Most of the time buying something that’s been ready-made by professionals is cheaper – especially if you count the cost of your time – and gets you a better result. You pay your money, and in return you get your problem solved.
But it might be that you buy other things by choosing to make something yourself:
- fun
- new technical skills and tools that you can use to solve other problems in future
- new ways of seeing your problem – and (perhaps) a wider range of unexpected solutions and possibilities
- procedural, “how to” knowledge
- transferable understanding of underlying principles
- a new network of people, places and information (experience of a new subculture)
- a feeling of mastery
- stories to share
- the respect of others
- an identity: as a person of ingenuity who breaks down and solves their own problems
Some things are worth paying a bit more for.*
*Just be mindful of the impossibility of starting from scratch