To ask if you’re a higher earner, what do you outsource to give you more time?

Kinda similar I’m a IT consultant with quite a few clients, I’d a cleaner that changes beds! I give up after soo many useless cleaners but my robot vacuums and mop is life changing also the Dyson air straight my hairdresser can’t get it as nice!

I use a laundry service
My meals are provided by Hello Fresh or Gousto
That's all - the rest I absolutely don't mind doing.

Cleaners, gardener, and 50/50 co-parenting with my daughter's dad.

The person that does most of the life admin you describe here is a nanny. That's what the very wealthy have even when they only have teenagers.

Save yourself time by not engaging with this type of poster. Ignore. They're here for the reaction.

Painting/decorating when it needs to be done. Partly because it is not my forte.

That depends on how much money you can make in the time that you free up by having someone run your entire life admin, doesn’t it?

I stopped the cleaner when my last children went to university but when we had 5 children at home and my income increased after year of full time work we ultimately had a cleaner/housekeeper 5 morning s week 9am to noon who did the cleaning, hoovered each day, put the food shopping away when it arrived, change the bedding every 2 weeks, emptied the dishwasher and washer and did ironing and put the washing away. I also had a gardener every 2 weeks for a time but happily do that myself now. We had a full time daily nanny at various stages when we had children under 5. We also had someone at weekends for a time who would drive the 3 children who were then 5 - 10 to parties all over the place - often 40 minutes' drive each way as private school children often come further than state schoolers at that age and we were both getting sick of driving them to parties; we also had child care at one point for 4 hours on Sat and Sunday morning so we could either drive our older 3 teenagers around or both work - we both just about always not only had a full time job each but did extra work for pay at some weekends indeed most weekends.

I never hired a PA because I am happy to do my own admin etc. I was in Quintessentially at one point but did not really use the service.
We also had before and after school club at the children's private school at one point we sometimes used and and the private school ran school coaches which was a kind of contracted out service to help parents.

When we were very badly off and I was 22 working full time and we each spent 50% of our net pay on full time childcare for the baby and probably most of the rest of our income on housing costs (yes it was not a bed of roses in the 80s either although everyone seems to think it was an easy life) we could not afford a cleaner but I certainly remember when my pay rose and we had 3 children under 4 and both worked full time and we had 3 children still in cloth nappies at night (disposables were not very good in those days) that we reached a point when we could afford a cleaner once or twice a week and it was a massive help.

I'd call £500 a month massively costly and I'm a high earner.

I’ve recently moved into a much bigger role. I have:

Cleaner
Window cleaner
Dog walker
Gousto meals - not good value for money but take all the brainwork out of meal planning - at some point I will stop using them but for now I am happy to spend the money in return for not having to think about what to cook through the week and then having to set up an online shop and order the ingredients.

I haven’t yet outsourced the ironing but I plan to do this as I hate it!

Cleaner.
Gardener.
Get groceries delivered.

I'm not a high earner, but if I was I'd go for:
-cleaner once a week.
-gardener (however much needed to keep garden looking neat and tidy).
-a PA/concierge person to deal with admin stuff and errands.

I enjoy cooking, and already do grocery shopping online for home delivery so that wouldn't need to change for me.

How does having a VA work? Don’t you have to share emails, passwords, bank account details etc? Would they sit in a queue hitting refresh to get you concert tickets?

My partner had a fantastic PA when the business was busy pre-Covid. She handled all life admin for us. It wasn’t massively costly either (about £500 a month maybe). She was available to us 24/7 but was free to work as much or as little as she wanted as long as everything was organised - appointments, quotes for gifts, personal and business meeting calendar, deliveries, insurance etc. I really miss her.

Definitely food preparation!!!
Personally I rather go and clean a loo than touch food to prepare and cook.
Noticed that a PP mentioned laundry, it's just husband and me here and "latest technology" for laundry.
😐

You need a kind of part-time PA / concierge who will do whatever you want, including your life admin, either doing it themselves or outsourcing for things like cleaning, property repairs etc. I don’t know where you’d find someone like that, but I expect there are agencies offering people with references.

Oh by the way. A virtual assistant is a REAL person. Not AI or anything. 😆

I use a VA for work.

They are virtual because not personal. They might have 30/40 clients.

They generally work from home and are self employed.

i have advice

i have a gardener, cleaner, someone to sew uniform labels and car valeted

i suggested off mumsnet and get a cleaner

Get a cleaner who will do the laundry too so you're not outsourcing to 2 services. Get shopping delivered. Have more stuff like gousto or hello fresh

When I was a high earner, I had a cleaner and also used a laundry service once a week. I don't have a car so I also used black cabs to get around if I was in a hurry.

MIL had an almost FT housekeeper.

We had a cleaner, when I retired I kept her on for two years as I hate housework but she changed jobs and I haven’t replaced her. I still miss her. Get a cleaner for sure, we also had a gardener sometimes.

When it comes to life admin, I think some people let it take up a lot of headspace. This is not a reflection on how well they do it just that they let it sit there as a burden.

My mantra in life has always been as long as no one is going to die what does it matter. When I was young I worked in a clinical role in the NHS, I actually could have killed someone with a mistake, drawn up wrong drugs or something of that nature. At work in my second career if something went a bit awry I would always say we are not nurses no one has died so it’s ok. I’m very much yes whatever mate.

That is just our own personality but if somehow you can get your head around life admin being less of a burden in your head it will really assist you.

The OP didn’t say it doesn’t exist for other people, though. She just said she can afford to outsource stuff, so does anyone have any ideas as to how she could do that.
We are high earners so we pay other people to do stuff that we could do ourselves but don’t want to. It puts money back into the economy, and allows us to earn more and therefore pay more tax.
As the OP says, you don’t seem to have any useful advice for her so no real need to comment.

@CherryBlossomFestival

This is my exact issue. AI can't help either it seems. I have built all that stuff into my routine - I spend 15mins every lunch hour and any dead time while waiting in queues, kids pick ups etc to do this.

I have set up the reminders app and my outlook calendar as a widget on my phone so it's on the first screen that I see.

It's the only way I can manage it and still fall behind sometimes.

Not a high earner BTW - just someone aware of the potential of VAs to be used to support life admin.

Find a local one as meeting will be important.

You need a virtual assistant for the life admin. You can brief them what needs doing (they'll even look at travel insurance/house insurance etc).

Thing is briefing them properly will take time, almost as much time as doing it yourself (at least the first time) BUT if you keep the relationship going over months and years you will see the benefit of time.

Hand all the thinking and planning to a VA.

Also I think you need a housekeeper not a cleaner. The difference is in the name!