This discussion had me thinking about MMM's latest post on hiring your children. I read it feeling myself constantly cringing with how dry and unappealing all the discussion about taxes, how to incorporate, paying social security and medicare taxes, and setting up a 401k was... If this is what Financial Independence becomes at some point, I'm doing it wrong. I find myself thinking less and less about optimizing every last gain and instead letting life and my own interests direct what I do with my time. Do people really retire early just so they can stew over tax optimization and accounting? Maybe I'm spoiled as a salaried worker!
There are tons of mathy types who absolutely love that stuff, so yes, and thank god for them because they post their work online so we don't have to.
If you don't want mathy stuff as part of your ideal life, then outsource it. If someone doesn't want grocery shopping or house cleaning as part of their ideal life, outsource it.
Different strokes for different folks. For some outsourcing is absolutely worth the cost, for others it isn't and the challenge is part of the reward.
Okay, cool.
I don't think the article is silly for what it's discussing, I think it's silly because people with money outsourcing is far more the norm than not. Sure, I also know some very very wealthy people who are extremely cheap and would never pay for anything they don't have to, but some article telling them they could outsource isn't going to change their values.
As for what's more valuable: making more money or cutting expenses...well, again, it depends on the individual case, and which effort will cause more hardship.
For some, cutting tens of thousands from their annual spending might produce no real drop in quality of life. For others, just a few thousand shaved off will cause hardship.
Likewise, for some, jumping to double their income may actually result in doing more satisfying and less drudging work with more autonomy. For others, making even 10% more money means making horrible life/work balance trade offs, and barreling towards burnout.
The biggest challenge of this whole thing is realizing that there are no "best" options, there are only the trade offs that we each individually must determine to be worthwhile.
I still maintain though, that no high earner ever needed to be told that they have the option to outsource.
We know.