Ask HN: What do you outsource for your personal life? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What do you outsource for your personal life?

23 pointsTbobbyZ24 comments

Auto shipping household essentials via Amazon has been a big time saver. Getting groceries delivered is another.

I wish there was a way to outsource managing my money and dealing with bills.

My neighbor graciously is handling my lawn for me since long covid.

Getting some things delivered by Amazon is nice. I leave the house as little as possible these days, as it's so taxing.

Here's my first instinct (snark) answer, which I'd normally repress here on HN: Electrical generation, natural gas supply, potable water, sewage handling, refuse and recycling, law enforcement, fire protection, ambulance service, food inspection, Civil and Criminal Justice, Public Works, infrastructure maintenance and regulation in general.

Cleaning. I hate paying for work that I can do myself, but I simply can't clean as well as professional cleaners. Even I spend more time than they do.

Same with washing/detailing my car, especially if there's a team working on it. 20 minutes x 3 people does not compare favourably to me doing 4 hours on Sunday afternoon.

4 hours to wash a car seems excessive.

I do it in 20 minutes, but I'm not detailing... just washing with a big hose brush thing.

In fact it takes me less time than driving to the carwash and back, and possibly having to wait.

Maybe I should've said "cleaning". Camping/offroading, it gets pretty grimy both inside and out. Hand carwashes here do the outside clean/wipe and then an interior clean (vacuum, wipe, etc). I tried to replicate it, but never to their quality.

This.

But I also then get the time back to spend with loved ones, and/or on fitness/hobbies/interests/sleep.

"But I also then get the time back to spend with loved ones, and/or on fitness/hobbies/interests/sleep."

Depending on how you clean,it could very well be considered simultaneous fitness.

Mail (virtualpostmail.com). I like getting an email with a PDF scan of letters. Then I save the PDF to my documents folder if it matters or never touch the actual paper or PDF again if it doesn’t. Due to some weird USPS policy, virtual mailboxes can’t be stuffed with junk or periodicals so I never have to waste time reading emails involving those

I outsource as much as possible, I have a maid clean our house twice a week (+ laundry, dishes, etc), a concierge service for all of our grocery shopping. An accountant and personal assistant which work together for all of the households and my businesses administrative tasks. The only shore I spend time on weekly is cooking. Living in south east Asia, I am paying around 500$ per month for the entire convenience. It buys me a full workday per week of time I can spend on leisure, working out or being more productive.

Tell us more about the assistant & accountant, and their interaction!

I hire people to annoy celebrities I don’t care for on Twitter. It got to be too much of a chore to torture such a long and ever growing list of people by myself.

Wait, is that something you seriously do?

Can you elaborate more? Which celebrities? How do you or they know what will annoy them the most? How much do you pay?

This comment is hilarious.

Haircuts - did my own for 11 years, recently found a barber that does privates in his small shop, my style is easy for him and a good price for me.

Grocery shopping - Shipt is wonderful paired with a fruit and veg coop. Trade Coffee drops off three bags every few weeks.

House cleaning - Im a tidy person but am home less and less, a family member wanted to get their cleaning business off the ground so now they deep clean once a month.

"I wish there was a way to outsource managing my money and dealing with bills."

This does exist under various names for various parts. Stuff like personal accountant, financial advisor, etc.

You can pay someone to manage your finances and bills: https://secure.aadmm.com/

As a software engineer myself I used to self host a lot. Nowadays I outsource email, backups, (remote)storage, etc.

Taking care of day-to-day meals for myself and family. It breaks my routine of what I actually want to do throughout the day. Takeout food is not a real alternative to home cooked meal.

Subscribe and save toilet paper. It just shows up.

Bills are annoying. Need account for autopay, their website sucks and crashes (Talking to centerpoint energy).

Just bidet, bidet, bidet, bidet.... No one wants a bidet bidet?

I got the toto fancy ass washer 2000, but still need TP to dry the bum.

Livin' la vida Lota.

Add-on bidet.

> managing money

Many fiduciary financial advisors will manage your portfolio on your behalf. Or do you mean like, day to day budget?

Driving. Cleaning. Filing my taxes. For now.

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