Your time is valuable. Not just in the abstract sense but in the dollar sense. Your time is worth budgeting even more than your money, too, but you still want to put a dollar amount to an hour.

You can’t know whether doing something yourself is “cheaper” than paying someone else to do it unless you know your personal wage for yourself. A professional, licensed plumber might cost a pretty penny, but do you know how many hours you would have to spend fixing that toilet yourself before it turns out to cost even more? If you invoiced yourself for your own work, would you grimace at the bill?

Your current wage doesn’t determine the value of your time. You can decide what it’s worth and schedule its use accordingly. Even if you can’t afford to pay someone to save you time, you can still decide that an hour of one activity is worth three of another. That said, you can only make a budget if you know your balance and your costs. How much do you have left to spend?