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Comment by dqpb | Hacker News Reader

If the economy is working properly there shouldn't be cost savings by doing it yourself. That's the whole point of division of labor.

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Maybe, maybe not. It really depends on many variables that are different for everybody.

If you work (or have worked) in construction you have the experience to do it at less cost. If you have friends who will all share labor to build their own houses, then you quickly get the experience.

If you can't earn more money in your spare time (burn out from working too many hours at your "day job" is very real!) then your labor is worth zero and you save money. Even if you could earn more elsewhere, if you enjoy working in construction once in a while your time is less valuable.

There might be market distortions that mean labor for construction gets paid more then the real value. Thus making you more competitive.

You might have a job that is less valuable than construction, and thus your time building your own things is worth less than the person you might hire.

You might have reasons (valid or invalid) to believe the professionals would do a bad job.

You might be a complete klutz that should never touch a tool. You might hate building things. You might be disabled. You might want to do something else with your time. All of these are valid reasons not do something.

In order to build a house you need to become the contractor. In order for contractors to make money they mark up the price of the building beyond subcontractor fees and materials. Twenty years ago there was a twenty percent mark-up in certain places in the country. When my family built our home we never bought anything at full price. One of my uncles installed all the flooring for free because it was his full-time job normally to install carpet etc. (I’m pretty sure but not positive). The cabinets that went into the finished main kitchen were like 90% off. If you are acting as the contractor and you have the time to wait to purchase certain material (when there are sales) you can potentially get below the costs of what some of the contractors are getting their material at. The cookie-cutter subdivision houses—in some parts of the US—are extremely poorly built with sub-par material (they are trying to make as much profit as possible).

This is irrelevant since he provides labor/services by himself.

You are telling me that if economy is properly working, a mother should not cut the daughter's hair since it should not be cost saving ?

I'm sorry if I misunderstood your point.

He's basically arguing comparative advantage. You're better off spending the hour programming and paying the contractor a (well, maybe) lower rate for them to do the job faster and better.

Which is fine as far as it goes for theoretical economics. But, in practice, as in your example, the mother probably doesn't have a way to get paid for doing some other task rather than cutting the daughter's hair--and would likely take even more time to go to the barber anyway.

It does make sense to pay for some tasks you could do yourself. But in a lot of cases you're not actually saving money especially if you're not earning money by the hour and are maxed out on how much time you're able to spend earning.

You'd be surprised. I've met some general contractors making about 2-3x what a senior developer makes. That's in Vancouver where there's a roaring real estate market, and senior developers earn half what they do in the US.

I return my cans and bottles for the deposit. Every time I do it I think it's completely illogical because I'm losing $50 each time over just spending the time programming. I justify it to myself as getting paid $5 to take a walk. I can't spend every waking hour programming or I'll burn out. I'm not sure I'm not just trying to rationalize irrational behavior though.

Of course I look like a homeless person walking down the street downtown with two big bags of cans, but I don't let that enter into my calculation.

I don't disagree, hence my parenthetical :-) Took me over a year to get a plumber scheduled as part of a rather small bathroom remodel in Massachusetts. The construction trades are still hard work but they seem to pay well enough in areas where they're in demand.

I used to hate dealing with bottle deposits because it felt like throwing money away even if it was a modest amount. Now my town recycling lets you bring in deposit bottles and leave them in a shed for the local animal shelter which works just fine for me.

It sure raises some questions about the typical advice to get a degree. Much more so if you get a degree in something nearly useless like English Literature.

I dropped out of Computer Science at my university, but I've done better than my friends who stayed and graduated with honors. My take away is there's no one best formula in life, rather there are more paths to success (and more ways to define success) than we have imagination to think of.

On the other hand, I know lots of people who have done well for themselves with classic liberal arts degrees (albeit mostly from top schools and they'd probably have done well no matter what they had majored in). But I do suspect that there are a lot of people who would do better going into the trades than dutifully getting a degree that they're generally disinterested in getting.

Well, the economy is not working properly: there's so much overhead with each step of capitalism involved in buying a home.

This is just one aspect: Take for example taxes: 33% is a double whammy. If you build it yourself, it's like making your own bed: you don't pay 1/3 of the labor cost for making your own bed. But, if you pay someone to make a home for you: First your take home pay is cut by 1/3 by your income taxes, and the person your paying or companies, their labor is taxed at another 1/3. In addition to the income taxes, that company has many other taxes to pay as well, not to mention impact fees, environmental fees, etc, etc and the lumber company they buy from has to pay even more taxes,etc.

as another example, look at the difference in cost between what someone charges and what they actually earn. For example: here in the bay area, a plumber will charge 180$ but, after expenses and taxes, he's left with about 20-30$/hr.

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