The statistics don’t support your assertion. Most people aren’t lawyers, and the median amount of money a person spends on legal counsel is pretty low.
The question in any given area you outsource to experts isn't how much you spend, but what percentage you waste as a result of lacking domain specific knowledge. For instance, I'm not a good auto mechanic, let alone an expert. But I've read my car's factory service manual end to end, and looked up a lot of what I didn't understand. I don't usually have to ask a mechanic what's wrong, but if a mechanic tells me something I understand what they're talking about and what it should cost, and thus, I might pay $1000 for a job where someone else would pay $3000. Having as much domain specific knowledge as you can is always a good thing. That's the point. Building wealth is not about refraining from spending money. It's about getting what your money is worth without getting scammed.
1. You're improperly discounting opportunity cost, which is making your math incorrect.
2. You might have saved the same amount of money by taking your car to more than one mechanic to get an estimate, without having done all that research.
3. "Building wealth is not about refraining from spending money." On the contrary, that's exactly what it's about, algebraically speaking. Income minus expenses is profit, a/k/a wealth.
Now, don't get me wrong - I don't disagree that it's good to know things; I went to university and then law school to get a well-rounded education (I'm an attorney as well as an engineer). But that doesn't mean I spent my time in the most economical way possible. (Law school was very expensive, and I don't even practice law.) If I scrubbed toilets for a living, I'd be way worse off than I am today, even if I knew how to fix my own car.
How do you know the second or third mechanic you take your car to isn't shining you on? My hourly time is $200, when I'm on the clock. Nothing spectacular, but not bad for a drop-out. That doesn't mean I can't do 4 hours of yeoman's labor in my free time to save myself $200 in legal or accounting or insurance or construction contractor or mechanic's fees. Plus I end up educating myself in some field I'm less familiar with. Doesn't that education more than offset the lost opportunity cost, considering it's done in my off-work hours and only at the expense of entertainment?
Congratulations might be the wrong word, but I applaud that you chose to become an attorney and an engineer; that type of combination is the gold standard for my family. I can't believe it's something you'd ever regret.
My argument throughout this thread has been misconstrued. All I'm arguing for is that people should use every available opportunity to educate themselves, and that certain things (to me, logic, computer science, legal, mechanical, biological, historical, and literary - but your preferences may differ) are valuable tools that are worth constantly continuing to educate yourself in.
On refraining from spending money: If you buy things that are worth what you paid for them (as an expendable or an experience), or things that increase in value over time, then spending money is fine. i.e. a fairly agreed-upon trade benefits both parties. The loss of net value comes in with friction in the transaction. Generally, spending money unwisely. If you require an expert go-between for every transaction, those fractions add up to the difference between your income and expenditure. Put more bluntly: The money I save on mechanics because I read the manuals and/or do the work myself is money I save. When I do want to spend money, it's not a problem if I'm getting what I expect from it, because it's an equal trade. The only loss would be if I didn't willingly agree to pay for what I got.
