I just made a $9,000 pallet planter from reclaimed wood, nails, trash bags and planting material!
Not bad for a DIY novice with next to no tools! While this might not seem like much, let me explain my math I borrowed from the master money man, Mr. Money Mustache.
As you can see, it’s banged together pretty crudely…but that’s the idea. I nailed through the patio slats (don’t tell my landlord if you know ’em) so it sits at a slight angle for more sunlight. The pallet came from a stranger we met while cruising neighborhoods looking for…well, lonely pallets. So we don’t know the pallet’s history, and we don’t know what it hauled. That’s why I stapled trash bags inside each box as a liner to seal out any chemicals from the wood.
Now, spending two hours out of my weekend making this planter was well worth it just for the mere fact of the use of manly tools and nails and splinters and smashed toes and thumbs. But saving money is (almost) even more fun! Here’s the breakdown of the cost comparison:
I saved $39.67 on a single purchase!! Not bad for a weekend off, relaxing while making some cool stuff. And this makes it even better: since it took me 2 hours to make the planter, I made $19.84 an hour! Let’s say I could set aside 2 hours a month for a DIY project (for things we would buy anyway). That’s $39.67 a month, and according to the amazing math of Mr Money Mustache, $39.67 each month saved at 7% for 10 years would net me $6,862.91.
Now if it takes me 2 hours a project, 12 months a year, for 10 years, that’s 240 hours of work. By the end of the 10 years, I would be making over $28.00 per hour working on interesting, useful, fun hobbies with nearly $7,000 to show for it. But of course, being a teacher, I have to talk about this amazing project in class, turning it into a mind-blowing learning opportunity! That’s 1 hour of class discussion, plus a 2 hour activity, plus 1 hour of assigned work and review at a minimum. At the going rate for Texas teachers, that’s $140 worth of lesson plans I didn’t even have to plan! Let’s say I can teach this lesson each year to my students. 10 years at 7%…that’s an added bonus of over $2,000! I don’t know about you, but I can definitely find one DIY project a month if I can save $40 a piece.
Now this was an awesome lesson in my Consumer Math Class. I started with a poll to find out who thought it would be more frugal to make a pallet planter rather than buy one for $40. Then we created the table from above line by line. There were some wide eyes in that class, and several students are still asking me how the planter’s looking each month.
A $9,000 pallet planter? That’ll get some attention!
Unlikely Prize 