The alternative, from a pure cost perspective, is to understand the following:
- How much could you sell the existing machine for?
- After said sale, how much cash would you have in hand after paying off any outstanding liens?
- With no machine, how much would it cost you to pay someone to remove snow? Mow grass? Gather / deliver firewood?
- If you add together your cash from the sale along with extra you would invest into a larger machine, how may times could you have wood delivered, snow removed, and the grass mowed before you would be spending additional money?
Early on, owning your own machine makes great financial sense because you save year-over-year and it puts / keeps money in your pocket. When you reach a point where you either need to spend a lot of money on a new machine or you simply can't be abusing your body to run that machine, paying someone else from the pool of money you saved over the years starts to make sense.
I bought a $25k machine to save about $3k per year in heating costs. The machine should have been closer to about $18k, but I opted to also mow and remove snow with it (mowing deck, snowblower). After running it for five years, I will have saved about $15k in heating costs. The machine will still be worth $15k, and I would end up having spent $10k to save $15k - a net of $5k to me. After ten years, the math changes ($30k saved, $10k residual, $15k spent overall) more in my favor.
At some point, I will sell the big machine and buy something a lot smaller to mow and remove snow only. I'll have have saved well over $20k by then, and will have to spend it to have others do some of that work for me. In the end, I'll come a lot closer to break-even than the people that don't do the work themselves, and that helps "my bottom line".