One of the arguments for hiring help around the house (usually housecleaners and folks to mow the lawn) is that your time is worth more than what it would cost to hire help.

The argument goes like this: If you currently make $25 per hour, and you can pay someone $15 per hour to mow the lawn, you’re actually either saving money or making more money by hiring someone.

This can certainly be the case if you have a limited number of hours to work. For example, if I pay someone $60 to clean the house, and I spend that time working when I would have otherwise been cleaning, I could conceivably earn more than I spent.

But what if I have the cleaner come while I’m working my normal hours or while I go out to the movies? Or what if I just avoided cleaning until the dust bunnies began breeding in the hallway? Then money doesn’t enter into the equation, except as an expense.

Which might be fine. I hate cleaning, and so I would like to hire a cleaner. It’s not a money-saving or a money-making endeavor though. It’s a convenience or a luxury. My sanity and potential free time are what I find worthwhile, and I’m ok with just saying that instead of trying to argue about the monetary value of time.

How do you handle spending money on hobbies? Do you have a certain amount set aside for them in your monthly spending, or do you just kind of go with the flow? Or maybe you stick with free hobbies, like reading or blogging…

About a month ago I signed up for an oil painting class, and I finally finished up my first painting yesterday. (We’d spent classes working on other stuff instead, and since I’ve only had time to paint during class, it’s taken me a while.)

Here it is:

(Don’t mind all the masking tape.)

I’ve really been enjoying this hobby. Time seems to fly by when I’m doing it, and I can actually concentrate too, which is highly unusual for me. However, it’s a pretty pricey hobby.

Even the beginner-grade oil paints and supplies are expensive. A pad of paper palettes? $10. One tube of olive green paint? $13. I could go crazy buying stuff, but so far have held back. (It’s not hard to hold back when stuff is that expensive.)

I imagine the costs will taper off after awhile, so it shouldn’t be too bad in the future except for the classes, which are actually pretty inexpensive considering how long they last. What kinds of things do you enjoy doing?

Are you good at spending money? I’m not.

Well, I take that back. I seem to have no problem spending more money than I maybe ought to — on eating out, things for other people, or stuff that makes the house look nicer.

But when it comes to spending money on actual physical things for myself, that’s another matter.

I can’t figure out if that’s just because I have an aversion to getting stuff in general (which I do), or if it’s also because I somehow don’t think I ought to be buying things for myself.

As sort of a test of this, for more than a year now I’ve been getting release point therapy (which is vaguely like a massage, only a thousand times better) every month. It’s not a physical thing, but it’s definitely just for me.

I still kind of cringe when I spend that money.

I think many women have this problem. They’re fine with buying new outfits for the kids, or a replacement doormat for the front door, or a soft new bed for the dog. But buying something — a physical thing — that’s just for us is somehow harder to do.

I don’t know if it’s that we think we have to justify the things we buy, or what. Clothes might be the exception to that, but then again we usually buy clothes because we “need” them for a particular purpose. Or because they’re on sale, or…you get the picture. I rarely hear a woman say “I bought that jacket because I just wanted it!”

I wonder sometimes if we bought more things strictly for ourselves “just because” if we would actually end up spending less overall. (And maybe be more satisfied too.) What do you think? (And guys, do you have this problem?)