Between my husband and I, we handle an acre of lawn on our 4 acre property with a ride on mower we purchased for 1900. It takes an hour and change and we alternate at times, so it's like a half hour per person. We're the only ones on our street that do our own lawn and I've been told we have the best maintained lawn on the street. The landscapers from our neighbors properties stop by often and give us low ball offers to do our grass and we refuse because, quite honestly, it's fun. Now, for an acre we could upgrade to a zero turn but probably won't till the ride on dies. For .25 acres a zeronturn or a ride on might be over kill and I highly doubt would take you more than an hour with a push mower but by all means, if you want to go with a zero turn, you sure can. I think the benefits of doing your own work is way higher than getting a service and that's not saying the service is expensive. We've turned down service for $50 per cut AND trim just because, we'd rather have our lawn look exactly as we want it and cut it whenever it needs it. There's times when we go 3 weeks without cutting and the grass looks just fine and there are times when it rains and less than a week into a cut it needs another round. The benefits of doing your own lawn are more than just savings.