It doesn't get better when your middle aged and realize that if it's not being built by the thousands as a consumer product, then it's going to cost ten times more to do it yourself all things considered.

Except weirdly enough, basic home maintenance. I don't know what that says.

Basic jobs get expensive invoices from pros because they'd rather be out there working a more substantial job. They don't want to drive out to your house, maybe need to make a trip to the store, and then be out of a job for the rest of the day since they couldn't schedule in anything else afterwards. I don't bother calling a pro for something unless I know it's something that will either take the whole day or isn't something I can finish before it must be done by. I can take my time redoing a spare bathroom or painting the exterior but a kitchen renovation would need to be finished quickly.

You could apply your logic to home building though. Builders get volume discounts on materials and labor. When someone is working the same repetitive job for months on dozens of homes, they can afford to charge their base hourly rate because they know their schedule will be full. If I built the exact same home the builder cranked out, it's going to cost me more despite using the same materials and people. When people build their own homes, they are usually going for something custom so a builder-grade starter home is not the goal.

What I've learned is that sometimes I do wanna spend a bunch of time and tinker so I will take the hard route.

Sometimes I don't want that headache and do the calculus of time & effort and spend the extra $ to get a speaker set that works with my phone :)

Home maintenance isn't being built by the thousands though, so that makes some sense.

> I would never be able to save any money by making cool gadgets was a bummer.

Wait until you get older and realize that if you want high quality, you have to drop down one-two levels on whatever you want to buy to avoid pointless shit like "Alexa" or "Google Home" integration.

That has nothing to do with the quality of a product, rather a personal preference for having something that's not internet connected.

Its a personal preference for having a device lasting more than a year.

The good news is that making cool gadgets remains fun.