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

[butterpears]

I have the opportunity to take on more consultancy work, which is quite lucrative as I am in a very specific field. I have done a smaller amount of this in the past. If I do it I will realistically need to outsource as much as possible to free up time. The costs of this would be more than worth it in terms of what I can earn.

My thoughts so far are to get a cleaner (we had one in the past but not recently), get my hair blowdried once a week (I have difficult hair that takes ages). My DH does most of the cooking and food shopping, I do most of the laundry and life admin. I’m struggling to think of more that I could outsource because I tend to have a fairly frugal mindset.

What do you outsource if you can use the freed up time to bring in more money?

If you have grass then a robot mower. Best thing we bought to get time back. Agree a good cheaner for more time with a longer list of jobs is needed. Local handyman on speed dial. A PA/VA would be great but I am not sure how that would work as I can't imagine how I would pass on family stuff. Trust is necessary.

We had a cleaner but don't anymore. It was just slightly more hassle than the benefit gained.

We outsourced laundry, but again, hassle, it's easier just to do it. Plus, there is almost no recourse if they ruin things (a set of bedding returned with unknown stains, and as we no longer had the receipt for it, they paid £20 as goodwill, the bedding cost over £150).

We have the cars valeted - that's worth it.

But I highly recommend a personal accountant and a financial advisor. Doing taxes is a PITA, and I don't have time to learn about investments from the ground-up.

I also recommend a mortgage broker (not just advisor), that saved us literally £1000s per year. Obv you don't need on of these all the time.

I also outsource tree pruning, hedge cutting / big gardening work.

I'd like a day to day gardener for weeding.

Other things that make life easier:

Meal / recipe boxes.
Therapy (even if nothing's actively wrong).
Physio/osteopath.

Not in this position now as we are both retired and have plenty of time. But back in the day, the first thing we outsourced was ironing. We had jobs which required us to dress fairly smartly so this tended to mean the sort of clothes which did need ironing. All those shirts! The ironing lady would collect them from the house and bring them back the next day. Perfect.

The cleaner came next. This was after DD and when I was about to go back after maternity leave. I was returning to work four days a week, but I wanted to spend my additional day off doing things with DD not catching up on chores, so we got the cleaner to come in on one of the other days to do the bulk of the housework.

We did try having someone to cut the grass for a while but that didn't really work out so we stopped that after the first year.

You don't have to be a high earner to pay others to do tasks. It's about having money to pay someone for something you feel worthwhile them doing to free up your time.

Are you stealth boasting or just being mean ?

I have someone to cut the grass. This leaves us to do some gardening as a leisure activity but keeps it looking tidy.

I have teenagers who are learning to do their own life admin. You need to look at what you are doing and see if it can be done differently (a lot can be planned for and not instant except medical stuff). Put aside an hour to do this rather than try and do it as and when.

For life admin put everything you can on to Direct debit and subscriptions including car tax, insurance etc. For school books, order online, even if you have to click and collect. For car servicing sign up to a service plan and opt into any reminder service, they will contact you. Yes get cleaner to do laundry including ironing and putting away, also get them to put out the bins. A cleaner doing a couple of hours 3x a week is better than one 6 hour slot. A cleaner can also put away your food shoping if you time it to arrive when they are there. Get gardener, even if you like gardening, they will keep it tidy when you dont have time. Get a private dentist it is much easier to get an appointment and make appointments 6 months + in advance, they will text you a reminder near the appointment time. Same for hair, book miles in advance and get a good relationship with the reception team , should you need to change. I use an ipad for everything so reminder emails show up and I can deal with stuff in my lunch hour.

We outsource the following:

Laundry/Ironing (you need 2 weeks of full school uniform for this to work)

Cleaner - as well as cleaning, ask that they pack away the clean laundry. This was a game changer for me!

Gardener - saves arguments

Meal prep - We use Hellofresh and it saves so much time thinking about what to cook/shopping.

You can get a personal/virtual PA Service to do a lot of your home admin for you if this is the area that sucks up a lot of your time

I literally do sweet FA theses days. Outsource or delegate as much as you can. Life is too precious to spend any of it with a toilet brush in your hand.

I think that if you had a oerson, cleaner/housekeeper/PA come to your house twice a week for a few hours would help. You could get them to e.g. put up Christmas decorations, do some deep cleaning, research if there was an item you needed to buy.. They may also do recycling of glass bottles, take old clothes to charity shops.

Automate as much routine purchases as possible. L'Occitaine and amazon allow you to do this.

Have a regular window cleaner and gardener.

Use a travel agent for holidays.

Just do things to allow you to cut down on cleaning/tidying/researching.

It makes much more sense to have a cleaner who also does laundry. Especially stuff like towels and bedsheets. I prefer to do my own clothes since I like to hang some things and tumble dry others.

Laundry services seem very expensive for what they are.

A cleaner with initiative is even better.

I have a friend who comes 2 days a week and she does:

Tidying, organising, decluttering, creating systems (ie files for paperwork, different baskets for cleaning, make up organisers etc) and doing things like cleaning, organising and reminding whats going out of date in the fridge and creates shopping lists of what’s running low (and reminds me to stop buying certain condiments I have 17 of) she manages all the laundry and bedding and makes sure things match like we have a grey bathroom set and a white one and she swaps them over this is my fave it’s like being in a hotel) put clothes away and organises the closets and drawers. She files all the paperwork away and leaves out nothing urgent for me. Does the dishwashers, mops the floors and wipes the sides etc. She loves all this sort of stuff and has 3 under 5 so it works really well for us.

I have a gardener, a tree trimmer man, a valet and used to use a driver / chauffeur for airports and concerts and big nights out and task rabbit app for building furniture and odd jobs but I am married now and he is v handy so don’t need that any more.

Before I had my friend I used a laundry service including a service where you drop the suitcases off from holiday and they clean and fold and return it in the right cases, that was so good!

I have a cleaner come in to deep clean sometimes. A daily dog walker.

I have my own business and have a Virtual Assistant who is my PA and she does some personal stuff for me like booking appointments, buying regular things like contacts and foundation, manages my personal email and fills out forms and things for me. She reminds me about things in my diary that are personal as well as business. She books all my day to day travel biz and personal.

I have a travel consultant who books all our travel and checks us in etc. She has been doing this for so many years now I just let her make a couple of suggestions within budget and pick one.

I’ve got 2 teenagers of my own and they do their own rooms and laundry and have done since high school. I have two step children who don’t but they’re not here full time. Am working on it!

I invest in things that give me headspace eg a digital door entry so I don’t have to find my keys or worry about who needs to get in, have subscriptions to every TV package, subscribe and save int things we use regularly like toilet roll and cleaning and hygiene products. So we never run out of anything and I don’t have a mental to buy list going on.

I pay for 121 coaching in my sport and have top package at the gym so I can go to anything anyone to suit and have a PT.

Basically I am ruthless about outsourcing anything and everything I can so I can focus on two things - growing my business and spending time with my family - and do things for me too!

A PA (needs to be physically present) to take care of the humdrum of admin and household management.

I totally agree. Far better to have it done in your own home with your preferred products and dried how you want erc. Using a service creates more admin, whereas if you have someone in regularly they empty the laundry basket, sort it, strip the beds, wash it, iron it if needed, put it back in the cupboard/drawers or back on the bed. I genuinely dont think about laundry, it just magically happens. Plus they can get on with other stuff whilst it's in the machine. Much better value and a better service.

We're a high earning household. We had a housekeeper/helper who basically looked after the house, did laundry, cleaning, school pick ups, ferried kids to appointments/activities, walked the dogs etc.

The only thing I couldn't outsource to her was the actual appointment making stuff and we generally would take kids to medical appointments if they were sick.

The kids are older now and we have relatively flexible hours so can manage pick ups etc. I just have a cleaner for 6 hours a week.

We live on a small island so there's not much else I need to outsource as most things are close by and I don't iron - the only thing we have mountains of is laundry (sports activities ALL. THE. TIME!) which we do on a rolling basis and the kids put their stuff away.

Thanks. These are incredibly helpful examples. If I take on extra consultancy it would bring in another about £3700 per month after tax, similar to what I currently earn after tax so I can effectively double my take home pay. But realistically I will have less time to do other things and I’m trying to think about what I can afford to let go of, while still making it worth my while.

Do you mind me asking, if your bonus covers the outsourcing roughly what figure that is?

There are so many absolutely amazing suggestions on here, I am going to carefully go through all of the recent replies and note it all down.

Apologies if that came across mean. It was a direct reply to a poster who really was being mean and said life admin doesn’t exist and just get a cleaner. I would never boast about income and have experience of having literally no money. Part of my issue with outsourcing is that I have a fairly frugal mindset due to past experiences so I feel like I should save money where I can. But that isn’t freeing me up to earn more. That’s why I’m looking for ideas so I can do things differently.

I genuinely appreciate any and all suggestions and agree that outsourcing is also about paying for others to do things you don’t want to spend time on even if not on a high income.

She is! I pay well over London living wage, but make sure that we have a proper conversation regularly and am very flexible about when she works each week, in return.

I'm in outer London and all my outsourcing costs around £1800 a month. I can earn much more extra than that by having the outsourcing. Frankly I'd rather do more hours in the career I chose than housework so it suits me very well. It's also nice not having any arguments at home about who does what as it is all done by someone who is fairly remunerated for their chosen work.

the friend who does your laundry, admin and cleaning… do you socialise with her? go out for coffees?

genuinely curious as i can’t imagine a friend doing all this for me

i have a cleaner and i like her very much
i have known her for more than a decade
but a “friend” ? no

Cleaning, meal prep/shopping (when the dc were small we had a housekeeper, now we just use delivery services, Gousto & Cook), gardening, excellent childcare & back up childcare. Ironing / laundry.

Thanks that’s really helpful. I am trying to shift more into that mindset. I recently painted my study, as it is something I can easily do myself but I am slow at it. I could have paid someone and earned way more in that time by doing my own work. I seem to be in a slightly “lack” mindset. I have turned down work in the past because I don’t want to be overloaded but then I’m spending time cleaning and changing bedsheets and walking to collect prescriptions etc.

i never said life admin doesn’t exist!!!

i am a single working parent of two children (tweens and one ND)

i rolled my eyes at the expression “life admin”

If you can't afford a pa then theoretically you could train your own ai and ask a housekeeper to photograph all documents coming into the house and get the ai to automatically add appointments to your calendar or make a calendar event to do deal with whatever the letter is about. The only issue it that it will take some input to train the AI in the first place.

’Life admin’ is just a way of describing something. Hardly worth getting your knickers in a twist about.