The psychology of "Do it yourself"

[JD Martin]

I'm interested to see what some other, more experienced REI say about this concept.

I have always been a DIY guy. I built my own house - literally, built my own house, contracting out just a few parts of the job - and have always done all repairs/upgrades on others I have lived in. I do my own rental rehabs too, naturally. Aside from the fact that I enjoy working with my hands and taking something that looks ratty and making it look nice (I used to restore old Mustangs, too), I have always felt as though I was translating real skills that I have into real dollars by turning a $10,000 rehab done by contractors into a $2500 rehab done by me, and pocketing the difference. 

Recently I have been listening to the follow-up to Thomas Stanley's "Millionaire Next Door", which is called "the Millionaire's Mind". Without going into specifics, the millionaire class he studies, by and large ground-up rather than inherited, almost to a person eschews the idea of DIY anything, on the basis that their time doing X, whatever X is (lawyering, doctoring, etc) pays far more than what it would cost to pay someone else to do X job (repair, rehab, whatever), and thus it is a financial waste of time to DIY.

Now, not saying I want to be a millionaire (OK, I want to :D ), but I grew up dirt poor and made my way from that point. If I hadn't done it myself, I don't see how I would have likely accumulated capital to get to the point I am now - and, yes, I make a good living at my day job now, but that was really only the past decade or so, and I'm not far from retiring. FWIW, I hold a doctorate and work in my field utilizing my education. I still do all my own work, from changing the clutch in my car to tearing out bathrooms. Last weekend I canned 15 quarts of tomatoes I grew in my garden. I figure it saved me about 40 bucks in canned tomatoes, all told, though the canning took maybe 2 hours in time. The millionaire mind would say that 2 hours would have been better spent buying the tomatoes and being more economically productive.

So what do you all think?