What kind of schleps have you bought yourself out of? If you prefer a less personal question, what kind of schleps could one buy oneself out of?
1) Shopping. For a few extra bucks, most large grocery stores will deliver.
2) Laundry. Pay a service to pick up / clean / drop off your clothes.
3) Travel. For long distances, fly first class (far more comfortable), or charter a plane (no TSA experience!). For in-city, take a cab.
4) Dining. Not in the mood to cook? Eat out whenever you want.
5) Taxes. Pay someone else.
6) Housecleaning. Hire a service.
7) If you want to get marginally obnoxious about it...never wait in line again. Just carry a big wad of cash and, if you find yourself stuck at the back of a long line, go to each person in turn and say: "I'll give you $50 (or whatever) for your place in line."
Then of course there are opportunities that aren't available until you have FU money:
1) Travel. A lot. To exotic places that you could not otherwise afford.
2) Invest your money better. Many financial instruments (e.g. hedge funds) are available only to rich people; normal folks cannot invest in them, which means they cannot achieve the same level of returns. This is one of the reasons the rich / poor gap keeps increasing.
3) Live in whatever neighborhood you want.
4) If you have really serious FU money, pay your local telecom to sling an OC-3 line into your house, even if it means paying off the city to dig up the street.
Having money makes you realize you actually didn't need as much of it as you thought you did.
You don't need anything like FU money to hire a cleaning service to come in every one or two weeks. Any normal salaried job puts you into range. I've seen house-sharing students pool their money together to hire one to clean their shared living areas rather than fight over whose turn it is to scrub the bathtub. It also forces you to tidy up on a schedule, as most cleaners won't move stuff to clean.
After food, accommodation and broadband, I can't think of anything out of my paycheck that gives me more bang for my buck in terms of quality of life. I would definitely pass up a new TV or better car or most material consumption in order to have a cleaner.
1.) FreshDirect - $99 a year for free grocery deliveries
2.) Any corner dry cleaner - $10 a week to drop off two loads of dirty laundry on the way to work. Your doorman will have it when you return that night.
3.) Your company buys you refundable tickets when you have to fly, which I argue is more stress-relieving than 1st class tickets
(Dining and Taxes need no explanation)
6.) Whatever maid your doormen / super recommends - $60-90 every two weeks. A bit steep, but playing The Sims made me realize cleaning service is worth it.
7)Having a local farmer's market deliver a basket of fresh vegetables to you every two weeks.
Here in Tokyo a supermarket will charge about U$5 for delivery. I imagine the fee wouldn't be very different in North America. Hardly FU money. (Actually the delivery fee is waived for purchases over $50, so I buy groceries once a week and never pay for delivery.)
2) Laundry. Pay a service to pick up / clean / drop off your clothes.
6) Housecleaning. Hire a service.
These are very cheap in the Third World. You can make a living as a remote freelancer out of Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Thai, etc. Of course most people don't want to move to Third World countries buy hey, it's way easier than ever getting FU money. ;-)
4) Dining. Not in the mood to cook? Eat out whenever you want.
I don't cook and I spend less than $22 a day for food. Not very frugal but again not even close to FU money.
5) Taxes. Pay someone else.
Filling my taxes used to take 5 minutes per year. Now that my name and address are pre-printed on the form, it takes me about 1. Everything else is done by my company.
On taxes if you make over 50k a year you should have a tax professional and not H&R Block or worse yet yourself. I resisted this for years and lost a lot of money because of fear that a CPA would be expensive. A good CPA pays for themselves. When I finally broke down and went to one it cost me $1600 for my personal taxes and I gains 10K over what I could find. He also refiled my last two years (I think it was 2 its been a while) and got me some more money back.