Lizzy and Lissa break down the hidden costs – financial and otherwise – of hired help. From housekeepers to virtual assistants to TaskRabbit sidekicks, outsourcing parts of your life can be a game-changer, but or a guilt trip. We unpack when hiring help is an investment in your peace of mind, and when it starts to mess with your values, your budget, or your sense of self. Is convenience worth the cost? And who gets to decide?
Lizzy and Lissa break down the hidden costs – financial and otherwise – of hired help. From housekeepers to virtual assistants to TaskRabbit sidekicks, outsourcing parts of your life can be a game-changer, but or a guilt trip. We unpack when hiring help is an investment in your peace of mind, and when it starts to mess with your values, your budget, or your sense of self. Is convenience worth the cost? And who gets to decide?
Main Topics
00:00 The Trade-offs of Hiring Help
00:58 Running The Numbers Segment
01:18 Financial Realities of Domestic Workers
03:57 Personal Experiences with Hiring Help
07:45 Emotional and Ethical Considerations
15:21 Balancing Costs and Benefits
18:34 Hypothetical Millionaire Scenario
19:46 Housekeeping and Pets
22:22 Digital Hygiene and Personal Assistants
23:39 The Stigma of Hiring Help
29:05 20 Cents Segment
References for Statistics
https://www.epi.org/publication/domestic-workers-chartbook-2022/
https://www.bls.gov/oes/2023/may/oes372012.htm
Lizzy: Today we're unpacking the trade-offs of hiring help in your personal life, how it can buy back your time and sanity, but also raise questions about cost and control. Is hired help worth it?
Lissa: Let's talk about it.
Welcome to Net Net with Lizzy and Lissa, where we analyze hidden costs and empower you to make your own damn decisions in life. Each episode covers a different facet of life, and at the end of each episode, we each give our takes on whether we think something is a net positive or net negative.
Lizzy: I'm Lizzy, a strategist and consultant with 20 years of experience in finance and investing.
Lissa: And I'm Lissa, a personal finance expert and a certified financial planner. We're best friends who talk about money.
Lizzy: And everything else.
Lissa: In today's episode, we are discussing hiring help and the considerations of hiring domestic workers. However, this episode is informational and educational in nature and should not be misconstrued as financial advice. We share our experiences to help educate, but you should consult a professional for guidance as needed. Is hired help worth it?
Lizzy: First up, running the numbers on hired help.
Lissa: According to the Economic Policy Institute, over 2.2 million people in the US work as domestic helpers, including housekeepers, nannies, and home health aides. And that number is likely a very big undercount since many people are hired off the books, work in gig roles, and fall into newer types of support that aren't always reflected in the data. For example, caregivers, private chefs, gardeners, drivers, handy people, and more.
Lizzy: There's been a lot of conversation around whether domestic workers are paid fairly. Right now, one in four live in poverty and only 13% get health insurance through their jobs.
Lissa: And to add a layer on top of that, over 90% of domestic workers are women, and more than half are Black Latina or Asian American women. So when we hire help, we're participating in this system that's shaped by race, gender, and class. And that's not inherently wrong, but it's something to be thoughtful about, especially when it comes to how much we're paying people and paying to outsource.
Lizzy: And according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the national average wage for housekeepers is about $16 and 66 cents an hour. But in cities like LA or New York, you could easily be paying 25 to 30 an hour or more, especially for someone with experience.
Lissa: What we know, there's more to life than numbers and statistics. So let's talk about it. Is hired help worth it? So outsourcing, hiring help.
Lizzy: Let's kind of set the stage. We mentioned some examples because as I was preparing for this, I, in my head was making a distinction between outsourcing and I think people often think of a housekeeper or cleaning service, that kind of thing. But the more I dug into it, the more examples I was able to find. So for me, I think of it as paying someone to do something you could do yourself-
Lissa: At home.
Lizzy: ... at home.
Lissa: Yeah, for your personal life.
Lizzy: So for example, housekeepers and cleaners, nannies or babysitters, in-home caregivers, gardeners, landscapers, personal chefs or meal prep, handy people, tutors, personal shoppers, dog walkers, personal trainers, car washers, movers, bookkeepers, assistants, organizers, pool maintenance, wide range of services.
Lissa: That's a good definition of things you could, for the most part, most people can do themselves in their home, but choose to outsource.
Lizzy: So that's kind of sets the stage.
Lissa: Yeah. All right. So where do we get started?
Lizzy: What has your experience been with hired help? If you could summarize.
Lissa: To summarize, I pick and choose. I'm very intentional about who I hire and when. It's never been consistent throughout my whole life. Obviously when I was broke and young and dumb and thought the number one goal was to save money at all costs, there's no way I would pay someone to clean my house or do anything else. Now that I value my time a lot and my energy a lot more differently, there are certain things that are definitely, they fall kind of in the nice-to-have category, but we include it in our budget.
Lizzy: Sure.
Lissa: For example, we get a housekeeper once a month to clean and we clean in between.
Lizzy: Sure.
Lissa: If I was balling and really, really rich and we were both cool with it, we would probably do it weekly so that we would clean less. But right now we're at a monthly cadence. Sometimes we actually stretch it to six weeks and in between you could tell the difference. It's just nice to have a fresh, clean house. And I used to love cleaning because it's also a workout for me, but now I have a bigger house, the time it takes is not worth it.
Lizzy: Yeah, understood.
Lissa: So that's one example. I have a couple of other things that I'm okay outsourcing, but I'm really choosy about it.
Lizzy: Sure.
Lissa: What about you?
Lizzy: Similarly, although my list was a little longer than I expected, so initially my first thought was a housekeeper. And growing up we would have phases where we'd have someone come once a month, maybe once every couple of months. My mom in particular, when we'd go on vacation, she'd like someone to come so she came home to a clean house, but it wasn't super common and it was just that expense. I've personally never had cleaners other than I think maybe once for a move out clean because I have that hard time justifying it to myself because even now I'm super meticulous about my apartment.
It's not a big space. So I'm like, "Oh, but you could just do it." But at the same time, sometimes you hire that person to clean the things that don't often get like the windows, the baseboards, and it just adds a little layer of depth. But I have used and regularly used delivery services, which we have a separate episode on, but that's kind of one of my forms of outsourcing, like grocery shopping or shopping trips. That is a huge time saver for me and totally justified in my opinion. I've done laundry service, I just took my dog to the groomer, which is a whole experience I'll share. I've used meal prep services, I've used movers. And then when I owned a rental property, I had a property management company and a handyman. So I've had a range, but most of them are kind of sporadic.
Lissa: Yeah. It's interesting to me that you said that you sometimes can't justify the cost for a housekeeper, but when you were younger on certain occasions, your family would do it because mine was the opposite. It was like, no, it was ingrained to me that why would you ever pay for that? Because you know how to do it. You can do it. You have all the tools and supplies. It's a waste of money. And so that's something that took many years for me to unlearn from my upbringing, my culture, my family, that no, you don't have to do everything yourself. And that energy is just as important of currency as your financial currency.
Lizzy: Right. So that takes us into the costs of hired help. So obviously there is a fairly straightforward financial cost in the hourly wage or the fee for the service that you're paying for. And as we mentioned, that can range from let's say 15 bucks an hour on up. And it just is going to vary depending on what you're paying for. And often these things do have a cost associated with them if you did it yourself, whether that is just time or in supplies or time to learn how to do it effectively, but there's also some emotional costs. So share what you've experienced. You kind of alluded to some of the guilt you may feel.
Lissa: Well, I think I'm past that a bit, although sometimes when we do that... We have the same housekeepers come and I've had, it's kind of like a family, but it's her and her husband and they work together. They tag team, and there will be times where they're doing a deep clean for us. So doing baseboards, doing everything that I start to feel bad. I'm like, "Dang, I'm really having someone else do this that I could be and should be doing," but then again, I'm paying them.
Lizzy: Yeah, I think that's the part that's kind of like sometimes a moral or emotional dilemma of I'm paying this person to do the service. I could do it myself. At the same time, this is their livelihood, so it's beneficial to them. And I think that's sometimes the challenge or even argument with domestic workers and fair pay and the fact that there are such racial and gender divides in this population because you don't want to not give someone work but there are a lot of loaded societal factors in that.
Lissa: I do it the same as I approach when I... I currently have one virtual assistant, this is a separate topic, but a virtual assistant that is outside of the US. So I actually pay less than I would pay if I had someone in the US. There's pros and cons, but I make sure that I pay her way above her living wage where she lives. And so I kind of have that same approach with my housekeepers is we actually don't have a set rate. It's not like an hourly rate. I let her, when she's done cleaning the house, depending on how dirty it is or how much cleaning she had to do, she'll throw out a price and I'll be like, "Okay, cool." And then I'll add 50 bucks for a tip. I'll go above and beyond that's way above market rate. But you know what? It's a person that I have a relationship with who I trust. We can leave the house and have her and her family clean when we're not there and don't have to worry about items getting stolen, things being misplaced. So it's a great setup.
Lizzy: Yeah, that's kind of my approach too, is if they provide a rate, I always increase it, go above it just because I want to be fair, and I understand that pricing is challenging and it's difficult to ask for something you might really deserve. So that's one way I try to get around that.
Lissa: You ever seen those trucks? They're like vans with marketing on them that are like, "Hire cleaners only $15 an hour." I always wonder if that's just the intro rate for your first clean, but even if, if that's the rate you're paying for the service, what are they paying the workers?
Lizzy: Right.
Lissa: Because usually they'll send two people. So what are they getting paid? That's what I wonder is how do you make that profitable?
Lizzy: And that's not even an accounting for overhead.
Lissa: You know what I'm talking about? You've seen those-
Lizzy: Absolutely. Yeah. And that's the thing to think about. If you're paying, how many people are coming, how much time are they actually spending? And then these people most likely aren't the business owners depending on how you hire them. So there's overhead involved. What are they actually taking home at the end of the day.
Lissa: Yeah.
Lizzy: You mentioned another cost though, or potential cost, which is trust. You are inviting someone into your home. You don't necessarily know them. You may or may not be home at the same time as them. So there's the personal level of trust of am I in my safe space, space safe, or there's the level of trust of are they going to do a good job? Because if you're doing something yourself, you know the quality you can deliver, whether that's good or bad, but it's really frustrating to pay someone for something.
Lissa: And it doesn't get done right?
Lizzy: Yeah.
Lissa: That's why I do think for certain things, like you mentioned, handyman are now services, middlemen services, tech services, Task Rabbit, platforms that kind of can help with that a little bit because even though you might be paying a higher rate because there's a cut that has to go to that service, there is a rating system. You can leave comments, and if they don't do a good job, they're incentivized to do a good job so that they can continue getting work.
Lizzy: Absolutely.
Lissa: So I do think there are ways to manage that a bit, but it does come into play because I've hired people where maybe they've put up all the picture frames in my house and it looked good. I wrote a good review and I closed out the order, and then these things started falling off the wall, so it wasn't done right. So it's like then you're just having to do it yourself anyway.
Lizzy: Yep, yep. I've definitely had that.
Lissa: Yeah. You've done ones where you've wasted money?
Lizzy: Yeah. My experience, I had a similar experience with a handyman or couple, and they were referred to me by someone who I trust, and this was out at my rental property where there aren't a lot of options because it's a sparsely populated area, and they left a lot to be desired, and I feel like they really tried to gouge on the pricing, but we went with it, and then ultimately they didn't really deliver the quality that we wanted and just weren't able to execute on a lot of things. I also had that recently, I took my dog to a new groomer and I chose this one just because of availability. My dog played in mud and was covered in bugs and stuff, so I wanted to do it that day. And I paid for extra services, like ear cleaning, teeth cleaning, a bunch of stuff. And I'm pretty sure they didn't do them.
Lissa: Really?
Lizzy: And when I picked him up, they said, "Oh, we got really busy. We had a bunch..." But I paid for this. So that's the frustrating part of those are things I 100% could do myself. I literally paid because I just didn't want to deal with it.
Lissa: I don't know if we have to censor this, but the one that I don't do is the anal gland expression. That's the thing you got to do with your dogs, and it's one thing I don't do, so that's why we take ours to the groomers regularly.
Lizzy: So know that's really frustrating. And definitely I guess the sunk cost, because I already paid for it, but you risk that when you ask someone to do it yourself. And so sometimes there's trial and error and finding people that you trust. You also can get it in a good rhythm with someone if you have regular maintenance and then they leave or they raise their rates or there's things like that that can happen.
Lissa: Yeah. So what's your experience in terms of the financial cost? Do you budget for it? Do you think it's overpriced, underpriced?
Lizzy: Yeah. So I think it depends on what it is. And generally, I'm at a point in my life where I value my time very highly and I value ease and convenience, but I also have a fixed amount of income every month and have to budget. So right now, the things that I'm willing to pay extra for are the deliveries. I did meal prep until somewhat recently, and I may go back to it again, but the cleaning is not currently. It could be in my budget. I could make room for it, but I'm actually, I don't mind it in my place right now. So that's kind of how I justify it though, the peace of mind of having one thing off my plate because this is something I wanted to bring up.
It's been interesting shifting from, over the past few years, from a two-person household to a one-person household. And there are so many economies of scale when you have a partner or when you have roommates, because two people are doing laundry, two people are doing dishes. You can divide and conquer. Just being an adult human, there are so many things you have to do. I mean, I'm cleaning every day. I'm doing laundry all the time, bills and errands, and it's just a lot. And for me, honestly, sometimes that can be overwhelming. Sometimes it can give me anxiety. So I'm at the point now where if there's little things I can do to ease some of the things on my plate, it's generally worthwhile.
Lissa: It's interesting. It just made me think of, because I have the opposite. I've gone from a single person, well, I've always had roommates, but for me to having a partner and I've started to realize that I don't mind at all and if there's a low likelihood I would pay someone to do my laundry or do my groceries, which are the two things that you mentioned that you would do, whereas I'm more likely to not want to clean the whole house, it helps because one of the least favorite things I like to do is just take out the trash. And it's just so simple that Allan doesn't mind doing it. I still do it when it gets full and no one's touching it, or maybe he's not around, I'll do it. But for the most part, it's his chore because it actually works out. The things that we don't mind doing are the opposite. Because he doesn't like laundry or folding laundry that much, and I don't mind because I can watch TV while I do it. So it's one of those things.
Lizzy: I'm getting to that place. For me, and just for context, I think I've said this before, when I did use a laundry service, it was more I was commuting, so I literally hadn't... I was never home, and I also didn't have in-home laundry.
Lissa: Oh, okay.
Lizzy: So that's more when I would consider it. Now I have laundry in my apartment, and I'm getting to the point where it doesn't annoy me. It's my least favorite chore, but I am working on it.
Lissa: Okay. This is hypothetical. I always think about stuff like this, but let's say, well, actually this could happen to either of us, but definitely for you. But let's say tomorrow you're a multimillionaire and you are very smart with money, so you know how to live a lifestyle and budget for it or whatever. But let's say you have this a lot more cash on hand that you can use for whatever you want. What would change? Would you hire more help in certain areas?
Lizzy: Probably, yeah.
Lissa: Which areas would be the first?
Lizzy: Okay. So I think the main thing that comes to mind that I would love help with is almost like a personal assistant. So things that are really hard for me are making phone calls, making appointments, mailing things, running basic errands, getting my car washed, that kind of stuff. I hate it. It's just mentally challenging for me to accomplish. So that would probably be the main thing of just that basic life admin. I would outsource that in a second. Buying gifts for people because I overthink it and I obsess and yeah, that kind of thing. And then the next would probably be regular housekeeper, just for the deep, particularly for the deep cleaning. I enjoy taking care of my space, but the scrubbing and a really good mop.
Lissa: A good mop, yeah.
Lizzy: A good mop. The stuff you don't do regularly-
Lissa: Especially when you have pets.
Lizzy: ... I think I like that. Oh, yeah.
Lissa: Because when you have pets, well, that's another thing. You are living by yourself right now, but you're not. You're living with a dog.
Lizzy: A dog, yeah.
Lissa: The difference is when you live by yourself and you have no animals, which I don't know that I ever had. I think one time in my adulthood, there was one year I lived by myself and didn't have dogs yet.
Lizzy: When was that?
Lissa: This was when I lived in Ladera Heights, but I did for many months have people crashing on my couches but that was my only time that I lived alone. And the crazy part is when you live completely alone, no pets, no nothing, you know who got it dirty. It was you. You know who spilled that on the calendar because it was you, you know who did this in the bathroom, it was you. That's the funniest part to me. Even when you have animals, sometimes I'm like, "Wait, did I knock over that water?" But no, it could have also been the dog. I don't know. So that's just a little side story, but it's like for me, I don't mind cleaning up after obviously my spouse and my dogs. But-
Lizzy: You know what I've noticed, I feel more, this is probably messed up, but I feel more of a sense of responsibility for it than when it... And so I'm more proactive and more engaged. I clean way more frequently, regularly, more attention to detail. I care way more now than I did when I lived with someone yeah, which is messed up.
Lissa: Because it's representative of your space. I don't think it's messed up. I think it's like... I mean, my husband gets busy, and so there'll be some weeks go by and I'm like, I try to vacuum every couple of days, at least once or twice a week because of the dog fur.
Lizzy: For sure.
Lissa: And then I remember... Put my phone on silent, and of course, it's a spam call. There'll be times where we're cleaning up the house, and I'm like, "When's the last time you vacuumed just like you thought to vacuum?" And he's like, "I never have." And I'm like, "Wait, so if we didn't get a housekeeper, and if I wasn't here, what would your place look like?"
Lizzy: Right. But it's not the same though, because yeah, I would have that, and it's like, oh, you can kind of get by.
Lissa: Yeah.
Lizzy: It's kind of messed up. It's not totally fair, but it's the way it goes. So what about you, what would you...
Lissa: Well, I'm glad you brought up the personal assistant thing. There are tasks that I don't like doing, and there's one that I kind of have tried to start assigning to my virtual assistants through my business, but I do think I need more of a personal assistant, because one of those is organizing files. I want to organize all my photos, my videos, even this goes for B-roll that I use in my YouTube videos, but also personal videos.
Lizzy: Like digital hygiene.
Lissa: Yeah, digital hygiene. And I used to love doing it, and I used to do it regularly so the upkeep was very minimal and easy, but there have been years and years now that I haven't done it, so I can never find-
Lizzy: It's like a mind mental task at that point.
Lissa: Yeah, I can never find photos that I am looking for. I don't know if they're on my phone, on my Google Drive or wherever. I wish I had some help to sort through those things and just had, I'd pay someone 50 bucks an hour to do that, and that'd be a pretty chill admin job to do.
Lizzy: For sure.
Lissa: I think it'd be more like a personal assistant, a generalist who can do certain errands for me when either I don't have time or they're just the specific things that I don't like doing.
Lizzy: Yep. Yeah, that would be my big thing, I think.
Lissa: So I alluded to this a little bit earlier with me and my upbringing, and I think it's changed over the decades with my family in terms of the stigma around cleaning and what you can do yourself, and you're bougie if you pay for this, but do you think there's a stigma?
Lizzy: Yeah, definitely. I think, well, there's a stigma, but it also, it is a privilege to do that, without a doubt. So these challenges we're talking about, "Oh, I don't want..." These are super high class problems and first world problems, and the reality is none of this is really that hard. So it is an absolute privilege. And so there's a weird thing that comes with that of being the person who hires the person, especially in different communities. So I would imagine being a daughter of immigrants and being from the Philippines, that's a whole other layer to it.
Lissa: Something I think about is throughout my upbringing, my dad would be the person who mows the lawn. He would always do, he loved gardening. He liked the upkeep. We had a lot of fruit trees in our backyard. He mowed the lawn, then he got sick. My dad had cancer, and so he couldn't do a lot of the physical things anymore and so my mom took it over. And then there'd be times where my mom couldn't do it, but she would get help from neighbors, friends, community, people that we... We lived really close to the rest of our family. So there'd be people to help. Maybe she kicks them a little bit of cash, but we'd always have help to do it.
It's so crazy to me now that, well, I've never lived in a house where I had a yard in my adulthood. I've lived in apartments and condos, but it's crazy to me that the condo building I live in is a small one, but we have gardeners come through every week or every other week, and they trim the grass, they water the plants and stuff. And if I got a house today, I don't think I would do my own lawn work, would you?
Lizzy: No.
Lissa: Yeah. Is that-
Lizzy: Well, I'm going to mess it up.
Lissa: I know I'll mess it up.
Lizzy: And it's just one more thing. But you raised an interesting point that this made me think of, it wasn't that long ago that we had a more communal culture where people lived with extended family, and that all of those resources were pulled into one household. So that was more normalized that you weren't one person managing every task, or even you imagine you worked on a homestead or a farm. That was your job, was to do all of these things together. And so part of this more individualistic culture is it adds so much more targeted stress and tasks and just stuff to manage on one person.
Lissa: Yeah. I still think, obviously some people, I think a lot of people don't outsource things like that. We live in Los Angeles, it's a big city, and it's kind of the culture and the norm for certain neighborhoods, especially for most people live in apartments and stuff, and you don't have your own house and your own yard. But I wonder what neighborhoods and where still have that community aspect where, all right, I can't mow the lawn, but I have a lawnmower, so a kid across the street will do it for 10 bucks.
Lizzy: I have kind of an example of that. So my older brother rents a house and has a pretty big yard. And at the time, this was a couple of years ago, he was just really overwhelmed. He has four kids, he owns his own business, and the landlord didn't take care any of the property. So the lawn was way overgrown, and we had family coming to visit. So I went over there and I was hacking away at stuff and just trying to clean it up. And there's a guy that owns a landscaping business around the corner, and it just happened to be, it was in December, it was starting to rain, and he came over and he's like, "You should not be doing this." And he helped me. And then now he goes over every week and does it for him, which is very, very sweet. So that stuff does still exist.
Lissa: Okay. I'm pitching this right now. I feel like we could do a whole episode on are lawns worth it.
Lizzy: Oh, yeah.
Lissa: Isn't that interesting?
Lizzy: Yeah. Especially here in Southern California.
Lissa: Yeah. Are lawns-
Lizzy: Without a doubt, and people are crazy about it.
Lissa: Yeah.
Lizzy: My dad's like he's big on his lawn.
Lissa: Pro lawn?
Lizzy: Pro lawn.
Lissa: Yeah.
Lizzy: Yeah. Okay. I've got stories.
Lissa: It's an argument. It's a real thing. Okay. I don't want to get into it now. We'll get into it.
Lizzy: We'll get into episode.
Lissa: But the amount of water that people spend on lawns.
Lizzy: But cooling.
Lissa: All right.
Lizzy: Good for the environment. We got arguments. We got arguments.
Lissa: We have a new episode we'll do, are lawns worth it. All right, so back to hiring help in your personal life, have we covered all the costs? Financial, the stigma around it, social costs?
Lizzy: Yeah, just some logistical costs. It's not like it's zero effort. You still have to coordinate it. You still have to find people, and it doesn't always completely get something off of your plate, at least not in the beginning.
Lissa: Yeah. Okay.
Lizzy: Yeah, I think that's the main stuff.
Lissa: Yeah. All right.
Lizzy: 20 cents?
Lissa: 20 cents. 20 cents is the segment of the show where both Lizzy and myself, Lissa, each get 60 seconds to give our two cents on today's topic, whether it's a net positive or a net negative for hiring help, where does 20 cents come from?
Lizzy: Because you get the opinion of two dimes.
Lissa: Two dimes. All right, Liz, you're up first. 60 seconds on the clock. Is hired help worth it for you?
Lizzy: I feel like my answer's going to be pretty obvious as a general rule, if I can afford it in my budget, absolutely. I think I value time, I value ease, and so the things that I can do to take stress off of myself, because I put so much on it, are really worthwhile, especially if that is supporting someone else and doing so at a reasonable wage. That's really fair. I love to do that. Support small business, support someone, the gig worker. I think that's a great thing.
Lissa: Yeah.
Lizzy: So yeah, net positive, assuming I can afford it.
Lissa: Yeah.
Lizzy: All right. What about you, Lis?
Lissa: I guess mine will be pretty obvious too, even though I think the only main hired help I personally have right now is housekeepers, and it's once a month or once every six weeks. So I'm going to go net positive for the same reason as you that if I had the money, I definitely look into it more to kind of boost the economy, but I would definitely pay people fair or above market and build relationships with people and get the help so I could free up my time and energy. The one thing that I did think of was that Allan and I talk about each decision as it comes, because there'll be times where I'm like, "Let's just hire someone. This is annoying. I don't want to deal with all the wiring of the internet." We have a three-story house and the internet's not working. I don't want to pay someone enough to do that, or I want to pay someone to do that. And he's like, "No, let me try to figure it out first." So there'll be, what?
Lizzy: Just made me think an added benefit of hired help is mitigating relationship arguments. For real.
Lissa: My internet is like, I'm like, well, I don't want any downtime, so I want the internet, but it's actually good. It saves us money if it's something he wants to do that he's capable of doing and that I personally don't have to do. And then if he realizes he doesn't want to do it or can't do it, we'll just outsource anyway. But, yeah.
Lizzy: I think it's case by case, right?
Lissa: Case by case.
Lizzy: There's certain things I like to DIY because I enjoy that stuff and others are that don't.
Lissa: But I'm definitely net positive. I'm not one of those people who are like-
Lizzy: "What are you doing? Why are you wasting money?"
Lissa: Who would never pay someone else to help out? It's all about time and energy.
Lizzy: And also, there's different phases for this. So there might be a phase where things are stressful or you have more disposable income and you engage more services. And then there's times where you tighten up and you think, all right, I'm going to do more of this myself.
Lissa: Yeah. So it is dynamic, I'd say.
Lizzy: Yep.
Lissa: Well remember, this is what we think. At this moment in time, no one can make the decision but you. So what do you think? Is hired help worth it?
Lizzy: Hit us up and let us know what you think. DM us on Instagram @netnetpodcast or email us at hi@netnetpodcast.com. And if you want to follow us individually, here's where you can find us.
Lissa: I'm at, new handle alert. I'm @lissalumutenga on TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram.
Lizzy: And I'm @live_well_lizzy on TikTok because I have currently deactivated all my other social media.
Lissa: I was wondering where you were. I was trying to tag you in something the other day.
Lizzy: Disappeared for a while, disappeared.
Lissa: Well, all references, statistics, and resources mentioned can be found in our show notes. This podcast is for educational, informational, and entertainment purposes only, and should not be constituted as financial advice. Remember to always do your own research, consult a professional as needed, and feel empowered to make your own damn decisions.