The lesson here, in my opinion, is that you can make informed choices about what you spend money on by translating the cost to your work time.

Here, you figured that paying someone to work on your yard would cost you about day's worth of pay and decided that's a trade you're happy with.

However, it's important to account for things such as taxes, work-related costs, and commuting time, since your $495 payment came out of your net pay.

If your total taxes and work-related expenses are say 33% of your pay, your work days are eight hours long, and your commute is about 30 minutes each way, the $495 was probably equivalent to the pay you receive for 13.5 hours worth of pay, or about 1.7 days' worth.