Every now and again, a PF blogger will consider the ramifications of opportunity cost: what it costs to use your potentially valuable time to do tasks that could be hired out to others for a fraction of what your time is worth. Or, alternatively, the amount you can save in the future by spending on a relatively pricey project now. True, all that. I’d like to propose a variant, though: hassle cost.
Hassle cost: the value, y, of time, energy and aggravation spent on something that could be eliminated at a cost, x. If y > x, then it’s worth spending money to get rid of the nuisance.
Problem is, time is easy to value. As for the dollar value of energy spent and aggravation aggravated…it’s anyone’s guess. It’s a figure you may be able to calculate only in retrospect.
Case in point: I expected to feel really bad about cutting down the devil-pod tree. I don’t like to kill a wilted basil plant, to say nothing of a large shade tree. Figured to get depressed whenever I stumble into the backyard. But nay! Every time I walk out there and see that empty space, what I feel is a profound sense of contentment.
♥ No more bushels full of wet strappy leaves to haul out of the pool.
♥ No more wads of devil-pods choking Harvey and sticking out of his little orifice like black fangs. No more trips to the pool store to have Harvey disassembled, disentangled, cleaned, and reassembled.
♥ No more yellow spots to bleach out of the bottom of the pool.
♥ No more dunes of goopy pollen clogging everything that looks like a sieve or a filter anywhere near the damn pool.
There actually is a cost benefit to assassinating the tree. Chopping it down cost about $350. With the city’s new, inflated water rates, draining and refilling the pool cost about $400. Protestations of pool guys who profit from this adventure notwithstanding, the truth is it should not be necessary to drain and refill a swimming pool every other year. Far from it: my ex- has lived in the house we bought just off Central Avenue for more than 20 years and has never refilled the pool. The specific cause of my having to change out the water in this pool is the vegetative material that the tree has been dumping in there. Phosphates. That’s what you get: organic stuff that makes it impossible to keep the pool chemicals balanced. Gives you algae. Lots of algae.
Cost benefit, though, as you can see, is different from hassle cost. The hassle cost of the tree is measured not in hundreds of dollars but in hundreds of hours.
Hassle cost benefit: deep in the positive numbers.
🙂
A lot of the bloggers assume that–while you hire someone to, say, clean your house for $50–you are earning some vast per hour fee as a consultant!
As for hassle cost–you know you did the right thing when a big weight ascends from your back. When you got rid of the tree, I SWEAR I could feel your load lift, many miles away.
Cool post – I think hassle costs are elastic creatures that are 100% DIRECTLY tied to income/cash flow. Thoughts?
@ frugalscholar: What more could a scribbler want than an empathetic reader??? {love!}
@ Evan: That’s really a complex question. hmmm… I’d love to hear how readers respond to it. “Directly tied…” Well, yes, if most of your time is occupied either with $60/hour work or with (successfully) soliciting said work. However, if you think your time should be worth that but you’re not actually getting 30 or 40 hours a week of $60/hour work and spending another 20 hours a week hustling up more of it, then you might as well be cleaning the pool.
Claro, if you’re unable to earn a decent living for one reason or another, then every hour you spend cleaning the pool is $XX per hour that you don’t have to pay someone else — i.e., in effect, it earns you that much per hour.
My sense is that there’s an emotional or psychological toll inflicted by unnecessary or especially annoying work. It may not be quantifiable in dollars per hour, but nevertheless paying someone to help you get rid of it may be worth the money. As we scribble, I’m DONE(!!) with today’s pool work. Instead of wrestling with bagsful of leaves and icky pollen stuff, I’ve had time to make a lovely fish stock preparatory to converting a large bag of shellfish into a magnificent bouillabaise, and I’m indulging myself with a bourbon and water. The wind is blowing. If the accursed tree were still there, you would not be reading this because I would be wrangling debris out of the pool and unclogging the equipment.