[Cooper]

	Originally Posted by Muse To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Worse, i had an abusive one. You see, having kids meant 'everyone'(her in-laws) hated her. So of course thats my fault mostly as the first born.

Sorry to hear that, but my raised me well and taught me many things....But I never needed her permission to do jack shit once I left home. Nor did I need her permission to be civilized.

[Muse]

	Originally Posted by Cooper To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Nor did I need her permission to be civilized.

This caught my eye. You mean civilized to perform certain tasks like cleaning? Does society have some sort of regulation on who can and cant clean someones house? Are maid services a manifestation of counter culture? Sub culture?

[Cooper]

Civilized as in doing it myself instead of leaving it for my wife to do.

[plotthickens]

	Originally Posted by AnaK To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	My hypothesis as it relates to this thread is that if I were married with children, with a career that paid well enough, I would like to have a cleaning service once or twice a week.

And your justification for doing this, instead of saving for retirement, is that if you were married your partner would not help with the cleaning (or neither of you would want to clean) and you would want more time/better health for yourself?

[Muse]

	Originally Posted by Cooper To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Civilized as in doing it myself instead of leaving it for my wife to do.

In my opinion, it sounds like it could even be a somewhat fun couples activity. But the thread is presenting the option of hired help as a solution.

I'm a romantic though, the "Il go anywhere if its with you" kind.
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[plotthickens]

	Originally Posted by Muse To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	thats a good question actually. It depends on the situation, and there are of course degrees. Building for the end game too quickly isn't flexible, and focusing on the now completely becomes inefficient later. Also opportunity costs change.

So your theory on delayed gratification is not static; housework is to be avoided, and schoolwork might be a good thing?

[Muse]

	Originally Posted by plotthickens To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	So your theory on delayed gratification is not static; housework is to be avoided, and schoolwork might be a good thing?

Sort of, sure. Shouldn't be surprising, most things aren't static. I just think about it logically and weigh the pros and cons.

[mike05450]

Meh, the cleaning is quick and easy; however, the procrastination before the cleaning can last days..

[AnaK]

	Originally Posted by plotthickens To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	And your justification for doing this, instead of saving for retirement, is that if you were married your partner would not help with the cleaning (or neither of you would want to clean) and you would want more time/better health for yourself?

More time and energy to devote to my husband, children and job, yes. Divorce is expensive. Losing a job is expensive. Children are priceless.

[mllebrie]

I'd rather save the money--ah! the miracle of compound interest!--and do the cleaning myself. I imagine having my own place would be very easy on the cleaning front, as I'm neat and tidy and don't really have to clean up after myself. It's harder and more time consuming to clean everything after it's messy than it is to keep it neat in the first place.

Now, dealing with another person... I don't know. I'd better find a neat-freak. I expect my man to pitch it, at the very least not make housekeeping harder. But, if this is the biggest problem I have with a mate, I guess I'd be lucky.

[AnaK]

I had an apartment for a year in downtown Chicago. I did not have a cleaning lady and I maybe spent an hour a week cleaning and it was very, very clean at all times. Why? Just me there, not home much, when I was it wasn't like I was making a mess, just surfing the web mostly, and I didn't cook a whole lot. I never had dirty dishes in the sink, even though I did not have a dishwasher, because I'd just wash the dishes after I used them and leave them drying on the counter, and re-use them. I spent maybe 10-20 minutes vacuuming. As a single person, I would not be able to justify a maid.

I'm frugal in other ways. I have a cheap laptop. I don't spend much on clothing. I have a $14,000 car. I have a $700 mortgage, PITI. But, if I were married with a career, I'd look at hiring a cleaning service.

[Silence]

Both of us work full time. We have a yard service that taks care of the mowing and trimming- it's just too much to take care of right now.

I'd feel funny having a cleaning service come in, but I know people that use them and swear by them. I think it just depends on priorities and one's budget.

[WeAreAllKosh]

	Originally Posted by Distance To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	If you're a white collar woman who brings in a decent income, I strongly discourage marriage unless you're both bringing in sufficient income to hire someone to cook and clean. No matter how open-minded men are, there are very few who can break out of gender bias and self-centricity.

If my hypothetical partner and I moved in together, she would quickly cede cleaning duties to me. I gain a lot of satisfaction from maintaining a clean, organized home. Cleaning has always been a zen routine for me.

As for cooking, I can feed myself when I'm hungry. I would not expect my SO to cook for me because she is a woman and that's what good women do for their men. I say this as someone who was raised in a classic nuclear family and watched my stay-at-home mom make nightly dinner for our family for 18+ years. Why don't I carry gender bias about cleaning and cooking? Because my very traditional parents taught all of their children, boys and girl, to be self-sufficient.

When should a couple pay for a cleaning crew? When neither of them like to clean and they can afford to pay someone to clean for them. Of course it would be a smart idea to run the long-term numbers first (or ask your girl friend, Suze Orman, if you can afford it) before shelling out any denarii for a cleaning service.

[ktgrey]

I do my cleaning myself because I live in an apartment which isn't that big and because I don't want anyone else to randomly enter it.

I have to say, I really don't get what the whole argument in this thread is supposed to be about. It seems a pretty straightforward question of whether you consider it worth it to spend money to save time cleaning or not, the same sort of question which can be applied to buying nearly any non-essential good or service. There seems to be a considerable amount of energy being devoted to winning an argument, as opposed to having any kind of meaningful discussion.

For what it's worth, according to Fidelity's investment calculator, 200k now after 30 years at 3% inflation, which is approximately the historical average, is about 82k, and definitely not 20k as has been claimed on the first page of this thread. It takes 8% annual inflation to get to 20k, which while not completely impossible, is not a reasonable default value to use.

Now suppose it costs $320 a month to have your house cleaned for you, which is the number under discussion on the first page of the thread. This is $3840 a year, rounded to 4000. It's very reasonable to assume you can match inflation, e.g. I-Bonds and TIPS, so let's assume at least 0% real return, but in practice you'll likely have more. How many extra years of work this results in depends on how much money you invest per year and how much you want to spend during retirement. Suppose you invest 20k per year (with cleaning crew) or 24k (without cleaning crew) and want to spend 40k per year in retirement, in which case you want to retire with 1 million. This is all in turns of "real" money, so all the numbers are adjusted for inflation, e.g. you save 20k the first year and an inflation-adjusted 20k the second year etc. and you retire once you have 1 million dollars worth of 2011 spending power.

0% real return:
50 years work w/ crew, 42 years without

3% real return:
31 years work w/ crew, 27 years without

6% real return:
24 years work w/ crew, 21 years without

So yeah, it would seem to make a substantial difference, although it obviously depends on how much money you have. And the greater the real return on your investments, the smaller the difference, e.g. at 9% real return the difference is one year. Of course you would want to consider how much you hate your job and whether it is worth it or not, and how much cleaning crews cost in your area etc.

(By the way, assuming -3% real return, you basically can't build up to 1 million either way, but even if you did, the 4% safe withdrawal rate wouldn't be safe under such conditions, so even if you had 1 million you still couldn't retire if you expected to live for 30 more years).

[Nicole1975]

	Originally Posted by plotthickens To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	You guys must be made of money. Each visit is about $100 in a 2-bedroom house; once or twice a week is $400 - $800. That's rent on a whole new place, AKA your retirement money.

So don't go through a service! $6-8 an hour for illegals.

---------- Post added 09-17-2011 at 08:56 PM ----------

Originally Posted by WeAreAllKosh To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

If my hypothetical partner and I moved in together, she would quickly cede cleaning duties to me. I gain a lot of satisfaction from maintaining a clean, organized home. Cleaning has always been a zen routine for me. As for cooking, I can feed myself when I'm hungry. I would not expect my SO to cook for me because she is a woman and that's what good women do for their men. I say this as someone who was raised in a classic nuclear family and watched my stay-at-home mom make nightly dinner for our family for 18+ years. Why don't I carry gender bias about cleaning and cooking? Because my very traditional parents taught their all of their children, boys and girl, to be self-sufficient. When should a couple pay for a cleaning crew? When neither of them like to clean and they can afford to pay someone to clean for them. Of course it would be a smart idea to run the long-term numbers first (or ask your girl friend, Suze Orman, if you can afford it) before shelling out any denarii for a cleaning service.

Why can't I find a guy like you???

[Ricardo Diaz]

	Originally Posted by plotthickens To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	So your argument is that a maid means one cannot be depressed?

Very funny. Your original implication was that an unclean environment indicates a depressed mind, which I clarified wasn't the case.

	Originally Posted by plotthickens To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Could you rephrase this please? I can't understand it.

DIY = do it yourself.

	Originally Posted by plotthickens To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Many people, from simple to famous, from base to erudite have said otherwise. I think you might be speaking for only yourself here.

Irrelevant. Consensus has nothing to do with facts. It just means many people are either cheap or poor. Feel free to explain as to why you might disagree.

[irini]

I'm an almost forty years old woman who has been working since I was twenty. I have created a family with two children, being a working mother and a housewife. I was doing most of the work by myself. My husband was helping me (I must admit that) but I had the main responsibility of house cleaning, of children taking care etc.......You cannot imagine how tired I have become of this.
Of course, I have managed to keep a house in order, to be very well attuned with house work and I became an excellent housewife....So what?
I have lost much time of my life for doing such things while I could save this time for myself.
Now, I have hired a woman to help me with housecleaning, every now and then, and you can't imagine how relieved I feel that I have the chance to have somebody to do housecleaning for me. I still do everyday house and I'm perfectly capable to do so, but having somebody hired to do some kind of job for me is really a great relief...
PS. The woman (house cleaner) loves me because I have never treated her like a maid. I respect her very much and I also cooperate with her to have the best possible outcome. She appreciates that very much...
I don't know if all these are relevant with the subject here, but I felt like saying them
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[Eudoxus]

Where are you people getting monthly compounded interest exactly?...

[AnaK]

Originally Posted by ktgrey To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

I do my cleaning myself because I live in an apartment which isn't that big and because I don't want anyone else to randomly enter it. I have to say, I really don't get what the whole argument in this thread is supposed to be about. It seems a pretty straightforward question of whether you consider it worth it to spend money to save time cleaning or not, the same sort of question which can be applied to buying nearly any non-essential good or service. There seems to be a considerable amount of energy being devoted to winning an argument, as opposed to having any kind of meaningful discussion. For what it's worth, according to Fidelity's investment calculator, 200k now after 30 years at 3% inflation, which is approximately the historical average, is about 82k, and definitely not 20k as has been claimed on the first page of this thread. It takes 8% annual inflation to get to 20k, which while not completely impossible, is not a reasonable default value to use. Now suppose it costs $320 a month to have your house cleaned for you, which is the number under discussion on the first page of the thread. This is $3840 a year, rounded to 4000. It's very reasonable to assume you can match inflation, e.g. I-Bonds and TIPS, so let's assume at least 0% real return, but in practice you'll likely have more. How many extra years of work this results in depends on how much money you invest per year and how much you want to spend during retirement. Suppose you invest 20k per year (with cleaning crew) or 24k (without cleaning crew) and want to spend 40k per year in retirement, in which case you want to retire with 1 million. This is all in turns of "real" money, so all the numbers are adjusted for inflation, e.g. you save 20k the first year and an inflation-adjusted 20k the second year etc. and you retire once you have 1 million dollars worth of 2011 spending power. 0% real return: 50 years work w/ crew, 42 years without 3% real return: 31 years work w/ crew, 27 years without 6% real return: 24 years work w/ crew, 21 years without So yeah, it would seem to make a substantial difference, although it obviously depends on how much money you have. And the greater the real return on your investments, the smaller the difference, e.g. at 9% real return the difference is one year. Of course you would want to consider how much you hate your job and whether it is worth it or not, and how much cleaning crews cost in your area etc. (By the way, assuming -3% real return, you basically can't build up to 1 million either way, but even if you did, the 4% safe withdrawal rate wouldn't be safe under such conditions, so even if you had 1 million you still couldn't retire if you expected to live for 30 more years).

It's a simple thing to calculate.

1) Assuming 20 years of weekly cleaning. (This thread is about families with children, most people don't raise children for 50 years.)

2) $80/week for 20 years is $80*52*20 = $83,200 you will spend on a cleaning crew over 20 years.

3) Lets say you invest that $80/week instead and earn 1% over inflation,
according to this calculator, you'd end up with 92,093.78.

4) $92,093.78 - $83,200 = $8,893.

5) It will take you 20 years to earn less than $9,000 in interest. For this $9,000, you will be sacrificing quality time you could devote to your family and career.

If you consistently earn a 6% real return, you should have your own mutual fund, because you have quite a gift.


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[plotthickens]

	Originally Posted by ktgrey To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	I have to say, I really don't get what the whole argument in this thread is supposed to be about.

	Originally Posted by Ricardo Diaz To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	free to explain as to why you might disagree.

This statement baffles me:
"I want to spend time with my family/hobby/videogames/masturbation/dog/religion/whatever -- I'll hire someone to do the menial work so I don't have to!"

Free time now is X hours. Free time later, if banked, would be X+Y% hours. It is only reasonable to go for the more later than shorter time now.

Example: you can have $100 today, or $200 next month. Which do you choose? Feel free to substitute whatever numbers you want, then look up the actual experiment, it's fascinating.

And yet people rationalize their need for immediate gratification, usually using exactly the opposite of what they say they want. Total contradiction. Baffling.

	Originally Posted by AnaK To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	If you consistently earn a 6% real return, you should have your own mutual fund, because you have quite a gift.

"Rent".

[AnaK]

Originally Posted by plotthickens To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

This statement baffles me: "I want to spend time with my family/hobby/videogames/masturbation/dog/religion/whatever -- I'll hire someone to do the menial work so I don't have to!" Free time now is X hours. Free time later, if banked, would be X+Y% hours. It is only reasonable to go for the more later than shorter time now. Example: you can have $100 today, or $200 next month. Which do you choose? Feel free to substitute whatever numbers you want, then look up the actual experiment, it's fascinating. And yet people rationalize their need for immediate gratification, usually using exactly the opposite of what they say they want. Total contradiction. Baffling.

Except time today may be worth more than time tomorrow. Time with your children is worth more when they are younger, than when they're 16 or 17.

	"Rent".

Yes, the rental properties are a smart investment.

[Muse]

Many of the 'Clean It Yourself Forever' advocates seem to have a vested interest in keeping other women(and men) cleaning, and have gone so far as to delve into the realm of finances and thoroughly fudge the numbers. I find it ironic that these appeals to monetary reasoning are often shunning economic reasoning, or are flat out wrong.

Then we have posters who say it is definitely worth it to them, who through
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have found time is money, but money is also time.

I think the bottom line is your personal economic situation (based largely on how much education you did, or who you married, or where you put your money already). This is not an option that everyone has, but is an option worth considering for those who do.

	Originally Posted by plotthickens To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Example: you can have..

the problem with your 'examples', and many in this thread, is that they are either based on nothing or based on something that is wrong. No amount of bold print or alternating font size with excalmation marks to grab our attention will change that they are incorrect.(and it also looks very carnival-ish. just saying)

Please understand this. You can talk about magical math all you want, but it will always be on par with all things imaginary, and nothing more.

[AnaK]

I've taken several, somewhat long, cruises with my mother to foreign countries. Those kind of cruises have mostly older passengers. I'd talk to them and they would all say the same thing....

"Wish I had done this when I was young enough to enjoy it."

They saved their traveling for their retirement, and guess what? They had arthritis, sore knees, temperamental stomachs. You could tell many of them couldn't really enjoy the trip as much as they would have hoped.

It's not always a good idea to delay gratification.

That's why, if I had kids, I'd not only get a cleaning service, I'd take many, many trips with the kids. There is so much you learn from traveling, and when the kids get older, it's too late to travel with them. They are in sports or activities and their schedules are often too busy.

[ktgrey]

Originally Posted by AnaK To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

It's a simple thing to calculate. 1) Assuming 20 years of weekly cleaning. (This thread is about families with children, most people don't raise children for 50 years.) 2) $80/week for 20 years is $80*52*20 = $83,200 you will spend on a cleaning crew over 20 years. 3) Lets say you invest that $80/week instead and earn 1% over inflation, according to this calculator, you'd end up with 92,093.78. 4) $92,093.78 - $83,200 = $8,893. 5) It will take you 20 years to earn less than $9,000 in interest. For this $9,000, you will be sacrificing quality time you could devote to your family and career. If you consistently earn a 6% real return, you should have your own mutual fund, because you have quite a gift. To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

I gave the stats for a few different real returns to illustrate that the less interest earned, the greater the difference in retirement age (which seems to be the opposite of what most in the thread are thinking). Therefore, I don't understand why you have bolded the stats for 6% real return, as if giving the stats in that situation indicates a grave flaw, or why the fact that $3840 is rounded to $4000 is bolded. In fact you yourself calculate the cost per year as $80*52 = $4160, which is greater than my value.

Also, the interest is less than $9,000 if we assume 1% real return, but you seem to be ignoring the direct cost ($83,200) which makes up the majority of the savings in such a scenario. So it is not fair to say that you are sacrificing quality time for $9,000. Rather, it is better to say you are sacrificing quality time for $92,093.78, which can be converted to quality time at a later date (by retiring earlier). So it is a matter of when you want your quality time, and whether you prefer to work at your job versus clean your house.

Edit: Let me try the scenario you have, again with Fidelity's calculator at
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. So in the first 20 years, we save $20k per year with cleaning, and $24k per year without cleaning, and after that we continue to save $24k per year until we hit $1 million, with a 1% real return.

After 20 years: with cleaning $444,784, without $533,741
With cleaning, it takes 18 more years after that, without cleaning, it takes 15 years

So in this scenario you save about 3 years off your retirement. This seems to me to be a much better way to describe the scenario than the claim that you generate only $9000 in interest after 20 years, which seems to be unfairly minimizing the impact.

[Crazyblue]

Everyone has their own opportunity costs associated with cleaning, for some people it will be worth more than the amount spent on hiring people to clean, so it's sound for those individuals to purchase those services. For others, the opportunity cost is not worthwhile so they will decline the service. The value of time spent/physical labor is dependent on the individual.

For me, I don't have enough cleaning to justify the cost of hiring an individual to do the cleaning and I have enough spare time to do it myself. If I owned a large home with a good number of people living in it and none of them had the time to preform the tasks, it would certainly be an option for me to hire someone to do the labor, rather than spending the small amount of time I have left over on something that is tedious. Obviously this will cost some money, but if those funds are taken from places other than retirement funds, and instead less time is spent getting dinner at a restaurant or going to movies rather than watching something at home, there is not going to be a noticeable impact on quality of life or retirement.