Mighty Bargain Hunter

Know your limitations when you do it yourself

Doing things yourself, especially home repairs, can be a big money saver.  The main reason it can be a big money-saver, of course, is because you’re putting your own labor into the job rather than paying someone else to do it for you.

I didn’t say that it’s definitely a big money-saver.  A home repair could end up costing more to do it yourself than to have a professional come in to do it, for a number of reasons:

• The repair doesn’t last, and must be fixed again. There’s usually a few right ways to fix something, and many wrong ways to fix something.  Choosing one of those wrong ways will end up costing.
• The repair doesn’t last, and ends up doing a lot of collateral damage. Failed repair jobs can just break, or they can break spectacularly and flood the entire county or level a city block.  (Well, maybe not that bad, but they could damage a wall or floor, or flood a basement or crawl space.)
• The repair ends up taking several tries, or several trips to the hardware store. This is probably an acceptable level of costing more, because the repair does end up getting done.

We’re in the process of getting our old house ready for someone else to live in it.  There were a number of plumbing things that we let slide, but for the sake of maximizing the property’s value, we want to fix them up.  I eventually tackled the flush valve in my new home’s toilet, and carried that experience to fix one of the toilets in our old home.  Looks like I’ve won that one.

But there were others that I tried to fix that I felt were beyond what I wanted to tackle myself.  Some of the under-the-sink stop valves (ones that control the hot and cold water to the faucet above) were leaking a bit.  I didn’t think replacing those would be a huge issue, but when I went to the main house water shut-off in the crawl space, I found that it wasn’t shutting off all the way.  Now, replacing that was something beyond what I was comfortable with.  That’s one of those things that should be done right.  We spent a fair bit of money remediating moisture in the crawl space, and want to keep it dry down there.

So, I found a plumber who could help me with this task.  As it turned out, replacing the stop valves under the sink would have been more work than I had thought, so it’s just as well I brought in a pro.

DIY projects only pay off if they’re executed correctly.  If failure would be costly, there’s no shame in hiring an expert.

Posted in Real Estate | 2 Comments »

Welcome to the Carnival of Debt Reduction

Thanks for visiting!  Here are this week’s debt-reduction related posts:

• Steadfast Finances runs through several thought-provoking quotes on debt and paying interest.
• Debt Eagle show how to do debt settlement yourself.
• Silicon Valley Blogger warns about refund anticipation loans.
• The Smarter Wallet discusses the Dave Ramsey cash-only diet.
• Do You Dave Ramsey? does the emergency fund baby step.
• Ask Mr. Credit Card shows how to use credit cards for a debt repayment plan.

Thanks!  If you have debt-reduction related questions (or any other money questions, for that matter!) ask them over at Cash Commons.

Have a great week!

Posted in Carnivals, Debt Reduction | 3 Comments »

I’m jealous how well Lowe’s treated my wife

Lowe’s puts out scratch-and-dent appliances regularly.  These are display models, appliances that got slightly damaged by a forklift, or customer returns.  They’ll knock down the price for someone who doesn’t mind a little blemish on the appliance, or one that’s slightly used.

We’ve gotten a few good deals with scratch and dent appliances, but for me the shopping experience hasn’t been the same kind as shopping for a brand-new (i.e., full price) unit.  The units are taken as-is, where-is, with no reservations, and the employees on occasion haven’t been that willing to answer a lot of questions about the items.  (Not that they should, I suppose.)

Well, my wife really hit the jackpot with one last week, and they took really good care of her.  Our new house’s refrigerator/freezer is a side-by-side unit, and has less space than the one in our old house, which had the freezer compartment at the top.  We looked for another on Craigslist, but weren’t having much good fortune, so we decided to get a new one, figuring that in the long run the operation costs of a more modern unit would justify the extra cost up-front.

Off to Lowe’s she went.  She found a scratch-and-dent unit (18 cubic ft.) that originally was $499.  The “scratch” was literally that: a tiny scratch on the back bottom of the right side of the unit.  For this, they knocked off $100.  But wait!  There’s more.  She was able to use a 10% off coupon with this item.  Down to $359.  But that’s not all!  They had a deal running with free delivery on appliances.  She got free delivery.  The next day.

Yeah, Lowe’s treated her pretty well.

Posted in Deals and Steals, Shopping | No Comments »

Four budgets you absolutely have to make

A couple of days ago I went to a one-day financial planning class.  I got a few nuggets out of the class and I’ll share one with you here.

The instructor spent a few minutes on creating a working budget.  This part was pretty standard.  If you don’t have Quicken fired up, then

• Take a standard list of common spending categories,
• Gather up a month’s bank statements and pay stubs, and
• Categorize the month’s expenses.

This produces a good starting point for a working budget.  But that’s just one of the budgets he recommended drawing up.

He recommended four separate budgets which cover the present, a couple of what-if’s, and the future.  Here they are:

1. The current budget. This is the one that is based (largely) on current expenses, with a tweak or two for spending categories that you know may be too high or too low.
2. The dead-spouse budget. What if my wife died unexpectedly?  How would the spending categories change?  For starters, I’d need to consider day care for my daughter or some other arrangement.  My time commitments would certainly shift around a lot, and that would affect how much time I could spend doing other things to make money outside of my job.  Could I do the things she does now, or would I have to pay someone to do them for me?  More budgetary considerations.
3. The dead-me budget. What if I died unexpectedly?  My income would go to zero.  What would that mean for my family?  How would they manage without my paycheck?  Have I put in place enough other resources so that they can do what they need (and want) to do?  These questions give rise to a whole new set of numbers.
4. The retirement budget. What if I quit my day job?  What other benefits that are tied to my job stay, and what ones go away?  Do the income streams that remain add up to a comfortable existence?  This budget is another whole set of numbers.

What is the purpose of making these budgets?  The main purpose, for me, would be to put the spotlight on holes in my current budget. Take away my paycheck, and what’s left?  Take away my wife’s good works, and what slack do I have to assume?

Do the numbers still work? If they don’t, then I have work to do so that they do work.

Posted in Budgeting | 4 Comments »