Imagine you had to write a dating profile. What would you list as your interests?
Maybe watching a game. Eating good food. Spending time with the family.
But here’s something you won’t necessarily list under your top 5 favorite hobbies. You won’t list the time you spend pushing a heavy mower back and forth in your yard. For many of us, that one doesn’t quite make the cut.
You know that getting a robotic mower gives you back time. That’s time you would rather spend doing ANYTHING else. But how much of it do you get back in your life?
Here’s why this is an essential question.
A robot mower is an investment that can run you anywhere from $1,000 – $5,000, depending on the machine you buy.
But money isn’t your only currency. In fact, you might argue that your time is a more restricted currency. You can find ways to make more money, but you can never get back lost time.
If you’re like many people, your job gets at least 5 days of your week. And what are you left with? Saturday and Sunday. Better make those hours count.
You know what you get paid for work. Have you ever put a value on those hours that belong exclusively to you?
You can’t make more of them. So it’s important to recognize them as a commodity.
What’s the hourly rate for your free time?
What do you think your free hours are worth? Meaning, how much should someone pay you to take one of those free hours away?
So whatever it is, come up with a number. And make sure it feels right to you. Because you’re the one who is selling your free time.
Every hour you spend mowing your lawn is time you’re “selling”.
How many hours does it take?
So back to the original question. How much time will you save using a robot lawn mower? Because you now know why this matters.
The average ½ acre lawn will take about 2 hours to mow. Have a yard that is a full acre? Now you’re up to 4 hours.
That might not seem like a lot of time. But think about it. How often do you mow your lawn?
You thought bigger was better. That was until you had to control your constantly growing lawn.
Let’s say you mow your lawn 30 times a year
OK, get out those calculators. We’re going to do some basic math. Because you’re not just looking at 2 or 4 lost hours here. You’ve got to look at the big picture.
If you mow a half acre lawn 30 times a year, and you don’t use a robot mower, you’re looking at a 60 hour investment.
You’ve lost watching 20 baseball games. Or you’ve lost out on 30 happy hours. And you’ve missed 60 1-hour naps.
If your yard is an acre, you’re looking at 120 hours per year. That’s collateral damage on your free time and social life.
And what’s that worth?
Maybe it’s hard for you to imagine what you would do with all that free time. You might underestimate your time’s value. So let’s go back to look at the financial value of your free time.
You’re paying yourself $15 an hour to give up your own hard-earned free time. Plus about $6 for 2 gallons of gas. So what does it cost you to mow your own lawn? That’s $36 total each time you mow your lawn.
If you’ve got a ½ acre lawn, pushing a mower will cost you 60 hours a year, minimum. And what’s the cost of that?
$1080 for a ½ acre lawn. Increase that to $2160 for a lawn that’s an acre.
Bottom line
A robot mower saves you 60 hours per year for the average lawn. Or about $1080. And that’s only with your time being worth $15 an hour. Imagine if we increase the value.
You’ve only got one life. You’ve got better things to do than spend 60 hours a year on labor. This is labor you can outsource to a robotic mower friend.
When you make an investment you want to get value. Well your time is an investment. So what could you do with 60 hours a year?