> amateurs can easily arrive at a finished job (of painting, in this case) that they would never be able to convince themselves to pay market rate for. If you'

> amateurs can easily arrive at a finished job (of painting, in this case) that they would never be able to convince themselves to pay market rate for. If you're looking at it from a economic standpoint, to be considered irrational, the tradeoff between the value of time vs the cost of hiring a professional would have to assume that the value of the time is greater than the value of the professional. I always hear this compared to "what is your hourly rate in your job" or "my time is worth more than that", but I think for most people this just isn't a fair comparison. Just because I can spend 10 hours painting my room and I make $x/hour and it would cost <$x to pay a professional, does not mean I would be able to actually generate an _incremental_ $x per hour by not painting and hiring the professional. For most people on a salary (where your pay is fixed no matter how much time you put in), their time outside of the job is, in a very real sense from an economic standpoint, valueless, and it would be perfectly rational to spend that time yourself, no matter how cheaply a professional could do it.