So £64 for the lot - about US$ 80. If you're in tech, the value of the time you spend driving to the store will probably be higher than all the tools you'll buy while you're there.
And if you're thinking "Oh at those prices the tools will be low quality" I can assure you, they'll be good enough for this job.
> If you're in tech, the value of the time you spend driving to the store will probably be higher than all the tools you'll buy while you're there.
This is the wrong way to think about things. You cannot usefully compare the value of time spent on work vs on hobby.
If I'm doing a project like installing the washing machine myself over the weekend, I value my time at exactly $0/hour. Let's look at the opportunity cost. What are the alternatives? On a weekend I could read a book, go out for a walk, play some games, etc; all those alternatives cause my income to increase by $0/hour. There is no difference in income amongst all these activities; there is only a difference in satisfaction.
You might say, what if you do this washing machine installation during regular work hours? Again the value of your time is zero, because in tech you are not an hourly employee: you get paid a fixed salary. Taking one hour off from work doesn't decrease your salary. Working overtime for one hour also doesn't increase your salary.
Therefore when I'm doing hobby projects I value my time at $0/hour. I think more about the kind of non-monetary satisfaction instead.
The way I've always heard it stated was: "Your time is only worth money if you'd otherwise be working." If I had to decide between fixing my washing machine and doing a freelancing job that pays $200/hr + paying a repairman to fix it, then I have an economic decision to make. If instead, I would otherwise be wasting time playing video games or watching TV, then it always makes sense to do the job yourself.
> If instead, I would otherwise be wasting time playing video games or watching TV, then it always makes sense to do the job yourself.
It depends on how much you value your free time and how much you enjoy fixing your washing machine. I spend five days working, I get two days for the weekend. The weekend days are scarcer and more valuable to me - I'm not going to give them up at the same price I give up a weekday.
Given a choice between fixing my washing machine myself and paying a repairman to fix it while I enjoy some hobby time, well up to a certain cost, I'd rather relax with a hobby.
Right, but that has nothing to do with your compensation during work hours. I was specifically objecting to OP's:
> If you're in tech, the value of the time you spend driving to the store will probably be higher than all the tools you'll buy while you're there.
Implying that if you're not in tech (read: don't have a high salary) then your free time is not worth as much. I think most people value their free time like you described, not measured in terms of dollars, and certainly not proportional to how much they make in their day jobs.
How much you're willing to pay to have things done certainly has a very direct relationship to the amount you've got left over at the end of the month. Pretending that's not true because you can't literally weight up hourly rates isn't very useful.
>If I'm doing a project like installing the washing machine myself over the weekend, I value my time at exactly $0/hour
If I'm doing a project I want to do because it's a fun challenge (like the time I replaced the main pump in my dishwasher), I value my time at $0/hour.
But if it's a project I don't really want to do (like pulling ethernet cables through my cramped and dirty crawl space so I can put in an ethernet jack next to the TV), then I value my time at twice my hourly wage and if I can hire someone to do it cheaper, I hire them.
It's true that I get paid the same $0 on a weekend whether I'm crawling under my house or going on a hike, I'm willing to pay money to get out of an unpleasant task so I can do something pleasant instead.
> This is the wrong way to think about things. You cannot usefully compare the value of time spent on work vs on hobby.
I'd consider this sort of move of house maintenance to be more of a chore than a hobby project, though maybe that's just because I've already done it before and it's not interesting or satisfying to do it again.
In any case - I do agree that attempting to apply the same thinking to the hours spent in day to day tasks as work needs to be done very mindfully, or even carefully. One of the worst practices I had early in my career when I was freelancing and had a few clients that were happy to give me as many hours as I wanted to take was to use that as an excuse to replace other tasks with work. Paying someone else to do 30 minutes of grocery shopping so that I can work an extra half hour and end up with a profit, ordering lunch multiple times per week because the time it'd take me to cook and clean up would end up 'costing' me more than just continuing to work on something I enjoyed.
Before you know it you start thinking of chores as complete wastes of time rather than normal things that are good for your character to be able to do consistently. Ended up with a significantly better financial outlook than I'd have had otherwise since I had the work ethic/life balance to take advantage of that situation and not completely tank other aspects of my life, but looking back I'd rather have kept the more mundane discipline.
If you don't regularly do house fixing/improving or household chores, and you just pay someone, you easily fall into the trap of believing it is all very simple and of low value. You soon will wonder why you 'pay so much' and it is still 'poorly executed' and taking 'too much time'. Having experienced the problems mentioned in the article puts one down to earth.
Replacing the wax rings and the closet flange on a toilet really makes you appreciate it when your plumber charges $300 and does the job in about 20 minutes versus the few hours it takes you.
> So £64 for the lot - about US$ 80. If you're in tech, the value of the time you spend driving to the store will probably be higher than all the tools you'll buy while you're there.
Unless you are billing by the hour (ie in consulting), you are driving to the store during the time you would be parking your butt in the couch and viewing, reading or thinking about something that does not generate cash. At least that is what it is for me. If you literally lose money by driving to the store, your argument holds.
> And if you're thinking "Oh at those prices the tools will be low quality" I can assure you, they'll be good enough for this job.
Maybe they are, maybe they are not. I tinker with cars and motorcycles. Every single piece of my tools is Snap-On or something really comparable. If I use a cheap Chinese brand and round off a nut, that is really going to hurt. It will hurt more than what it hurt to buy a socket set for close to $200.
Also, if you are approaching something the first time, low quality tools will get you bad experience that will resist, maybe prevent you from trying it again. I might be one of those weird ones, but for me, Buy once, cry once.
I've turned a few wrenches as a life-long DIY mechanic, a former aircraft mechanic, and a mechanical engineer. I use the Hazard Fraught method of tool purchases:
I will buy a tool from Harbor Freight once. If it fulfills my needs great. Job done and it goes into the toolbox. If I use it so hard it gives up the ghost, then it gets chucked into the fuckit-bucket and I go buy it at higher quality.
To be honest, Harbor Freight and other store brands (Husky, Kobalt, etc) have always been reliable enough. As a home-gamer, I certainly couldn't see being able to have a toolbox full of Snap-On, especially before completing my engineering degree.
If I were a pro and feeding my family depended on what those tools did, then I could certainly see Snap-On as an investment, as my father did when he ran his own shop. But, to the point about rounding off a nut, something like that is rarely a function of tool quality and more about technique. Yes, a cheap 12 point socket or wrench can round off a hex pretty badly, but if it happens, the whole setup has probably been giving warning signs the entire time. My experience is that cheap tools are more likely to snap, break, or shatter during heavy loading, but that's not often the default use case.
> I've turned a few wrenches as a life-long DIY mechanic, a former aircraft mechanic, and a mechanical engineer. I use the Hazard Fraught method of tool purchases: I will buy a tool from Harbor Freight once. If it fulfills my needs great. Job done and it goes into the toolbox. If I use it so hard it gives up the ghost, then it gets chucked into the fuckit-bucket and I go buy it at higher quality.
Now you either have a tool that might be unreliable and can cause you trouble for the next job. Or, you spent money that you didn't have to spend by buying the lower grade tool when you needed to buy something better anyway.
> To be honest, Harbor Freight and other store brands (Husky, Kobalt, etc) have always been reliable enough. As a home-gamer, I certainly couldn't see being able to have a toolbox full of Snap-On, especially before completing my engineering degree.
Here you have a solid point. I am thankful that I am able to afford good tools. But if someone in unable to justify, I would say either work to be able to justify it, rent, or buy the best you can afford if you need the tool right now.
> But, to the point about rounding off a nut, something like that is rarely a function of tool quality and more about technique.
Maybe you are right. But here is an exaggerated example. You have a socket that has more clearance than ideal. You loosen one nut, and that was okay, you loosen the second one, that was a little tighter and that whole setup flexed a bit, but turned out okay. The third one is where things slip. Now, you have a problem. At least that is more or less how I land into trouble.
> Now you either have a tool that might be unreliable and can cause you trouble for the next job. Or, you spent money that you didn't have to spend by buying the lower grade tool when you needed to buy something better anyway.
The "unknowns" point is valid, but the advice to buy something cheap to start with still comes from a good place.
Even from a cost perspective, I've snapped a few wrenches and upgraded my box saw (,and will splurge on a solder iron the next time I do anything serious), but the money wasted in those mis-purchases is vastly less than the money I would have spent on getting the "right" tools at the outset.
You also have the problem of unknown unknowns. Plenty of people are willing to sell you a $25 tool for $250, and we all know how reviews work, so the presence of good reviews and a high price tag isn't sufficient to guarantee quality. Even going with a "good" brand doesn't suffice if the brand is willing to increase profits on a few duds here and there (or, more charitably, just doesn't always hit them out of the park) or goes the way of Lenovo after an acquisition. Buying a good tool is often a nontrivial effort, and (when directing that advice to your average homeowner rather than a professional with that particular tool) the experience you have with the bad tool gives you a starting point for figuring out which aspects you do or don't care about.
For a few small examples, I own the cheapest immersion blender, 16oz claw hammer, precision screwdriver set, ... that I could get my grubby little hands on. I'd make those purchases again in a heartbeat.
For a counter-example, I did the same thing with a diamond stone. It turns out I don't care about the surface area or most characteristics (and now I know), but I care quite a lot about the depth and longevity. I'll save more money getting a longer-lasting stone that's a size I need, despite having "wasted" money on the cheaper stone, since I won't be inadvertently getting something bigger than I need or want. Since those things last ages I'm not sure the point really holds, but it also lasted for years and was purchased at a time when money was tighter, and spending more money then would have been much more expensive than spending it now.
For an actual counter-example, now I know that any wrench where I'm applying more than a few hundred foot-pounds of torque absolutely needs to be forged, and I'm willing to splurge to avoid low-quality steel. The cheaper wrenches were properly wasted money. Compared to all the time and money I've saved only purchasing nice tools when something failed though, I still think it was a good strategy.
>> I've turned a few wrenches as a life-long DIY mechanic, a former aircraft mechanic, and a mechanical engineer. I use the Hazard Fraught method of tool purchases: I will buy a tool from Harbor Freight once. If it fulfills my needs great. Job done and it goes into the toolbox. If I use it so hard it gives up the ghost, then it gets chucked into the fuckit-bucket and I go buy it at higher quality.
>Now you either have a tool that might be unreliable and can cause you trouble for the next job. Or, you spent money that you didn't have to spend by buying the lower grade tool when you needed to buy something better anyway.
An important note is that this is a conscious decision. I know that I cheaped out on something, and I'm often pleasantly surprised that it didn't break. But I'm not depending on it for food, and we have backup transportation methods, so I'm not completely hosed if it gives up. For example: I once spent $20 on a Harbor Freight corded angle grinder, with the understanding that it'll probably work for the one job I really needed it for at that moment. 15 years and half a dozen smoke checks later, the damned thing still runs hard.
>> To be honest, Harbor Freight and other store brands (Husky, Kobalt, etc) have always been reliable enough. As a home-gamer, I certainly couldn't see being able to have a toolbox full of Snap-On, especially before completing my engineering degree.
> Here you have a solid point. I am thankful that I am able to afford good tools. But if someone in unable to justify, I would say either work to be able to justify it, rent, or buy the best you can afford if you need the tool right now.
If you can, that's great. Most of my wrenching life, including working on multi-million dollar automation equipment, has been well serviced by budget tools. Anything pro-grade was handed down from my father after he closed his shop. I'm to the point now where I could reasonably afford to upgrade, but the handtools still work well, and my money/time is honestly spent better right now paying a reputable shop to do what I need. Starting out in the world, I never thought I'd be able to say that, but I'm happy to be here now.
I'll have a project car again some day, and then I'll look hard at what is needed to accomplish my goals.
I think a lot of your thinking here is assuming somewhat frequent use - and I agree when you are going to be using the tools often, just get a decent or good one. For a lot of tools though - well lets just say my tool chest has an awful lot of things I need that one time 20 years ago, and haven't needed since. Often I don't know which tools are going to be in that one-use category, so the algorithm "buy the cheap one, upgrade when needed" has overall saved me more than enough money to upgrade to the really good version even for tools I use relatively rarely.
The other thing that I'll add here is that if the tool has a battery, then I'm going to a well established and supported brand. I know they love to change the technology (Lookin' at you DeWalt) but there are often workarounds. I'll buy into the tool ecosystem because the last thing I want to do is stop my flow to figure out which tool/battery is ready for the task at hand.
> But, to the point about rounding off a nut, something like that is rarely a function of tool quality and more about technique. Yes, a cheap 12 point socket or wrench can round off a hex pretty badly, but if it happens, the whole setup has probably been giving warning signs the entire time.
In the rust belt, about every bolt has lots of warning signs and each job is a gamble. I really need to get a torch.
Knowing the tricks that come with your location are a big deal. I'm in a minor salt part of the US, so I don't often have to worry about pre-treating a fastener on our daily drivers. If it gets to the point that I'm breaking out the torch, I'm working on an outlier.
Snap-on is a brand that is generally sold out of panel trucks like ice cream. They're very expensive but have great warranties. They also go to your shop, on a schedule.
I've never owned any snap-on but I'm friends with mechanics that have lots of fun jokey names they call them.
I agree that some high quality tools are required to not escalate your problem, but I like the incremental purchase methodology for most tools.
Buying cheap (good enough) allows you to figure out what tools you actually need to upgrade on. I had a lot of pain in my high school days fixing a beater car which required me to purchase some higher end socket sets. You learn from some of those stripped bolts which tools to upgrade, but you don't want a whole garage full of high quality tools you don't really use.
If you have a stable hobby, buy quality first, and maybe build up inventory when you can so you don't have to make frequent trips.
If you don't and you just want to do some odd things spanning multiple trades, buy cheap and upgrade if you rely on them frequently.
my strategy: when you're young and especially if you happen to be buying your first home, buy the cheap version of almost everything as you need it. Minor exceptions for things you KNOW you will use a lot (but they still don't need to be the most expensive). If you like certain jobs, selectively upgrade over the years. If you move a lot or age out of certain things, cull aggressively. Good tools have decent resale value if they're not consumer grade. All consumer grade tools have the same low (but non-zero) resale value IME. YMMV.
P.S. Anyone looking for a quality router with a selection of bits?
On the flip side, it gets harder and harder every year to find speciality tools and parts the moment you need them. Nothing’s worse than setting aside a weekend for some big project and then finding out you have to order something online and pick the project back up some other day. God forbid you recall you had the part/tool in question at one time lol. Even when I plan in advance often something comes up I don’t catch until the moment I need it.
I keep a LOT of computer/video game console parts but luckily with some planning and decent geometry skills (and a lot of straps) they’re easier to store. Camera and audio equipment on the other hand…time for a purge if I’m being honest!
A few decades ago you'd be completely right - but these days, tools are cheaper than ever.
Washing machine hose, £7 [1] Hole saws, £8 [2] Wrench £8 [3] Spade drill bits £6 [4] Adequate drill £35 [5]
So £64 for the lot - about US$ 80. If you're in tech, the value of the time you spend driving to the store will probably be higher than all the tools you'll buy while you're there.
And if you're thinking "Oh at those prices the tools will be low quality" I can assure you, they'll be good enough for this job.
[1] https://www.toolstation.com/washing-machine-hose/p17946 [2] https://www.toolstation.com/holesaw-kit/p23014 [3] https://www.toolstation.com/minotaur-water-pump-pliers/p8325... [4] https://www.toolstation.com/flat-wood-drill-bit-set/p44945 [5] https://www.toolstation.com/black-decker-500w-hammer-drill/p...