According to the Pew Research Center, more than half of Americans claim that they are usually trying to do at least two things at once. Let’s face it, most people are at least slightly overwhelmed by the demands of modern life and the modern world.
What if you could simplify your life, though, and have more time to spend on the activities you find meaningful?
It’s possible! One way that many Americans are achieving this outcome is by outsourcing personal services to others so that they can have more time outside of work.
Are you interested in learning what services might be worth hiring out? Let’s take a look at twelve personal services to hire out.
What Is a Personal Service?
A personal service is a service rather than a product. Services include advice, access, attention, affective labor, and experience. These services are also sometimes called “intangible goods.”
When you hire personal care services, you are outsourcing something that you theoretically could do yourself but you find it’s worth the money to pay someone else to do it.
How Much Is Your Time Worth to You?
Many people believe the most frugal option in life is to always do things yourself rather than paying others to do them for you. While there is certainly some logic in this, it actually isn’t the whole story.
This is because you need to consider how much your time is worth to you. Depending on your income, life stage, and other factors, you might find that you have more money than time. If that is the case, you might consider outsourcing some of your normal daily activities and chores so that you can free up your time to do other things.
Sometimes it actually saves you money to hire out services. Professionals can often do things more efficiently than you would be able to, and you can spend the time working on your business endeavors or spending precious time with family and friends.
Whenever you consider hiring out a service, think about how long that same activity would take you and whether or not it’s worth your time versus the cost of hiring someone. You might find that frequently it actually makes sense to outsource even very simple tasks.
1. Grocery Delivery
These days, you can get grocery delivery and all but the most rural locations.
Getting your groceries delivered can sometimes cost you a delivery fee and then it is customary to tip the delivery person. Lower cost extra, the delivery fee is typically only $5 or $10 if there is any delivery fee at all.
When you think about how much time you spend grocery shopping, consider whether or not it’s worth a little extra money each week to have someone shop for you and bring your groceries to your door.
This can be particularly meaningful if you usually walk to the grocery store or take public transportation.
2. House Cleaning
One of the most common personal services to outsource is housecleaning. There are a lot of reasons to hire a cleaning company, one of which is that you can spend your valuable time doing things you find more meaningful.
The average person spends about four hours a week doing housework. When you think about it, that’s half of the workday. What else could you do with this time that you would enjoy more?
Keeping your house clean is important to your mental and physical health. You can also typically customize your house cleaning needs to fit your budget and your schedule. You might find that it is helpful to have a home cleaning service come through once a month to do deep cleaning tasks, or you might prefer to have cleaners in your home several times a week.
3. Home Stager
If you are selling your house, it is common to stage the home to help make it more salable. While it might be tempting to do this yourself, it can be very difficult to remain objective when decorating your own home for sale.
When you hire a professional home stager, they know how to declutter and depersonalize the space so that potential buyers will be able to picture themselves living there. They will also know how to highlight the strengths of the property.
When homes are staged well, they tend to sell for more money and sell faster. This means that home staging can often leave you making money rather than spending it. I am looking to sell my house for cash Florida so I found this checkout.
4. Wedding Coordinator
When considering which personal services to hire out, you might think about whether or not it is worth that to try and coordinate your own wedding. A wedding is a special occasion that you want to be able to enjoy to the fullest. If you try to save money by planning your own wedding, you might end up missing out on the fun because you are worried about the details.
Hiring a wedding planner can actually help to save you money, believe it or not. This is because they know how to negotiate better rates from vendors.
5. Personal Trainer
Of the many personal services that are in demand these days, you might seriously consider hiring a personal trainer. This is a particularly good idea if you tend to be the type of person who will buy a gym membership but doesn’t feel motivated enough to use it regularly.
Sometimes all you need is a little bit of support and direction. A personal trainer can help you find the motivation within yourself to get healthy and stay fit.
6. Lawn Care
If you have a property that has a yard of any kind, you might consider hiring out your lawn care. A lawn care company can do everything from mowing your lawn and weed spraying to landscaping and maintenance.
While some people might enjoy mowing their own lawn, other people might find it to be a tedious chore. If it isn’t something that you find to be an enjoyable activity, it can be worth it to hire professionals.
7. Laundry
One of the personal services to hire out, particularly if you live in a place with no washer and dryer, is laundry. If you have to go to a laundromat to do your laundry, it can be time-consuming and expensive.
This is also a particularly good task to outsource if you live in an urban place and would typically walk to the laundromat or take public transportation.
It can be a real hassle to lug your laundry to a laundromat in a duffel bag only to spend quite a few coins and a couple of hours to get it done. Then, of course, you have to lug your cream on your back home.
Many laundromats offer a pickup and delivery service. If you value your time and hate the process of going out to do your laundry, it might be worth it for you to hire out this service.
8. Dog Walking
It can be difficult to give your dog all of the exercise that it needs when you work a full-time job. Hiring a dog walker can be a relatively inexpensive thing to do and can help you make sure that your dog is healthy and spends enough time outside moving around.
This is a great personal service to hire out, because you can schedule a dog walker only when you need. Perhaps it works for you to walk your dog in the morning before you go to work but you’d like someone to stop by and take them for a walk in the afternoon. This can save you the trouble and gas money of running home on your lunch break to let your dog out for a quick pee.
You might be able to hire a neighborhood teenager to walk your dog for you. If not, there are a lot of do walking services in most cities that can be quite affordable.
9. Home Office Needs
If you run your own business there are a lot of potential things you can outsource. You might consider hiring someone to manage your emails and your scheduling. This is often not as expensive as you might think and can save you a ton of time dealing with minutiae.
You could also hire out your marketing and publicity needs. When you run your own business, you don’t typically have a lot of time to put into marketing. You can find very inexpensive help these days to help with your branding and marketing campaigns.
This is also the case when it comes to building a website and managing your online digital marketing. You might consider hiring a digital marketing company so that you can have the greatest possible online presence without having to put in the hours yourself.
10. Cooking
In many households these days, both parents work full-time and the children have busy schedules, too. This makes it more common to eat out or eat poorly when people do spend time at home.
While it might seem extravagant to hire someone to cook for you, for some families or individuals it might make sense. You do not need to hire a personal chef to cook a fresh meal for you every evening, as this would get quite expensive. However, you can set up a monthly meal plan and have a cook come to your home once a month and vacuum seal and freeze meals that will be ready to eat.
11. Every Day Errands
When you think about it, you probably spent quite a bit of time every week running errands. You might consider hiring someone to run the errands for you so that you can have more time. Things like running to the post office, making phone calls, or grabbing something from the store are things that you can hire out.
For digital errands, you can hire a virtual assistant. When you hire someone that is offshore, you can pay as little as four dollars an hour for this service. You also might consider hiring a local teenager that you know and trust to do these tasks for you.
12. Anything Else You Despise Doing
At the end of the day, we only live one life. If there are certain regular chores or tasks that you absolutely hate doing, consider hiring someone else to do them. Unless the cost of doing so would seriously cut into your monthly budget, it can be worth it simply for the peace of mind that you do not have to do it yourself.
Outsourcing Personal Services: Does It Make Sense For Your Life?
One survey found that the ideal amount of free time in order to produce the greatest satisfaction in life was around 2 1/2 hours a day. Do you feel like you are getting that much time to do whatever you want every single day?
Probably not. Even if you work a standard 40 hour a week job, there are so many other little things to take care of that it can feel like you don’t have any time to yourself at all.
One way to gain more free time is to make sure that you are being as efficient as possible when it comes to your chores. However, this can be massively aided by outsourcing some of those chores to other people. This can help to make the tasks that you do complete yourself more manageable and help your life feel more under control.
Did you find this article on outsourcing personal services interesting? If so, be sure to check out the rest of our blog for more fascinating and informative content
