Since my husband does all of our lawn care each month, he saves us a good chunk of money doing the work himself rather than hiring someone to do the work for us. Yes, I admit that I like the convenience of hiring someone to do the work for us. Hiring someone allows us more freedom time wise by not having to worry about when the yard is going to be taken care of. The time that we save by hiring someone though may outweigh the financial benefits of doing the work ourselves.
We did have to make some investments in the equipment to do the yard work ourselves, but these investments pay for themselves sometimes in the same year they were purchased. We have a lawnmower, a weed-eater, a big shop broom (for the grass on the sidewalk), and a fertilizer spreader.
We mow our yard on average about every seven to nine days. I’m not sure what the going rate is for a lawn mowing service, but I’ll just estimate $40 each week for mowing and weed-eating our front and back yard. Our yard begins to require lawn care sometime in late April or early May and requires lawn care through September or October. This is about six months of lawn care which would cost us around $960 a season. The $960 would easily cover any start-up equipment required to care for your lawn, and any maintenance required on your newly acquired lawn equipment. It would probably even cover the cost of gas, oil, weed-eater line, and lawnmower blades that require sharpening.
The bottom line is that mowing the yard isn’t always fun, but I like the money we save by doing the work ourselves. I won’t even complain if the grass gets tracked into the house, as long as the yard is taken care of.