I’ve written before that I’m not a natural handyman. I’m thinking that maybe it’s time to develop those skills. We’ve been working with contractors all spring to do repairs around the house, and the constant drain on the pocketbook is beginning to hurt. I’d rather do some of this work myself. (Of course the reason we need to hire these folks is that the previous owner did a lot of the work himself — and he did a crummy job.)
Let’s think about happier finance stories, shall we? Here are some recent money articles that have caught my eye:
Have I mentioned that Chris Guillebeau at The Art of Non-Conformity has my favorite blog right now? He does. I enjoy following his adventures as he travels the world, but I also think he does a great job of discussing topics more relevant to my own life. Today he writes about sufficiency, the state of having enough. “For me, the most important principle of personal finance is self-awareness,” Chris writes. “To become self-aware, it helps to know exactly what sufficiency looks like for you.” This is a great post.
Yahoo! HotJobs has a quick list of 8 fast-growing, high-paying jobs. If you’re looking for new work, you might want to check this out. Several of the careers are computer/tech-related. The list also includes physician’s assistant, plumber, and media buyer.
Kris and I recently went to see Up, the new animated film from Pixar. I loved it. I thought about writing a short post discussing the movie’s message that you should not postpone your dreams, but Lucia at moneyStrands has already done it for me. She writes: “We often dream about things like going on our fantasy vacation, paying off student loans or buying a brand new car, yet unexpected expenses and mishaps in life always seem to get in the way. So what can we do to better prepare ourselves financially so that we have an emergency fund but can still save for a vacation? Create a financial plan!”
Finally, David at MoneyNing has some thoughts on how not to worry about money. He has a good life and his finances are solid, but he still worries about money sometimes. This is interesting. I, too, worry about money even though my financial situation has never been better. I think we all worry. How can we learn to just let go? (Maybe this is what I need to do with our remodeling projects!)
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Yeah, the constant drain for those little jobs is annoying. I manage to do a few things here or there but there is so much more I can and should do. I couldn’t do anything to my car, but that’s ok, I sold it and maintaining a pedal bike is so much easier and cheaper
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You don’t want to get in over your head trying to avoid calling a professional if that’s what you need of course, but a lot of stuff that handymen get called out for are simple things that, with the right amount of effort in learning, most anyone could do.
And it’s rewarding when you fix something yourself. I think the feeling of accomplishment is worth a lot of trouble.
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Sometimes I get so cheap, I mean frugal, that I feel guilty about buying the things that I really enjoy and can afford. At that point, I have to remind myself why I scrimp, save and sacrifice in the first place. I’m very deliberate with my spending habits. Although I cringe when broke people use this phrase, I say to myself, “I deserve it.”
What’s the point of pinching pennies to leave for someone else to squander?
Shawanda
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J.D.,
I knew nothing about handyman type work three years ago. Two weeks ago a friend I was in the Marines with called me and asked me to help him with a water leak under his house. I crawled under the house, got muddy, inhaled a primer and glue fumes from the CPVC adhesives and finally got the leaked fixed after about an hours worth of work. For my time my friend gave me a new 50 gallon hot water heater he wasn’t using. (We needed one since I just installed a new 6 ft jetted tub in our recent addition.)The exchange for my time saved me $450 in purchasing a new hot water heater and we sold our old hot water heater for $100. I can’t tell you how much money I’ve saved from learning to work on things myself and how much equity I’ve been able to put in our home since all I am spending money on is materials, and tools
. I’ve turned it into a bit of a side business in my spare time.
I’ve actually thought about taking the newly acquired skills and flipping a house, I hear the real estate market is hot right now!
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JD,
I’m all about the DIY mindset, but you may consider, as an alternative, attempting to extend your friend base. Having a large pool of friends to draw from can save you so much money on things you never imagined. Leverage their expertise rather than spend too much time trying to acquire it unnaturally yourself. Instead, spend that time improving the skills you have so that you have something to offer in return to those that help you.
Just another perspective.
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You should look into your local adult education or career center to see if they offer classes for various home improvement areas. Mr Chiots took the plumbing one and it now very confident when doing plumbing repairs. He’s hoping to take the electric one next. For only $50-$100 each class (which usually goes 1-2 nights a week for a month or so) it’s so worth the money.
Another great idea is trading skills. We sometimes trade skills with people we know. That way we both get what we need and we each use the skills we have.
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I’m all for DIY in most cases. I have no problem with plumbing, carpentry, painting or (most) electrical. I will gladly change a leaky faucet or problem switch rather than pay a professional.
That doesn’t mean I wont call someone in. My electrical service is out dated and I need to upgrade and add some circuits. That work will be done by a licensed and insured electrician.
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I’m all for DIY and learning new skills, but it sounds to me like your situation is a bit different. If your savings are solid, and your having quality work done on something as important as your home, stick with the professionals.
If you’d like to experiment and learn a new skill, then do, but give yourself the time you need to develop it, don’t rush into a job that you need done around the home before you are able to do it well.
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It is a great feeling knowing that you can do it and save lots of money. I had a company reface my kitchen cabinets and realized I spent 20 times in material and labor what I could do myself with my labor being free. My wife has tiled two rooms and I have changed out showers, retiled bathrooms and changed out all the electrical fixtures in the house and also put in flooring in 3 rooms. And we have the house we want, not settling for what we purchased.
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@almost there -
That’s awesome that your wife is so handy, but be careful considering your own labor as “free.” Everything comes at an opportunity cost. If doing a particular project yourself will add to the satisfaction of it, as it often does with me, then by all means, sink yourself into it. But, if it’s a task you’d rather not do, don’t take it on yourself without considering how much your own time is worth doing something that is actually meaningful to you.
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Like what Tyler said. I don’t enjoy working on the house and my one painting job was painful. I’d rather hire it out and spend my time on something I’d much rather be doing. But I make enough money to make that choice.
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Okay, “moneyStrands”. I think that’s the first time I’ve heard of that website. Anyone else using it? Your thoughts? I’m leery of linking my financial data to an online service even though I need something like this…I think. For example, it would be nice to enter a receipt into the proper budget category from my mobile phone, as I’m walking back to the car, and not a week or two later when I get around to emptying my pockets of bits of crumpled paper to take to the desktop computer.
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I agree with Tyler and KS. If you enjoy working on the house in your spare time, that’s great. But I can’t stand that kind of work. When I owned an older home once upon a time, trying to do my own projects stressed me out so much that it simply wasn’t worth the money savings, and my skills weren’t up to snuff anyway. Plus, it left me no time to do other things I actually enjoyed. I ended up moving into a condo and couldn’t be happier. I’d rather spend what limited spare time I have doing other things. My money-saving hobby is cooking from scratch, but I do it because I enjoy cooking. I know a lot of people who are the opposite of me (who do DIY on their home but eat out for every meal), so it’s all a trade off of time vs. money.
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There is worry and then there is concern. I am concerned about my finances. They interest me. My desire to see them grow is great. I do not stay up nights thinking “the world is going to end because my fanances are not close to being in order” or “will I be able to eat tomorrow?” Those are worries.
Those who have little concern give their money to a Barry Madoff. Those with a good amount of concern read articles like yours, watch some good financial TV and read some good books (but I am finding the books the least amount of help in this economy.)
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I would say be realistic about your limits when it comes to doing your own carpentry/plumbing/etc. My husband is a carpenter and he says a lot of his work comes from fixing homeowner screw-ups or bad repair jobs. I think these are mostly from homeowners with just enough knowledge to be dangerous and looking to save a buck by doing it themselves. Unfortunately for them, they are often out more because of the time and money wasted during the DIY phase followed by the panicked call to a professional. I highly recommend looking into a local course in home repair, particularly if you’re not naturally handy like myself.
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The reason people (men in particular) are so eager to try DIY in this country is because of the exorbitant costs of labor. In most other countries, it’s cheaper to have things repaired than replaced. In the US, it’s often cheaper to replace things than to have them repaired. As a result, people who can’t afford either try DIY, and some are successful enough to keep trying.
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J.D., can you tell us some of the things that the previous owner did wrong that you’re having to fix? As a DIY-er I sometimes worry that my improvements could be similar to those of your previous owner, so it would be nice to hear some of your stories just to compare.
I should say that typically I will heavily research my improvements. There’s lots of great resources online.
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Isn’t that funny? When I was watching Up! I thought, “thank goodness they have an emergency fund!” To me, the message of the movie wasn’t about postponing goals, but about savoring the here-and-now, and letting your goals flex as your circumstances change.
I am also quite stable financially and have spent a fair amount of time trying to make sure my family mitigates risk. I was really starting to worry earlier this year. MrP and I did an informal risk analysis to confirm there weren’t any major areas of concern on the horizon. Whenever I start back in the money-worry loop I remind myself of that conversation, and of all our planning. It definitely helps.
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Regarding DIY my sister used to work in decorating and painting/faux finishing of houses. She is horrified by some of the tactics used in some of those DIY shows where you redecorate a room with $500. Many times their fix-up technique either a) do not use appropriate materials for the job and/or b) are not undoable (can harm the substrate you are altering if you want to undo/remove the project later). Just be aware of where you are getting your information for the job you are doing. This Old House is great on the other hand.
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On worrying over money: if you didn’t ever worry about your money you’d relax your standards, spend more when you shouldn’t, and slowly develop bad habit after bad habit as you allowed them to gain a stronghold on how you manage your finances.
It’s the worrying which keeps you in check. Be thankful you worry every once in a while.
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Our biggest problem with DIY projects seems to be that we don’t have the experience to properly assess how easy or hard something is going to be. Painting or swapping out lighting fixtures is pretty straigytforward, and we’ve done all of that on our own. But when we tried to put down engineered wood flooring, we didn’t realize what lurked beneath the carepting, and we only got about three rows into the project before deciding we’d need to call in professionals who could easily deal with a seriously uneven slab.
And then there’s the flip side where you think things are worse than they are. Last week, we ended up calling a sprinkler repair service to deal with what we thought were some serious issues with our irrigation well. It took the repair guys about a minute and a half to conclude that it was just a bad pump, which is something we could have fixed on our own. Fortunately, the well guys were pretty reasonable in terms of price- they got wholesale prices on a pump we would have had to pay retail for, took part of their profits from that, and labor and their expertise in telling us that it wasn’t as bad as we thought ran about $75 more than if we’d bought and installed the pump on our own.
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Thanks for the shout out JD. Glad you enjoyed my post about lessons learned from the movie Up.
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When I consider a DIY vs. hiring a professional, I try to think worst-case scenario. Like our current house, I installed new gutters and downspouts, painted the exterior, but there was no way I was getting up there to re-roof the house (worst-case being I fall off the roof). I gladly paid the $3k to let the professionals do it. Not to mention they did it in one day vs. probably a few weekends of my time.
I’ve found the Home Depot 1-2-3 books to be pretty helpful, I’ve specifically used the electric and plumbing manuals.
I’m also interested what types of errors the previous owners committed on your home.
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DIY nightmares
Scary — electrical and plumbing are often worrisome. Even professionals sometimes do a bad [careless] job. I have run across pipes that don’t slant properly, fires set by careless soldering near joists, repairs that make use of what is in the truck rather than what is needed (frequent if you have fancy plumbing,GFI’s improperly connected, ditto regular grounding, and on and on.
Incompetent — what partgypsy said: bad surface prep, painting over wallpaper, putting up wallpaper without sizing, using a sheetrock screw (brittle) when strength is required, caulking wide joints (I have been guilty of this myself), using unpaintable silicones in places that will require paint, the whole “that’s good enough” as opposed to “that’s the right way” attitude, again, sometimes encountered in “professionals” as well.
Taste — anything, in my view, that puts heavy texture on a wall or ceiling, pine boards distressed, then stained to imitate dark oak or mahogany (they do this on the HG Network all the time), funky colors (like the dark lavender our bedroom was once painted), irreversible stuff like gluing mirrors to walls, scalloped “Early American” trim boards and screen doors (also known as “Black Forest” doors) since our ancestors didn’t do anything like this at all, anything cutesy or twee. If you like it, fine, but make sure you can get rid of it before you put it on the market or it will cost you money in your sale price.
Products — nothing built in with fake wood grain over chipboard, plastic materials for exterior use (lattice,fences) unless you have seen it in action for ten years in your area and know it won’t yellow or grow brittle.
And on and on . . . .
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I have noticed one thought that always keep me away from starting with regular exercises. That is the procrastination. I always try to convince myself to start exercises from tomorrow, its an easy thing to do, will only take 15 -20 mins of my time, no big deal…so let’s start it from tomorrow and let’s do this other thing today.
I am clean on saving side though, I always try to save today and spend tomorrow. Both has to do with mental set up, failing at one, and winning at another.
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