$150/hr is $300k TC, and the vast majority of people don't make that. (I don't.) Let's say the average farmer makes $45k/yr or $22.50/hr. $22.50*32-hours of labor = $720. So $250 for the part and $720 for the labor = $920 vs $5,000. Still up by $4,080, but then we also have to add in the increase in knowledge and skills that came from performing the work yourself. Let's say automotive school costs $1,000, and that the hands-on work was instructive and counts for a quarter of that, so that's $250 from doing it yourself so that works out to be $4,330. Which is a pretty good deal!

Homesteading is a dream of mine, but I may be too rooted in the comforts of working in tech for it. Maybe if I win the startup lottery.

>> Homesteading is a dream of mine, but I may be too rooted in the comforts of working in tech for it. Maybe if I win the startup lottery.

-I guess that depends on how you define homesteading; I quite enjoy myself living on a farm with no animals larger than a cat (And I could do without the cat, thankyouverymuch!), having a day job in engineering and spending some - well, a lot of - my sparetime picking up useful skills, like how to fix a tractor on the cheap, forestry, digging trenches, building sheds, maintaining said sheds, filling them with firewood, repaving roads...

I have the good fortune of having my in-laws living next door, though; they've been running the farm since forever and I pick up all sorts of useful things, not to mention they still put in a ton of work. I wouldn't even be able to keep the land from degrading unless we had them to help us out; so homesteading, even by a quite loose definition of the term, means you'll have a hard time doing it part-time.

Hence winning the startup lottery first probably is a good idea; then you can (with any luck) outsource some of the back-breaking stuff, too.