Earlier this year I wrote a post about my quandary with paying more for something to save money in the long run. While I still haven’t resolved my water heater issues, the price of oil dropping has made paying for it a lot less painful. So I’ve pushed that spend-to-save concern to the back of brain for the time being. That is until today.

I was reading the latest issue of Wired Magazine, to which I subscribe. There is an article in the January 2009 issue about a freelancer who is constantly stuck in a time suck. This writer has many inefficient habits and managed to convince Wired to let him write a story about his decision to read time management books and then apply the principles he learned to his freelance lifestyle.

The story, called “Diary of a Self-Help Dropout” by Chris Hardwick, is one of the most enjoyable pieces I’ve read in a long time. That’s probably because I, too, am a freelancer and could recognize myself in many of his daily distractions. But I think that anyone working in a business setting will find something in the story he/she can nod in agreement to.

What really clicked for me in the story–and made me want to blog about it today–was something Hardwick decided to do: outsource some of his tasks. He got the idea from the book The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss. Here’s how he conveyed his outsourcing epiphany in the piece:

“Apparently when you spend hours completing menial tasks, it actually costs you money, because  you could be spending that time doing something more profitable.”

By hiring a virtual assistant from Ask Sunday.com for a nominal monthly fee ($39 for up to 15 requests each of which should take no longer than 20 minutes), he frees himself to get actual work done instead of spending hours diddling on the Internet looking up random facts.

Outsourcing isn’t something new to me but it got my frugal mind thinking. For the record, currently, I have someone else taking care of:

* my taxes (an enrolled agent, just as good as an accountant)

* my highlights (Clairol may have a Nice & Easy highlighting product that I can buy over the counter, but I feel more comfortable letting a professional give me highlights)

* my headshots (since I appear on TV from time to time, I need to have pictures that show me in my best light–literally–and don’t look like an amateur took them)

In the past I have outsourced my housecleaning but I can’t justify doing that anymore. I don’t need to have a perfect house, and FlyLady’s tips help me to keep my house neat (enough) and tidy (enough) these days.

But this notion of outsourcing to a virtual assistant? Well there’s something really attractive about that. Especially since I lost at least an hour this past week trying to figure out what was wrong with my MacBook (got it fixed this weekend at the Apple Store), and I could have used someone else spending time getting me my appointment at the Genius Bar. Because every minute I spent researching my computer’s problem was a minute I didn’t spend marketing myself to magazines or writing queries or doing something proactive to bring in income.

Besides researching computer issues, a virtual assistant might be able to help me figure out which web hosting company I should use for my Suddenly Frugal dot com domain. Right now I don’t have the time to research it and am not quite sure which questions I should be asking when doing that research anyway. (Got any suggestions? Please let me know.)

Besides that I’m not sure what else a virtual assistant could help me with, but I think I’m going to make a note this week to pay attention to time-suck tasks that I could have outsourced, and see how they add up.

Do you spend to save, like with a virtual assistant or other kinds of outsourcing? If so, let me know. I’m really curious.