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Comment by darekkay | Hacker News Reader

This is only true, if you do not value your free time. In your example, you've spent 4h to save 200$, so your work was worth 50$/hour. A freelancer with a 100$/hour rate might do 2 hours of work instead, spend the money, and gain 2 hours of free time.

There are other factors of course, but in general, many people come up with a rate for their own free time (which is often higher than the actual rate they charge clients)

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It’s not only true if you don’t your free time. It’s only true if you’re a freelancer that is turning down hours at a higher rate than what you’re saving.

Many people working on products, both on their own and within a company, aren’t turning down other profitable work to optimize existing solutions.

If I watch a two hour movie instead of spending two hours saving $100/month, it doesn’t matter how much I value my time, no one is paying me $100/hour to watch a movie.

There's a difference between the initial example and watching a movie. That's what I summed up with "there are other factors (than money)". If I'm only interested in the _outcome_ and I treat the way to achieve it as work, I definitely weight the time cost vs benefit (and I am not a freelancer). If it is something I enjoy doing (which may or may not be true for the initial example), I'll take this into account as well. Time is a limited resource, and I treat it as such.

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