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You’d be surprised how affordable and effective a virtual personal assistant can be. Mine handles almost all of my life admin stuff and it’s the best $500/mo I
by Swizec 6y ago
You’d be surprised how affordable and effective a virtual personal assistant can be. Mine handles almost all of my life admin stuff and it’s the best $500/mo I spend.
- mLuby 6y agoIs it always the same person? How do you build up the trust to let them mess with your bills/tickets/money?
- coenhyde 6y agoyeah this is one of my concerns with virtual assistants. Do you trust them with your identity and privileged information? eg SSN, CC's, passwords etc
- jonfromsf 6y agoThis was a major plot point in the movie "Where'd you go, Bernadette". Wife of a Microsoft executive hands over all the family information to a virtual assistant that is actually a Russian identity fraudster.
- Swizec 6y agoIt’s been the same person for almost 5 years. Trust was built over time. She doesn’t have direct access to my money, only credit cards. Those are easy to cancel or chargeback if things go screwy. She does know my SSN which is a bigger concern, but then again you give your SSN to all sorts of people and services in USA, it’s very not actually a secret. Oh and she doesn’t know passwords to anything. LastPass sharing only.
- jazoom 6y agoDoesn't that mean she knows the shared passwords?
- ornornor 6y agoMost password managers let you share passwords without actually revealing the password.
- JMTQp8lwXL 6y agoI struggle with this concept. Suppose a password manager's password sharing utility allows me to login to a web service in my browser. Couldn't I open the Network tab and observe the network request that displays the plaintext username and password?
- ornornor 6y agoProbably. It’s not meant to be bullet proof I don’t think, but most people who aren’t developers don’t know that the network inspector is even a thing let alone how to use it.
- jazoom 6y agoHow can they possibly login without the password being available to them?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- matsemann 6y agoWhat kind of stuff is that? Don't think I can come up with anything I do that I could see someone else handle for me or that would be worth paying for.
- Swizec 6y agoThe sort of stuff that feels silly to delegate but 10min here, 10min there adds up fast. Big ongoing thing is that she helps with my inbox, deals with ordering stuff online, random annoying tasks like booking travel, some customer support, stuff like that. Oh also makes calls for me when I don’t wanna deal with it like booking appointments and such. Kinda wishing I could afford someone in the same city so they could help with physical tasks but maybe later.
- julianlam 6y agoThis is kind of like Visa Concierge, although they don't handle your inbox :) I find I have to constantly tailor my requests with additional details, otherwise it's a back-and-forth email tag which rapidly diminishes the usefulness of the service. But I suppose that's to be expected when each time you contact them you get a different agent helping you..
- Swizec 6y agoYeah this only works if you have your person not "some person". A fantastic example recently: Some newsletter sent a book recommendation list. Instead of clicking links, finding the right format, and dealing with all that, I just slacked my assistant "Hey can you get me all the books from X newsletter on audiobook". Feels silly to delegate, instead of a task I put off and think about and finally waste time on eventually, it's a 5 second thing and I can move on right away. The "not have to think about it" part is the bigger benefit imo.
- matsemann 6y agoThe reason I spend time booking travel is either because I want to save a few bucks (and then paying someone makes no sense) or because I'm exploring options to know what I want (again, makes no sense having someone else do it). If it were pure business travel as in "I have to be at a conference in city A from X to Y" I could see the value, maybe. But for personal? No. I spend literally a minute with customer support a year, I think it would be easier voicing my issue directly than having to explain it to a third party and having multiple follow ups.. I don't get this at all. I'm so at the opposite I would almost pay money to be able to do this myself instead of having others in control. Can't fathom paying for the hassle of having others do this.
- elygre 6y agoWhat kind of stuff is your “life admin stuff”?
- violetgarden 6y agoFor me, it’s usually house stuff. If something breaks or needs maintenance that I can’t handle, it’s often a chore lining up contractors to get it surveyed and repair. Other than that, I’m also curious what people’s life admin stuff is.
- baby 6y agoI’d rather spend this 500/month on a bigger rent.
- giantg2 6y ago$500 per month is a lot for most people.
- Scapeghost 6y agoIndeed. People run entire families on like $300 a month, where I've been.
- 1123581321 6y agoIt is likely that a part-time assistant can be hired for much less in low cost-of-living regions.
- r00fus 6y agoHow'd you go about finding and choosing one?