I think Americans put a greater percentage of their wealth and identity into their possessions, especially housing/real estate. So to pay a random person ±minimum wage to be in this personal identity space is not desirable, even if you can afford it. It requires thinking of your home as more of a presentation space and less as a personal one.
Furthermore, most of the upper class already does hire cleaners, cooks, etc. The upper middle class, which is roughly the group of people you're referring to, is typically composed of people that are money-focused enough to think spending $10,000 a year on something they can do themselves is a waste.
There's also the simple fact that many people would rather have $10k a year + a dirty apartment and subpar food than the opposite.
> ask a mid-career software engineer making 150k if they'd trade 10k/year to get an additional 10hrs/week of free time back, and I think a LOT would say yes.
Maybe a lot would. Although I could certainly afford it, I wouldn't. There are a lot of more useful/fruitful things I can put that money towards.
> is there something about American class psychology where it feels wrong to employee somebody to do this?
Personally, I don't think it feels wrong at all, nor is it a question of trust. For me, it's just that the cost/benefit ratio isn't good enough (the cost is more than just the financial outlay, and the benefit of gaining a bit less than 1.5 hrs/day isn't that much). That said, I have certainly hired people to come in once a week to clean my house before and could see doing it again if my time and/or energy budget demanded it.
520 hours at $10k/year is only around $19/hour. This is minimum wage in some American cities like San Francisco, and fast-food starting salaries in many other large cities. You're simply not able to hire someone for bespoke meal prep, housecleaning and random errands for $19/hour in America - or if you can, they will either not be competent or move on quickly to higher paying jobs.
Having a housekeeping service come for an hour or so weekly and a lawn maintenance and snow clearing service every two weeks will cost around $10k a year total in many large or mid-size cities, and many upper middle class earners do in fact use those services.
okay, so lets adjust the numbers in my quick example.
i'll pay $20k a year to get 10 hours back a week (i.e., you an engineer that goes from making (120/yr to 100/yr). that's still a valuable trade that i think a lot of people would take given the choice.
and the assist would then be getting 80k/yr if they do a fulltime 40 hours a week which places their compentation at the level of plenty of white-collar (non-tech) office jobs. and it doesn't require any special skills or equipment.
i can't imagine spending 10k for snow/landscaping work. i havent paid for lawn mowing, but when we had a snowplow guy he'd charge $50 per plow event (when snow got above a certain level).
You're supposing that the salary cost is the only cost. That's not how it works.
Firstly, are you offering this assistant Paid Time Off? Paid Sick Time? Are you making social security contributions? Health care contributions? Or do they need to do that?
You're happy with 10 hours per week. So say 3 to 5 pm? Or would some of the tasks be time-of-day dependent? Would you be happy
By the time you're paying a living wage, and all the extras are added in, it's costing more like 25 to 30k a year. Maybe some folk can afford that, but I'm guessing most can't.
But what fo randos on the internet know? Find 3 mates. Pony up some cash. Hire a person. When it's working, find 4 more randos and hire another. This is how businesses start...
Note that in the USA there are typically three kinds of assistants: (1) they're an established business and you simply pay their quoted rates, in which case they don't net all that you pay them due to their overhead and IRS obligations, (2) they're classified as a "household employee" and the IRS wants both of you to cover extras like Social Security and Medicare, in which case their paycheck has deductions and you owe taxes to the IRS, or (3) you give them under-the-counter cash payments to avoid paying taxes, but that's illegal.
Great question. I call this the “delegation paradox”: even when the math works, people resist letting go.
- Psychology: self-worth gets tied to “doing it yourself,” so outsourcing feels like weakness or elitism.
- Trust: Handing over personal tasks (groceries, errands) feels riskier than it is.
- Friction: hiring, scheduling, and managing another human adds overhead.
- Perfectionism: many would rather do it “their way” than risk compromise and not have the job done perfectly.
Ironically, these same barriers make people more comfortable with AI assistants, where with AI, you have less friction, less stigma, fewer trust issues.
The real productivity hack isn’t just saving hours, it’s getting past the belief that you must be the one doing everything.
- Hiring someone costs way more than they salary they receive
- getting someone reliable who works for such low wages is especially hard
- people are cheap generally and don't have the disposable income
- I think many people have house cleaners, people who mow the lawn and shovel snow, nannies
I think Americans put a greater percentage of their wealth and identity into their possessions, especially housing/real estate. So to pay a random person ±minimum wage to be in this personal identity space is not desirable, even if you can afford it. It requires thinking of your home as more of a presentation space and less as a personal one.
Furthermore, most of the upper class already does hire cleaners, cooks, etc. The upper middle class, which is roughly the group of people you're referring to, is typically composed of people that are money-focused enough to think spending $10,000 a year on something they can do themselves is a waste.
There's also the simple fact that many people would rather have $10k a year + a dirty apartment and subpar food than the opposite.
> ask a mid-career software engineer making 150k if they'd trade 10k/year to get an additional 10hrs/week of free time back, and I think a LOT would say yes.
Maybe a lot would. Although I could certainly afford it, I wouldn't. There are a lot of more useful/fruitful things I can put that money towards.
> is there something about American class psychology where it feels wrong to employee somebody to do this?
Personally, I don't think it feels wrong at all, nor is it a question of trust. For me, it's just that the cost/benefit ratio isn't good enough (the cost is more than just the financial outlay, and the benefit of gaining a bit less than 1.5 hrs/day isn't that much). That said, I have certainly hired people to come in once a week to clean my house before and could see doing it again if my time and/or energy budget demanded it.
520 hours at $10k/year is only around $19/hour. This is minimum wage in some American cities like San Francisco, and fast-food starting salaries in many other large cities. You're simply not able to hire someone for bespoke meal prep, housecleaning and random errands for $19/hour in America - or if you can, they will either not be competent or move on quickly to higher paying jobs.
Having a housekeeping service come for an hour or so weekly and a lawn maintenance and snow clearing service every two weeks will cost around $10k a year total in many large or mid-size cities, and many upper middle class earners do in fact use those services.
okay, so lets adjust the numbers in my quick example.
i'll pay $20k a year to get 10 hours back a week (i.e., you an engineer that goes from making (120/yr to 100/yr). that's still a valuable trade that i think a lot of people would take given the choice.
and the assist would then be getting 80k/yr if they do a fulltime 40 hours a week which places their compentation at the level of plenty of white-collar (non-tech) office jobs. and it doesn't require any special skills or equipment.
i can't imagine spending 10k for snow/landscaping work. i havent paid for lawn mowing, but when we had a snowplow guy he'd charge $50 per plow event (when snow got above a certain level).
You're supposing that the salary cost is the only cost. That's not how it works.
Firstly, are you offering this assistant Paid Time Off? Paid Sick Time? Are you making social security contributions? Health care contributions? Or do they need to do that?
You're happy with 10 hours per week. So say 3 to 5 pm? Or would some of the tasks be time-of-day dependent? Would you be happy
By the time you're paying a living wage, and all the extras are added in, it's costing more like 25 to 30k a year. Maybe some folk can afford that, but I'm guessing most can't.
But what fo randos on the internet know? Find 3 mates. Pony up some cash. Hire a person. When it's working, find 4 more randos and hire another. This is how businesses start...
Note that in the USA there are typically three kinds of assistants: (1) they're an established business and you simply pay their quoted rates, in which case they don't net all that you pay them due to their overhead and IRS obligations, (2) they're classified as a "household employee" and the IRS wants both of you to cover extras like Social Security and Medicare, in which case their paycheck has deductions and you owe taxes to the IRS, or (3) you give them under-the-counter cash payments to avoid paying taxes, but that's illegal.
Great question. I call this the “delegation paradox”: even when the math works, people resist letting go.
- Psychology: self-worth gets tied to “doing it yourself,” so outsourcing feels like weakness or elitism.
- Trust: Handing over personal tasks (groceries, errands) feels riskier than it is.
- Friction: hiring, scheduling, and managing another human adds overhead.
- Perfectionism: many would rather do it “their way” than risk compromise and not have the job done perfectly.
Ironically, these same barriers make people more comfortable with AI assistants, where with AI, you have less friction, less stigma, fewer trust issues.
The real productivity hack isn’t just saving hours, it’s getting past the belief that you must be the one doing everything.