Time is tight in the Quack household. I’m finding myself spending more time than I would like on activities that are neither “quality time with family” nor “building my career”.
Previously I have been hesitant about spending more money on convenience services for fear of lifestyle inflation. Now however I feel that not freeing up more time would slow down my career growth.
The question for the community: in your busy lives, what has been the best ROI for you in terms of money spent vs time saved? Let’s say for argument’s sake I would be willing to spend 500-1k per month on such services.
A few more thoughts on our current situation and some ideas I have:
We have a cleaner coming once per 2 weeks to do a deep clean. With small amounts of cleaning by us between visits, we keep the place in good shape. Instead the cleaner could come twice per week so we don’t have to do any cleaning, and could also do our laundry.
Meal prep: we eat pre-prepared food during the week, combination of food prepped the night before and things from the freezer. I would love it if either there was 1) some way I could get good, healthy ready meals for the freezer so we could reduce the amount we need to cook, or 2) have someone come to our place and do meal prep for us. (It’s important to us that we are eating well, lots of veggies, no additives, low salt, etc. Getting supermarket ready meals is not an option because of this.)
Meal prep. Well, that’s a nice business Idea.. but it’s already done for example at Coop. Of course you have to trust them for some stuff (salt). How do you know if someone coming at your place will do an healthy meal? There are already businesses like that (sort of) but they are catered to invalid/old people. Find enough people and you can Uber food to them. But then again..trust.
I love to cook and my kids are helping whenever they can.
Cleaning and bike and car repairs are things that I could do technically but I prefer to source out and have peace of mind.
In Spain same situation, cleaning lady every two weeks, but does my laundry too. I did not use the kitchen in two years I eat at least twice a day in restaurants. It is a tradition here in Valencia to meet your friends for the almuerzo which is kind of a second breakfast. I pay 300 EUR per month to eat and drink in a restaurant almost every day, the cleaning lady gets 50 EUR every two weeks. Sometimes I use a private driver, a neighbour, that costs me 40 EUR per day (with car) but I don’t have to worry about drinks or parking. Spain is still dirt cheap if you avoid tourist traps, way more bang for the buck. That is mainly why I spend almost 6 months per year here.
In Switzerland I only use a gardener once or twice a year for more or less 1.7k CHF. I have robots to cut the lawn and to clean the floors and I do like to cook sometimes. Have a bigger kitchen in Switzerland.
Hiring a gardener to take care of the outdoor space. So far, it’s been my best expense, especially compared to the time it used to take me with my own non-professional tools.
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