Find what an hour of your time is really worth after taxes and commuting, use it to decide whether to do a job yourself or hire it out, and see what you'll keep when you sell something on eBay, Facebook, Mercari and more.
The average one-way commute in the US is 27.2 minutes (Census Bureau, 2024 American Community Survey). For your real tax rate, the Paycheck calculator works it out. Work costs: gas or transit, parking, work clothes, lunches you wouldn't otherwise buy.
Comparing a whole season of mowing? The Mower Size Calculator compares buying a mower with a lawn service over five years.
| Marketplace | Fees at your price | You keep | List at, to keep your target |
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Seller fees checked November 1, 2026. Shipping lines assume the buyer pays the shipping amount above and you pay the label. Local options assume cash unless you pick a payment app. Not tax advice.
A salary of $60,000 sounds like about $28.85 an hour over a standard 2,080-hour work year (40 hours times 52 weeks). But that isn't what an hour of your life earns. Taxes come out first. Then the job takes hours it doesn't pay for: the average American spends 27.2 minutes getting to work each way, according to the Census Bureau's 2024 American Community Survey, which adds up to more than 200 hours a year. Many jobs also have costs you only pay because you work there, like gas, parking, lunches and work clothes. Put all of that together and the take-home value of an hour can be a third lower than the number on the offer letter.
That real figure is the useful one for everyday decisions. Personal-finance writers have used it for decades to ask whether a purchase is worth the hours it costs. Here it does a more practical job: it tells you what your Saturday morning is worth when you're deciding whether to mow, clean, detail the car or list something for sale yourself.
Doing a job yourself costs supplies plus your hours. Hiring costs the quote plus the time it takes to find someone, get the quote and let them in. When your hours are valued at your real rate, plenty of chores turn out cheaper to hire out than they look, and plenty of others turn out to be bargains you were right to do yourself. The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis calls this opportunity cost: the value of the next-best thing you could have done with the time.
Money isn't the whole story, and the calculator doesn't pretend it is. If you enjoy a job, the hours aren't a cost at all, so set it to "I enjoy it." And there's evidence that buying back time is money well spent. A 2017 study led by Ashley Whillans found that people who paid to avoid disliked chores reported higher life satisfaction, as Harvard Business School summarized. The break-even figure answers the question directly: if your hour is worth more than that, hiring wins on the numbers.
Every marketplace takes a different cut, and the differences are large enough to change where you list. eBay charges 13.6 percent of the total sale including shipping, plus a per-order fee. Mercari takes 10 percent of the item price and the shipping the buyer pays. Poshmark keeps a flat $2.95 on sales of $15 or less and 20 percent above that. Etsy stacks a listing fee, a 6.5 percent transaction fee and payment processing. Facebook Marketplace and OfferUp are free for local pickup but charge on shipped orders. Craigslist is free in most categories.
Local sales have their own catch: how the buyer pays. Cash costs nothing. PayPal and Venmo goods-and-services payments cost 2.99 percent, which buys you purchase protection, and business accounts charge their own rates. The calculator includes that fee when you pick a local marketplace.
Two habits get you a better price. First, work backward from what you want to keep: decide the amount you'd be happy to end up with, and let the "list at" column tell you the asking price on each marketplace. Second, check sold listings, not active ones, for the same item. Active prices show what sellers hope for; sold prices show what buyers paid. Then look at the "per hour" figure. If an hour of listing, messaging and meeting up nets you less than your real hourly rate, bundling small items into one sale or donating them may be the better use of the afternoon.
Fees are from each marketplace's own fee pages, checked November 1, 2026: eBay, Mercari, Poshmark, Etsy, Craigslist, PayPal, Venmo and Cash App. Facebook's and OfferUp's help pages block automated checks, so their shipped-sale rates are the widely reported figures and are labelled that way. The commute figure is the Census Bureau's 2024 one-year estimate; the 2025 estimate is due shortly and we'll update when it's out.
Start with what you actually keep: take-home pay after tax and work costs. Divide it by every hour the job really takes, including the commute and unpaid extra hours, not just the paid ones. That real hourly figure is usually well below your quoted wage, and it is the honest number to compare against paying someone else.
Hire when the quote is less than your supplies plus your hours valued at your real hourly rate, and you don't enjoy the job. If you like doing it, count fewer of those hours. The calculator also shows a break-even rate: if your hour is worth more than that, hiring wins.
For most categories eBay charges 13.6 percent of the total sale, including the shipping the buyer pays, plus $0.30 per order (or $0.40 if the order is over $10). On a $50 item with $8 shipping that is about $8.29 in fees.
Local pickup sales are free. For shipped orders Facebook has charged 10 percent per order with a $0.80 minimum since April 2024. If the buyer pays you with PayPal or Venmo goods and services, that payment fee (2.99 percent) applies on top.
Decide what you want to end up with, then work backward through the platform fee and your shipping cost. The "list at" figure in the calculator does that for each marketplace. Check sold listings for the same item to see whether that price is realistic.
Divide what you net by the hours it takes to photograph, list, answer messages and meet or ship. If that per-hour figure is below your real hourly rate, donating or bundling items into one sale may be the better use of your time.