Saving Time and Saving Money

Recently, I had one of those "ah-ha!" moments while reading an XKCD comic.  Given my family's inclination to ostensibly save money, no matter the cost, it is not surprising that I never equated the act of saving money to the act of saving time.

If the comic and that sentence do not spell it out clearly enough, it basically breaks down like this: the oppurtunity cost of saving money is the time you spent doing so.  As XKCD points out, if you spend 9 minutes or more to save a dollar, you are working for $6.66 an hour or less.  This is an essential insight to saving money, and as usual, brings to mind the old adage that "time is money".

Combine it with another favorite of mine, "if you don't have time to do it correctly now, how do you expect to have time to fix it later?" and you have a powerful way to reason about your handiwork.

• Take your time to do good quality work because every minute you spend doing it right saves at least another minute later fixing what you botched.
• Avoid materials and methods that are unfamiliar or too involved to acquire (unless the above applies, of course).  You save time learning the new techniques and avoid using those techniques poorly, thus sidestepping possible mishaps.
• Plan ahead and in some detail so that when you are out on a job or gathering supplies you have thought of everything you need and thus will not waste an hour picking up things you forgot.

It all seems like common sense, but it is not obvious how dire the consequences are.  For instance, say you are building a deck.  If you needed four more 2x4's than you bought, and the lumber yard is 20 minutes away, you must spend $5.00 in gas to buy $10.00 in lumber and spend an hour doing so.  If you are making $30 an hour, now you are making $15 and you have to spend an hour more later.  Do that twice a week over a three week contract, and you have to spend an additional day working and $240+ of your customer's money.

Now what if, in a similar and even more likely situation, you bought enough lumber but because you did not double check your measurement, you need those four 2x4's to fix what you botched.  If it took 45 minutes to measure, layout, and cut that lumber, then find out it was wrong, that is $22.50 and the better part of an you wasted.  Now you have to work two more days and spend more than half a grand of customer money, and that is if you are working alone!

Two working days and half a grand or 30 seconds and three cents.  Those are your choices, so you should probably double check everything you measure. Every time.