If it is your family bathroom or car, if you have worked on it before, chances are that you can deal with a problem on the spot thanks to the skills you learned and the tools you got for the occasion. No need to wait for the handyman. And if it is a problem you can't solve, you may also have better understanding, which makes explaining the situation to a professional easier.

The entire premise here is that's not the case. The repair/remodel drags out because you're doing it in your spare time, and mistakes and setbacks are a drag on your motivation. Meanwhile you and your family aren't able to use your main bathroom (or whatever), and that stresses you out, makes you feel guilty that progress isn't happening faster.

I get this, and will call a handyman for some jobs, but I try to do repairs and "upgrades" myself when the work seems manageable to me.

I guess it depends on where you live, but getting an electrician around here takes so much time and effort, not to mention money, you could by half way through to training for a journeyman degree by the time he shows up.

Perhaps a downside of becoming halfway proficient as a handyman is all the people asking for your help. But you can see it as an upside as well, if they are friends and you enjoy helping them out.

Also the tools you might not have for that particular repair typically cost as much or less than the service call would cost. Except once you have the tools and know how the next service call is free whereas if you got someone to do it for you, you’ll have to pay just as much the next time around.

Heh, I tend to agree with this. Unfortunately reality always seems to disagree. No matter how simple the job, _something_ new will go wrong that requires multiple trips to home depo, putting it back together & ordeing parts off amazon, or bodging together some sort of fix that's kinda trash but gets the stupid thing working again today.

Sounds like software engineering as it’s commercially practiced.