Spending money to save money

DH had to spend $100 on 6 pieces of lumber. No wonder building a home costs and arm and a leg! He needed boards to make forms for the gate piers. He also went and talked to the guy who will be making/welding the 4 gate posts. At first he told DH it would cost $450 (mostly material costs, I guess) and then he called DH and said he underestimated the cost of the metal, it will be $650. Ok,.. it's still about a $200 savings over what he was going to buy online from a gate supplier.  Gotta save where we can. I could only imagine what having someone else make the gate pier forms would cost, so at least it's just materials and his own labor involved. And (I think) once the concrete is poured into the forms he can re-use the scrap lumber for something or other at some point.  At least this little project is giving him something to do on this nice sunny day.

Notice the tennis ball laying there in front. Silly dog kept trying to get him to play fetch.
 
It sounds like DH and the equipment operator guy will be starting work on the rockery wall again on Thursday. He's also asked our neighbor across the street's son (early 20's) if he'd like to make some extra money by helping with the labor on the rockery, so I think he will be helping, which will really help DH out, so he doesn't have to work  his muscles so hard. This kid is a hard worker and has muscles - he's a forest firefighter in summers.

My side job "boss" finally got back to me on my offer to do a little extra work for them. The one main thing I had offered to do, they are going to do internally with a different way. She didn't offer to throw anything else my way, so I guess that's a no. Darn. That would have been an easy couple hundred dollars a month to make.

I have not been doing M-Turk at all. I want to do it. I need to do it. I just can't get into the groove of it the past month or so. Getting my raise and the extra money in paycheck (total net of about $375/mo) from the tax cut took some of the pressure off of needing more money, which probably is why I haven't been too excited about spending 10 or 15 minutes to make 50 cents. But it does add up. I need to start taking a lunch break again and doing what I can with it.