This was a great Time Value calculator that a friend Lori Bamber passed on to me that I think really provides some insight.

First, it tells you have many hours you have to work to get an hour of leisure time. For me, it is about 2.5 hours of work for 1 hour of kicking back. Yikes! Give you pause when you think about what you are focussing on when you are relaxing. I’m not sure it will make me relax more if I am thinking that I have paid 2.5 hours to do it!

Second, it calculates at what $ an hour threshold it makes sense to pay someone to do something for you instead of you doing it yourself. For example, according to the calc, my net pay is $15/hr after expenses. So for me, if someone costs less than that, it might make sense to pay them to do it . In their example, in deciding whether to paint your house yourself, you might figure that the job would take 200 hours of your weekend time, and each hour is worth $20. You could pay a painter up to $4,000 to do the job instead, in effect buying time from the painter.