Any labour you pay is paid with your post-tax income, with sales tax on top. You'd need to work two hours to buy an hour of your own labour. You usually get paid for a fixed number of hours, so the time you save by hiring an expert can't be spent at work paying for it.

There's usually some overhead involved too: finding labour, scheduling appointments, bringing your car to the dealership etc. Doing your own oil change takes less time than driving to the garage.

You don't have to do everything on your own, but I'd save the experts for the important challenges.

Sure! But a day only has 24h and you need to work, rest&relax, eat and shop somewhere in there. If a repair job costs me 1h of time or 2h's worth of labour in money, it's not clear that I can afford the 1h of literal time.

Not to mention that a job that it might take a service 1h's worth of labour to do may take me 2-3h, amortized with the learning curve (say, 4-5h first time I try, and eventually down to 1.5-2h after I've done it a few times).

You're right. In the end, it comes down to picking your battles. There's no hard rule for which battles are worth it.

I do my own motorcycle repairs, because I sometimes stray far from the nearest mechanic, and field repairs can be necessary. I also cook a lot, because I have to eat every day and restaurants are expensive.

However, I paid someone to rebuild my forks, and I buy pre-made pie shells. Those things are not worth doing myself. My father rebuilds engines in his garage, but won't change the oil on a slush-covered car. He'll pay someone else to do it.

I guess it depends on how pleasant the job is to you, how often you need it done, and how much it costs to get it done relative to your own salary.

> I guess it depends on how pleasant the job is to you, how often you need it done, and how much it costs to get it done relative to your own salary.

Yes, this is the most important point I think.

> You usually get paid for a fixed number of hours, so the time you save by hiring an expert can't be spent at work paying for it.

That cuts both ways though. I'd rather work 28 hours/week and spend more time fixing stuff myself. But jobs largely come as 40 hours/week (there are exceptions, but they would mean compromising on field, location or both, at least for me); if I could work 70% of the time for 50% of the pay I probably would.

Oh I agree. I have saved a lot of money by learning to do many things and handling them myself but I depend on the same supply chains for tool parts that others do for razor cartridges.

The more I've read about the lives of 19th century pioneers the more I've realized that even they depended on something more akin to modern supply chains than on real self sufficiency.

Truly self reliant peoples live in poverty. I know no counter example.

I would argue self-reliance is mostly playacting these days. More so than minimalism. Sure you can learn to do basic things like cook for yourself or build furniture but the skills required to live a relatively modern lifestyle go way beyond the capabilities of one person. Are you really going to mine your own iron to smelt into steel and drill for your own oil?