The question I always have to ask you and others is, "how do you value your own time?"
Clearly you have time invested in doing this and including all the time, looking on line, talking to father, I'm guessing quite a few hours when all is said and done. 4? 6? 8?
Time, like money, has value. Some of that value can be converted to dollars and cents. Do you value it based on what you earn per hour in your work? Do you value it at zero on the basis you wouldn't be doing anything else or you really enjoy doing this? Or do you value it based on other things you could do instead like time with family or playing golf or something?
Some thought examples:
#1-Figures it would take them 5 hours They earn $40 an hour and can get all the work they want on their job and prefer doing their work to this. So $200 vs $200, no savings and don't enjoy it.
#2-Finds doing this work very rewarding. No way they would prefer to spend the time. Saving $200 is just an additional benefit.
#3-Partner constantly complaining about them spending time working on boat rather than leisure time with them. Value of time immeasurable and well worth the $200 cost to avoid doing this.
#4-Retired. Only other work is driving Uber and makes $11 an hour doing so. Spends 4 hours doing this so well worth it to save $200 while using $44 worth of personal labor.
#5-Loves learning and doing work like this and doesn't care what the cost, prefers doing it oneself.
#6-Absolutely hates doing work like this. Would rather be with partner doing anything else and doesn't care what the cost is to pay others to do it.
We all look at these things differently. I do value time highly and look at how I'd prefer to spend it, but that leads to unique decisions too. Here's an example many might do differently. My wife and I are to make a trip to NC. The drive is 10.5 hours so with stopping and fueling and eating lets say 12 hours and cost is likely $350 or so. Can fly in 2 hours but including getting to airport and all perhaps say 4 hours and 2 tickets $308. So save $42 and 6.5 hours, clearly better it would seem? But....I don't like flying. I especially don't like flying commercial. I love the drive with my wife. We sing, we talk, we make it special. So, we always drive it. I put negative value on time spent in airports and on airplanes and positive value on time riding in a car with my wife. It's not that I ignore the value of time, I very much consider it.
BandB,
As mentioned before ones time has value, too, and I'd bet a lot of us take that into consideration.
There are some that are willing to go grunt work to save the $20/hour guy, but most won't. Even the $100/hour guy is often worth the price, especially if they have considerably more skills and you just don't like the job. And I'd argue that there is a LOT of us that value their time way more than what a mechanic is paid. I feel this way even in retirement. My time is actually MORE valuable retired.
But things like oil changes, belts, hoses, etc. A lot of us can do them in almost the time it takes to just talk with the mechanic and write the check, so we do them ourselves out of convenience.
And, there is an argument to have an understanding of what can stop a boat cold when there are just no mechanics around.... yes, even well maintained boats can have this issue, fortunately rare.
And there's the issue of incompetent mechanics, and there's a LOT of them. If one is not at least knowledgeable, they may never know if the mechanic screws something up that will cost a lot later. I've had that happen MANY times. (It's worse in aviation....happens, too). For that I avoid boat "yards" like the plague. My biggest issues have been with yards or larger maintenance shops that had the job to the least competent employee. I want the mechanic I talk with to be the one doing the word. I also insist on being there, if I want and some yards don't permit this.
One of my more notorious times of incompetent maintenance was flying my plane out to Colorado. On takeoff couldn't get the gear all the way up... stopped half way. Did the trouble shooting, manually extended it, landed and went to the high priced big shop on the field. Fortunately, the let me help. In the end, they misdiagnosed the issue saying it was a limit switch, which they didn't have. So, they temporarily wired around it so I could fly. I told them that their diagnosis didn't make sense and thought it was wrong, however, I was away from my home base. I could continue the trip (but with the limitation of having no back up switch that prevented the wheels from retracting on the ground if I accidentally tried to put the gear up). When I got home, I found a frayed wire causing the problem. Cost me $1K for the great work.
In boating, another big shop has some stupid mechanic that simply forces a screw into a oil resevoir drain hole, stripping the threads. Caught it and they paid BIG time to fix it.
Another time, some flunky mechanic was extracting a frozen bolt.... I told him to go slow, use plenty of penetrating oil and heat. He rushed and broke it off in the housing. Grrrrr!
I could tell you dozens more over the years.
Happens ALL the time, and that's a BIG reason to be involved on ones maintenance.
