how long to keep your daily contacts?!

Unless your dad is an eye doctor, I wouldn't listen to him. There's a reason they're called dailies -- they're meant to be used once. The lenses are thinner and more fragile, so they often don't stand up to the rigors of proper cleaning. They also break down fairly quickly, so may end up with half a lens in your eye one day. And they aren't surface-treated like many monthly lenses, so they'll tend to accumulate deposits fairly quickly, too. If you didn't like the idea of daily replacement, why'd you get them? Monthly lenses are still a very good option, particularly for people who wear contacts most days.
And opening a new pair of contacts can't possibly be any more difficult than cleaning the existing pair... if it is, you're cleaning them wrong.

I'm an optometrist.

Adam is right. Cleaning and soaking take longer than opening a new pair of lenses.

Daily means once a day and that means you need to use a new pair of lenses daily. You are risking eye infection by continually using your lenses more often than they are meant to be used. If you don't like the dailies, which really are the safest to use, then next time your order contact get monthlies.

You should really throw them away everyday. They aren't ones that you can keep for a month- so they shouldn't be cleaned. You're risking the health of your eyes if you do that- and you only get one pair. Just deal with "opening a new pair of contacts." =_=

I have monthly contacts and I stretch them to two sometimes three months. My eye doctor said not to do that (could lead to eye infection), but it saves some money.