Time is money; money is time.
One of the advantages of increasing your income is that you have the ability to outsource time-sucking activities that you’d rather not be doing.
Outsourcing tasks gives you the added benefit of more free time. This free time can be used to either work more hours or to have more leisure time.
I personally want more free time so that I can pour more time and energy into my small businesses. Free time is limited, and if you don’t leverage resources to make as much free time as possible it can be difficult to achieve business and personal goals.
Below are 7 ideas of things you can outsource to save time.
1) Cleaning
Cleaning can take hours upon hours of your week and keeping a house or apartment clean is a constant battle for busy people. Cleaning can become a frustrating chore when you add up all the time spent vacuuming, scrubbing the toilet, and all the other cleaning tasks you could do without.
Having someone come and clean your house for you can give you more time to kick back after a long day of work. It can be difficult to find a cleaning company that you trust, but once you have the service started it’s hard to go back. Even if they don’t “deep clean” your house, it will cut down the hours that you spend doing manual cleaning chores.
2) Yard Work
Mowing the lawn, laying fertilizer, raking leaves…these are all necessary tasks for a homeowner. Necessary and time-consuming, that is. Hiring out yard work is an easy way to free up time on your nights and weekends.
Don’t forget about Winter. You can save a lot of money by hiring a snow removal service. I can’t count the hours I’ve spent shoveling snow during the frigid winters we have in Minnesota.
3) Pet Care
Let’s face it: pets take a lot of time and money. My wife and I decided against getting a dog mainly because we just don’t have the time to give them what they deserve.
A couple things that can be outsourced is grooming and walks. There are a ton of people looking to take care of pets in your area. If you need more time, consider hiring out some of your pet care tasks.
4) Child Care
My wife and I both want to have careers, even when we have children. That means we will need either daycare or a nanny. Thankfully there is no limit to the number of daycare providers or nannies that are willing to take on this task.
Some other tasks that can be outsourced relating to child care are tutoring and athletics. In fact, a lot of people already do this with after-school tutors and coaches.
5) Cooking
Cooking is something everyone has to do. Planning meals, buying food from the grocery store, and actually preparing meals can take a lot of time.
Personal chefs aren’t really in the budget for most people. Eating out at restaurants and take-out can help, but it’s not always the best for your wallet or health.
There are some new companies that were started the past few years who focus on solving this problem. They pre-cook meals that are healthy and easy to prepare. This can be a great way for busy people to free up time.
6) Home Improvement & Home Projects
Do-It-Yourself is all the rage, and there is definitely opportunities to save thousands of dollars by going the DIY route. There is one enemy of DIY, though, and that’s time. Home projects can eat up a ton of free time and prevent you from relaxing or working on side hustles.
If you have a side hustle or small business you may be able to leverage your income from that to pay for home improvements. Home projects can be fun for some people, but for others it’s just another thing to get done.
Hiring a professional means there is less risk of things going wrong. Beyond that, many people don’t factor in the hours of planning and preparing needed to properly execute DIY home projects.
7) Laundry & Ironing
I spend about an hour a week ironing my clothes. I can’t wait for the day that I can justify paying for laundry and ironing service. Currently, though, it doesn’t make financial sense for me to have all my dress clothes dry cleaned.
I don’t have to tell you twice that if you can take laundry and ironing off your to-do list you can save a lot of time. If you can afford it, dry cleaning could be a big time-saver.
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These are just a few ideas of things you can outsource to save time. The great thing about the age we live in is that there are a ton of companies who are working towards making time-consuming chores easier. I feel like every week I hear about a new business whose goal is to save people time and energy.
Are you a fan of outsourcing? What else would you add to this list?
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Oh gosh I definitely need outsourcing to keep me sane. Especially for my laundry. It’s an extra $15 every two weeks for wash-dry-fold but my clothes end up so fluffy! Plus, that’s like 2 hours I don’t have to spend tied to the laundromat. Which to me is 100% worth it.
Nice list. We outsource a number of things, but it’s largely business related so we cans focus on higher paying work and bringing in more business. We’ve toyed with the idea of hiring a cleaner to come in a few times a month, but at the rates I’ve seen from commercial companies to do it I’d much rather save the several hundred dollars per month.
I wish I could outsource more. I am such a control freak! For example, I would really like someone to come and clean my house BUT I am afraid they won’t do it right. I can just see myself re-cleaning everything once they leave and feeling resentful about it. Ugh!
We do most everything ourselves, but will likely be outsourcing more as the debt goes down. I’d love to pay someone to come and clean the house. :-)
Personally the only things we outsource at this point is gutter cleaning on our house and car maintenance. One item I see a lot of people outsource are income tax returns : ) As a CPA, I prepare my own. But I’m hoping to start a business in the near future where I help people prepare and file their income tax returns.
Love this! We outsource our lawn and yard maintenance. It just makes it so much easier because our neighbor has a lawn company and he can literally mow our lawn in 5 minutes whereas it would take us 30.
I can’t wait until the day that I can hire someone to clean my house. That’s my money motivation :)
I cannot wait for the day when I can outsource cleaning!!! Until I’m debt free I will not be doing that, but I am a fan if your money is right.
I only outsource what I cannot do myself. I outsource daycare at this point, but I will try everything else. I do a lot of cooking and cleaning. Lawn care is in my wheel house and so is car maintenance. That is actually my chance to get away from the computer. I will outsource stuff where I don’t have knowledge or the proper tools.
I am all for outsourcing if and only if you use that time to earn more money and aren’t paying off credit cards. I know lots of people who outsource things they could easily do themselves while they stay in debt and use the free time to watch TV.
Reading blogs about being frugal and being frugal or perhaps cheap myself, I have a hard time justifying outsourcing things that I can do myself. But honestly, I’m with you on some of these…they are very time-consuming chores which would free up a lot more time to do other things. I feel like it’s work, eat, sleep, do chores…rinse and repeat.
I am a big fan of outsourcing cleaning and childcare. I make MUCH more money per hour than I pay for those and having them in place makes me significantly more productive. This past weekend I did a deep dive clean of my house and realized that my cleaning lady probably saves me about 5 hours a week, so she is definitely worth it to me.
I outsource cleaning, laundry, DIY and garden care, low wages here make it really worth it. If we go away, the handyman would take care of the pets so that is part of his responsibilities instead of having to find a kennel. Cooking I really enjoy so unless it is a time consuming recipe, or a local one the housekeeper would do better than me, I do most of it myself.
I’m with you 100%, DC! There are definitely tasks that make sense to outsource if you can afford them. When the girls were younger, we had a nanny and we have a cleaning person too. We still keep things tidy but it’s great having her help us out. I enjoy cooking so I do cook most of our dinners. Like you, we have a cat and Prince is pretty easy to take care of, especially when you pay your kids to change his liter box. :) We are not big DIYers, it’s not something my husband and I really enjoy, although I admire those who are so handy.
Thankfully my boyfriend doesn’t mind all the cleaning and apartment upkeep, so he takes care of that! I cook and do laundry, which doesn’t take that much time on a regular basis. At my old office, a dry cleaning service came by to take clothes that needed cleaning, and then delivered them back two days later. I thought that was pretty neat. No time wasted there!
I would love to outsource cooking and doing the laundry (only because I have to do it at a laundromat-if I had one in my place it would be no big deal). I do like cleaning though and have a pretty small place. I don’t outsource anything currently save for a few writing assignments and blog maintenance tasks. I think if I could, that’s where my focus would really go.
taylorqlee Wait…only $15 for wash-dry-fold? For how many loads? That sounds like a great deal!
FrugalRules But John, think of how much more income you could make with those few hours of not cleaning? Just kidding, I’m being sarcastic. I think of NOT outsourcing as saving money, too, so as long as I’m paying down debt and trying to build up income streams, I’ll be doing most of this work myself.
Holly at ClubThrifty I have an issue with that too, Holly. I have a LOT of trouble releasing control of things which makes it so much harder to outsource.
Laurie TheFrugalFarmer You and I are on the same page, Laurie. I plan on outsourcing many things down the road, but while I’m paying down debt there is no reason to.
BudgetforMore I use TurboTax, but I bet you could find some bloggers and small business owners who would be all about that.
SenseofCents That’s great! I do pretty much everything myself, but if/when my cash flow increases I would consider outsourcing many things.
DebtRoundUp I’m pretty much in the same place as you right now. I’ll do pretty much everything I can myself and will outsource what I don’t have the knowledge or tools for.
brokeandbeau Same here! It’s really just a matter of being able to afford it or not. It’s something you can work towards, for sure.
theFinancegirl Same here! I am in debt so I try to not outsource things, because I figure it would be better off in an emergency fund or going towards my debt. But once that debt is gone I’ll seriously consider outsourcing more stuff.
Hey DC, definitely a fan of outsourcing, I considered getting my ironing done, which would probably cost me ~$30 a week however I realised that I actually enjoy having the time to spend an hour or so, listening to podcasts..
Having said that yes I would be a big fan of outsourcing :)
Eyesonthedollar I hear you, Kim, and that’s why I haven’t outsourced much of anything. I will outsource larger projects (like installing a new bath tub, for example), but for now just really “hustling” and trying to increase my cash flow.
Andrew LivingRichCheaply Haha same here. Throw a workout into the mix and you described my life.
blonde_finance I definitely would like to hire a cleaning service down the road! For now I am focused on saving wherever I can, so I’m willing to do the extra chores.
RFIndependence I know you’ve written about this quite a bit on your blog. I think it’s the biggest advantage of living abroad. So many opportunities to outsource for cheap.
ShannonRyan One of my life goals is to be able to afford to have a nanny. I think it increases your quality of life so much. There are also many people who are in college, transitioning after college, grad students, and those who just want a good job who make great nannies.
JourneytoSaving We have a dry cleaner at our work, but I actually wash and iron them myself to save money. If I got a promotion or two I think I’d be able to justify it, tho.
Beachbudget Ah that’s too bad about the laundromat, but I can see why lots of apartment/condos don’t have them. It’s so much cheaper not to run those gas lines.
mycareercrusade Woah at $30 for an hour of work I would totally DIY, so I think you’re smart for passing up on it. But yeah I’m a fan of outsourcing within reason, and if I had higher income I would be seriously looking into outsourcing a lot of stuff.
$30 in Australia though I’d argue is probably the equivalent of $16 or so in the US due to higher wages.. I would happily pay someone $30 an hour to do it if I knew I could earn an more than what it would cost me.. Cause if you’re hourly rate is $50 for example and it costs $30 to outsource a task the net result is $20 profit (of course that’s simple cause there’s taxes involved ha) but I don’t mind spending money to make money!
DC @ Young Adult Money taylorqlee Ah, sorry it’s actually ~$20 per but I estimate probably $10-15 more than I would pay doing it myself. It’s just for me so 1-2 loads for 2 weeks worth of clothes. Not sure how good of a deal it is (don’t really have many points of comparison) but it’s definitely convenient!
mycareercrusade Haha I forgot to do the exchange rate. I was totally thinking $30 USD!
And then you can watch TV with all that time saved. A great trade (sarc..)
No Nonsense Landlord Haha not exactly what I was proposing, but if you can afford it I don’t see any shame in taking some time to relax and entertain yourself. I personally would use the time to get more sleep, work out a bit longer, and work on some business ideas.
Outsourcing and delegating are almost essential to making more money. I’ve always outsourced yard work as labor is pretty cheap and the work would take me a lot longer if I did it myself.
thebrokeprof I agree 100%. It’s hard to leverage your time properly if you keep all the routine chores in your schedule.
I’ve considered outsourcing an assistant for tasks like managing my email and editing my blog posts. My mom thinks I’m getting “too big for my britches” LOL.
But some people (like her) don’t understand how much time really is money. If I have more free time to pitch and write posts I’ll make more money to finance an assistant. It all comes full circle.
TrendyCheapo I agree 100%. I also don’t expect a majority of people to understand how spending money through outsourcing can sometimes be justifiable. If you have a way to utilize the time better and it makes sense from a finance standpoint, I’m all for it.