It would be a time vs money thing for me. New chain is ~$35 new cassette is ~$225. Dunno how many hours that is to you, but my last cassette ran 10k+ miles and was still going strong when I sold the bike. Maybe two chains a year.

But it's not so much time or money, as it is just making it work right. I could toss 5-6 chains a year instead of 2, but I'd still have to scrub out the cassette, so I may as well clean the chain while I'm already dirty ;-)

Now if I had a proper workshop setup with my tools (instead having them mostly in storage) who can say how much more I would work on things?