[desas]

> If instead, I would otherwise be wasting time playing video games or watching TV, then it always makes sense to do the job yourself.

It depends on how much you value your free time and how much you enjoy fixing your washing machine. I spend five days working, I get two days for the weekend. The weekend days are scarcer and more valuable to me - I'm not going to give them up at the same price I give up a weekday.

Given a choice between fixing my washing machine myself and paying a repairman to fix it while I enjoy some hobby time, well up to a certain cost, I'd rather relax with a hobby.

[ryandrake]

Right, but that has nothing to do with your compensation during work hours. I was specifically objecting to OP's:

> If you're in tech, the value of the time you spend driving to the store will probably be higher than all the tools you'll buy while you're there.

Implying that if you're not in tech (read: don't have a high salary) then your free time is not worth as much. I think most people value their free time like you described, not measured in terms of dollars, and certainly not proportional to how much they make in their day jobs.

[bmicraft]

How much you're willing to pay to have things done certainly has a very direct relationship to the amount you've got left over at the end of the month. Pretending that's not true because you can't literally weight up hourly rates isn't very useful.