Once upon a time, I was shopping for a smoker.  I wanted a way to smoke and cure my own meats so I didn’t have to spend as much money at the store.  Let’s face it, a quarter pound of quality beef jerky costs between $6 and $15 depending on flavor, brand, and location.  Something deep down in my carnivorous soul was outraged by this and wanted to fight back.

Then I discovered how expensive commercial smokers were.  It would take me about two years at my average rate of jerky consumption to recoup the costs of the hardware and supplies.  When living on a tight budget, this isn’t an easy sell to the pocketbook.

So I researched what it would take to build my own.  It would end up being cheaper, but far more difficult. Rather than continuing down this path I sucked it up and continued to shell out copious amounts of cash for my precious dried meats.

My brother pointed out how lazy this made me.  I had a solution to have low-cost, superior quality dried meat on hand at any time.  The only reason I didn’t take that option was because of the effort involved.  In reality, the high cost of the store-bought jerky I enjoyed was a luxury tax.

This past week, I was given a food drier as a gift.  It can dry fruit, vegetables, and, yes, even meat.  I actually made my first batch of jerky this week, too.  In just under 20 hours (most of which was spent in the drier on autopilot) I made a little over half a pound of jerky.  And it only cost me $5.

Let me summarize.  By getting up off the couch and investing my television-watching time elsewhere (the jerky required a total of 1 hour of actual labor to prep, process, and package), I produced twice as much product as I could have bought in the store for less than I would have spent.

My brother would probably be proud.  He taught me something about business.  Some things that we outsource – read: purchase as a finished good from an external supplier – could be handled in-house with a more favorable ROI.  Why pay $1 per copy to have a presentation bound at Kinko’s when the entire project will take 15 minutes and the raw materials cost $0.15 per copy?  (Assume 50 copies of your presentation.  Binding through Kinko’s would cost $50 and be entirely hand’s off.  Binding in-house would cost $7.50 for supplies and $2.50 for 15 minutes of labor for a $10/hr intern.  That’s a savings of $40 with the added benefit of being able to supervise every step.)

If applying a little economics to every day living can save me in the long run, it will have just as positive an impact my business.  What do you outsource that could probably be handled in-house for a lower production cost?