Spending Money at the Laundry
by Mr Credit CardMrs Credit Card is away with the kids at the moment and I am left to my own devices at home. One of the things that I have to do on my own now is my own laundry. Mrs Credit Card normally sends my working shirts to the laundry and does the washing and ironing for the rest of the clothes herself.
Before she left, I was left with a pile of clothes (some of my casual long sleeve shirts, a couple of pants and some polo shirts). This pile has been staring at me for the last week or so. I am too tired at night to iron this pile of clothes and I think I can better spend my time on things that are more important. Things like writing blog posts, preparing my work for the next day.
I tried to hire my baby sitters to iron my clothes. But none of them could iron! My neighbors then suggested that I send my washed clothes to the laundry and just pay for it. So that was what I did.
It turns out that it actually cost more than I thought. The buttoned casual shirts cost only about $1.50. However, the pants and polo shirts cost about $6.50. Total cost was about $50 though I got a 20% discount. When the lady behind the counter told me the price, I was taken aback. I realized that I could probably iron the two pants and the polo shirts.
What what stopped me from doing that was something that I have read a lot and reiterated by my successful friends. And that is to build wealth, you cannot do low level jobs (or as some call it, the $5 an hour job). Hence, I see spending two hours ironing clothes (that’s how long I would take) as a $5.hr job and decided not to waste my time on it.
And I probably spent about $25 more than necessary. But my thoughts are that if I want to be making an equivalent of $500 an hour, then I should spend the my time on projects and things that will help me accomplish.
Question : Would you have done the same thing? Or do you disagree with this? Is this being not frugal?
August 24th, 2007 at 20:38
There’s an arbitrariness to your reasoning. Let’s say you make $100,000/yr, which comes to roughly $50/hr if you have a normal eight-hour workday (which, if you’re making six figures, you probably don’t).
Well you need to think of the rest of your day–the drive to work, using the restroom, your lunch break, and even going to the cleaners–as all means toward maintaining your job. Therefore, you make 100,000/year, but not necessarily $50/hr. You don’t get paid for all the things you have to do to keep your job.
If you are paying to have something done for you that you could do yourself and you aren’t doing anything that has a revenue-basis, you aren’t saving yourself any theoretical money. You’re spending 50 bucks to do what your parents probably gave you a few nickles to do when you were a kid–your chores.