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Rant: Underpriced my first gig and it snowballed into a nightmare at a house in Austin
I quoted $500 for a full fence job last month and ended up sinking 60 hours into fixing old posts and rotten wood for free because I didn't build in a buffer. Has anyone else had a first price come back to haunt them like that?
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kimr915h ago
Little correction though - $500 for 60 hours works out to about $8.33 an hour, not a $500 loss. Your real loss was the opportunity cost of not taking other work during those hours. Either way, you learned a cheap lesson compared to some folks who keep making this mistake for years.
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aliceharris1d ago
You're looking at this backwards. That $500 loss taught you exactly what your time is worth which is way more valuable than breaking even on one job. Sometimes paying for a hard lesson upfront saves you from making worse mistakes later when the stakes are higher.
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