Why Paying a Gardener to Do My Spring Planting Saves Me Money

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Doing work yourself isn’t always the most cost-effective option. Read on to learn more. 

As a homeowner, one of the things I try to do is make sure the exterior of my house looks nice and presentable. After all, it’s the first thing people see when they come to my door.

And also, I like my home to look nice for me. That’s why I make a point to have flowers planted every spring.

Only I don’t do any of that work myself. Rather, I write a check to my landscaping company to do the work for me.

You’d think that would be the more expensive route to take. But actually, it helps me come out ahead financially.

When you can earn money by bailing on home projects

This year, my landscaper charged me $200 to plant flowers in my front lawn. That cost included labor and the flowers themselves.

I happened to be home when the team came to do the planting. It was a group of three, and it took them about 90 minutes to get the job done.

Since they do this sort of work for a living, it’s fair to assume they’re faster at it than me. And since it took three of them 90 minutes, I think it’s fair to say that it would’ve easily taken me five hours to do the same job.

Also, they had the flowers with them when they showed up at my house. They no doubt had to get them from a local nursery, which surely took time. So really, doing the work myself would’ve most likely been a five and a half hour job.

Now, let’s take the $200 I took out of my bank account and divide it by 5.5. That means I paid roughly $36 an hour to free up five and a half hours in my own schedule. And I’m not even accounting for the cost of the flowers (to be fair, nurseries around here are reasonably priced so it probably wasn’t a lot).

Meanwhile, I’m self-employed, and thankfully, I earn more than $36 an hour. So even when accounting for taxes, I still came out ahead financially by outsourcing the job and using those hours to work rather than doing my own gardening.

Also, by having my landscaper’s team do the work, I was reassured that it was done correctly. I’m not exactly a gardening wiz, and had I done the work myself, I might be looking at a bunch of dying flowers right about now.

Some services are worth paying for

When you’re self-employed, you can often justify the cost of outsourced home maintenance because the time you don’t spend on it yourself is time you can work and earn money. But even if you’re not self-employed, some things may be worth paying for.

If you don’t like to garden or aren’t very good at it, it could be worth it to hire a landscaper if you can afford it. HomeGuide says landscapers typically charge $25 to $50 per hour, per person. Of course, your costs will hinge on the work involved and where you live.

The point, however, is that there’s nothing wrong with paying for a gardener, or for another home serviceperson to take care of tasks you’d rather not do yourself. Granted, if you have zero money in your savings account and a lot of debt, then you may want to push yourself to do more things yourself. But if you’re doing fine financially, you shouldn’t feel bad about outsourcing the work you just don’t want to do.

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The Ascent does not cover all offers on the market. Editorial content from The Ascent is separate from The Motley Fool editorial content and is created by a different analyst team.Maurie Backman has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

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