I thought about calling this entry “Don”t Spend Two Hours to Save $20”, but it lost out on the internal blog title poll. Both phrases are about how it”s easy to end up spending hours & hours to avoid paying a nominal amount.

People who know me know that I like to talk about productivity a lot. Granted, I see the irony of me talking about productivity while I sit around writing blog posts, but anyhow.

Have you ever…

One of the things I”ve learned over the years is to not be afraid to spend a little money to save a lot of time. Assuming your time has value, it makes a lot of sense. So have you ever:

• Spent hours creating a program to do something, instead of buying a $25 piece of software that does all that you need and more?
• Used poorly-written, cumbersome free software to do your daily work, instead of paying $30 for a program that works really well?
• Saved $20 on a new tech gadget by trolling FatWallet and TechBargains for a week, sending in multiple rebates, asking store managers to price match, and/or driving back to the store to do a return/rebuy or price guarantee?
• Avoiding paying a $25 shipping fee on furniture or other large items by driving down to the store yourself, strapping the items to the top of your car, heading back home, unloading it, and carrying it into the room?
• Bought a cheap piece of crap to do something (a rake, a wrench, a garden hose reel, a heatsink) that required extra time or money to get it working correctly, and/or broke after a short while and required replacement?

…and so on. It”s easy to get sucked into saving a little money, but unless you enjoy the time spent saving that cash, you should make sure to be aware of how you spend your time and ensure that it”s really getting you somewhere. As programmers, we love writing software, and it”s really easy to say “hey I can quickly write or build my own X for free!” I”ve done that a lot (and heard similar sentiments from other developers), and while it”s fun writing little utilities and tools, they have a habit of taking longer than expected.

A Full Price Lesson

I had a friend back in Chicago who asked me to come with him to buy some stuff for his computer. I mentioned that he could save a lot by checking out various deals, and that different stores had different prices, so that he could buy his keyboard at one vendor, his antivirus software somewhere else, a mouse on Amazon, and then send in some rebates to save even more. I mentioned that he should keep an eye on bargain-shopper online casino sites and only buy when items go on sale, do some online research to compare price-for-performance between different items, and other price-shaving tips.

After a long spiel on techie thriftiness, he promptly ignored me and dragged us into Office Depot, where he asked my advice on what a good keyboard, mouse, and antivirus vendor were. I told him, and he grabbed the items, paid at the counter, and strolled out.

Initially I was shocked at his cavalier attitude at paying full price, but then I realized that he was done in 15 minutes. Done! I”d still be driving around, cutting out UPC symbols, etc. a week later.

I still remember that experience whenever I start thinking about how I can save $10 on a hard drive by comparing 4 different drives at 5 different sites over the course of 2 weeks.

If you”re not working, you aren”t getting paid

I”m not saying you shouldn”t try to save money, nor should you throw money away. Nor should you buy things you don”t need if something free will work just fine. Nor should you avoiding writing your own tools.

I”m just saying that if your time is valuable, think about how your time is spent, and just be conscious of where your hours are going vs where they”d go if you spent an extra $20-$100. Over the past two years at DevelopmentNow, that really hit home. We do 100% project work here, so if we”re not working on a client”s site, we don”t get paid. With that in mind, I felt more comfortable paying a little to gain a lot (of time). Especially in IT, there are opportunities to spend an extra $20 to save hours.

Examples from the field

For example, I set up an Unfuddle account for the company. Unfuddle is sort of like BaseCamp Subversion Ticket system, but it was ready to go instead of me spending hours (days?) setting up SVN, Trac, and other stuff for free. I”m also probably going to buy phpEd or some other commerical PHP editor. Why? Because I get a lot for that $100 or so, and I buy it & I”m done. I take a lot of screenshots, too, and need more features than Cropper Ifranview currently provide, so I”ll probably buy SnagIt for $40. Plus I order most things (including furniture) online & have it delivered right to my door — not only does it save me time, but it”s better for the environment than driving my car around.

Wrapping up

So…that”s how not to spend two hours to save $20. If you get paid hourly, saving $20 via two hours of unpaid work carries a real opportunity cost, which is how you go about losing 20 (or more) dollars an hour.