Beating Broke

Personal Finance from the Broke Perspective

The Cost of Not Doing it Yourself

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The Problem

Recently, I became aware of a slight water problem (as if the word slight has any business hanging out with the words water and problem) in our basement.  Somewhere between when our house was built and when we bought it, the bathroom had been rearranged.  The plumber (or DIY’er) who did the work, rather than move the lines and start fresh, merely just capped the old water supply lines off.  The standard caps worked (and work) just fine.  However, one of the caps wasn’t really a cap.  It was a shutoff valve.  Whoever it was merely capped the output of the valve and turned the valve to the shut position and left it at the end of the line.  Any engineer will tell you that the more moving parts and connections there are, the higher the liability of failure.  Eventually, the metal of the valve began to corrode.  It corroded until it began to leak.  Which is where I come in.

While downstairs, I noticed that one of our kids’ buckets that was being stored for the winter was full of water.  There weren’t any obvious leaks, and the concrete floor around it was dry.  I couldn’t find a good reason why someone would have filled it with water and then taken it down to the basement, so I took a bit closer look.  Turns out, that valve was leaking.  Slowly enough, thankfully, that it wasn’t causing any problems.  According to my wife, who noticed the leak months ago (BAD wife!!!), it’s been leaking for a while.

November 2, 2010

The Fix

As with any issue like this, I’ve got two choices.  I can call a plumber and get it fixed, or I can attempt to fix it myself.  I’m pretty comfortable with building things and fixing most things.  Electrical and plumbing are probably the two things that I don’t like to mess with.  When we replaced the sink in our kitchen, it took 3 attempts and several months of trying before I had a working sink without any leaking.  I did manage to remodel the bathroom recently though, and replaced the toilet without any major issues.  So, going off of that, I decided to see what was involved by doing a few searches online.

After my research, I found that there are essentially only one or two ways to go about fixing the issue.  All involve cutting the pipe off, and re-capping it.  Or, properly capping it, as the case may be.  The 100% best way would be to cut the pipe, and then flux and solder on a new cap.  Done right, it’s almost impossible to break and a pretty good guarantee to never leak.  The problem here is that I’ve never done any of that and don’t own a torch, so would have to buy one of those.  They’re not expensive, but would certainly add to the cost for a tool that I have infrequent enough use for that I don’t already own one.  The second way would be to put what is called a compression fitting over the end of the cut off pipe.  The idea there is that there’s a compression ring in the fitting that, as the nuts are tightened, compresses the pipe into the fitting and creates a watertight seal.  No special tools necessary.

I hadn’t done either before, so it was still up in the air.  Add to that the fact that there is no water cutoff to that part of the house and the water to the entire house would have to be shut off once the project started and remain off until the project finished.

In the end, I did decide to give it a go myself.  My reasoning was that the worst case scenario wasn’t all that bad.  Worst case, I can’t get it fixed and have to call a plumber.  I’m out the money for the parts (~$10) and the water in the house would be off until the plumber came.  Even if the plumber is super busy, I doubt it would be more than a day of waterless-ness.  Inconvenient?  Sure. But, it could be a lot worse, so not horribly worrisome.  Worst case, it costs me some money and some water free time in the house.  We’ve got friends who live close enough that we could use their house for water activities like showering.  And a couple of gallons of filled water jugs would be enough for emergency flushing of the toilet.

How it went down.

I’ve never had the pleasure of a DIY plumbing project going right the first time.  Until now.  The procedure was certainly not an overly complicated one.

  • I turned the water off to the house.
  • I cut the old fitting off, making sure to get the cut as square as possible.  As a note, I tried to drain the pipes before cutting the old fitting, but very little water came out.  I left the drain hose open while I was cutting.  Once I had the old fitting off, the rest of the water drained from the drain hose.  I believe this was because it had created a vacuum of sorts and it was only released when I opened up the other end to vent.
  • I then took a bit of sandpaper (160 grit, I believe) and sanded all the old grime and corrosion off of the end of the pipe.  Not sure that this was really necessary for the compression fitting that I decided on, but better safe than sorry.
  • As soon as that was done, it was as simple as putting the fitting on the pipe and tightening it down.

Not only was it pretty simple and easy, but it didn’t leak when I turned the water back on.  Awesome!

The Cost of Not Doing it Yourself

There’s one other cost involved that I didn’t mention, and, it may be the most important.  It’s the cost of not doing it yourself.  Sure, it would have cost me the cost of the plumber to fix it.  But, it would have also cost me in experience.  I learned a new skill.  Granted, capping a household supply line isn’t necessarily high up there on a list of desired skills, but I won’t hesitate to do it again.  Plus, I’m now able to assist others who have a similar task and save them money too.  To me, that adds value to having done it myself.  It’s like getting paid to do it.  When you add all that up, the cost of not doing it yourself is almost always too much.

photo credit: silkolive

Saving Money by Cooking at Home

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On the long list of things that you can do while saving money, one thing that invariably makes it’s way to the top 10 is to brown bag lunches and to cook at home.  If you’ve ever sat down and figured out how much you spend eating out each month (we have, it’s in the budget), you know that food, and dining out in particular, can be  a real drain on the budget.

One thing that really holds many people back from cooking at home and even from taking bag lunches to work is that they never really learned how to cook.  Either their parents never brought them into the kitchen to help, or their parents just never cooked at home either.  Either way, many of the simple skills that those who do cook take for granted are a complete mystery to others.  Some of those skills are being replaced with machines and such that can do the task, but those are usually expensive and if you’re trying to save money, aren’t really an option.

Pork Chop with Apples and Blue CheeseBut, it’s not an excuse!  You can learn those skills rather easily.  Need to know how to boil an egg?  Search for “boil an egg” on the internet.  Anyone who can read, can make their own food.  With the internet at our fingers, you can easily search for recipes.  Stuffing?  How about Pineapple Stuffing.  Chicken?  Here’s a whole list of chicken breast recipes! Here’s instructions on how to make beef jerky!  Most have pretty detailed instructions.  And, besides, what’s the worst that could happen?  You ruin some food?  I’d bet you could try at least once or twice more and still not equal what the same meal would cost at a restaurant!

The bottom line is this.  Not knowing something isn’t an excuse.  Some things will take time to learn, but you can learn many of these basic skills, with repeated practice, in less than a month.  Challenge yourself!  Take a month off of eating out.  Only eat in for those 30 days.  And, no, I don’t mean delivery.  Or Digiornos.  Start with raw ingredients and go from there, using a recipe.  After a while, you get to know how certain things taste and how they go together and you can even forget the recipe.

Photo Credit: thatedeguy, on Flickr

Obligations of the Buyer

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With all the news lately about people “walking away” from their mortgages, increasing bankruptcies, and debt consolidation/repayment schemes, I got to thinking about what the obligations of the buyer are.  And, also, the ways that we as a society have made it easy to sidestep those obligations.

Obligations

What are our obligations when we buy something?  Does buying a pack of gum carry different obligations than buying a house?  Naturally, we have obligations to ourselves as to the upkeep and use of that which we buy.  If I buy a house, I have an obligation to myself to do what I can to make that house last as long as possible and remain structurally sound.  If I buy a pack of gum, it’s a lesser commitment, but that obligation still exists as an obligation to not let my purchase go to waste and either chew the gum or give it to someone to chew.

What obligations to we have to the seller when we buy something?  There are two ways to look at this.  The first scenario involves paying cash for something.  If the full purchase price that was negotiated is satisfied, I don’t believe you have any obligation to the seller.  However, if the purchase involves debt of some sort, there are obligations that arise.  If you purchase with a credit card, there is an obligation to pay that debt to the credit card company.  The same is true for a mortgage, a car, and even a pack of gum.  Not only do you have an obligation to pay the debt, but you also have another obligation to yourself to learn what that debt is going to cost you.  This last obligation is the one that was most ignored during the fiasco that we like to call a housing bubble.  Many ignored the facts of what their new houses were going to cost and bought them anyways.

Sidesteps

In the pursuit of a consumerist society, these obligations can sometimes get in the way.  If I ignored the obligation to know the cost of debt and bought a house anyways, I likely entered into an agreement to pay a mortgage company a set amount each month.  Recently, it’s become popularized to demonize the banks that lent the money to people as the sole problem and, as a result, it’s become no big deal to merely “walk away” (default, or stop paying) on a mortgage.  The reasoning follows that it’s better to default on the mortgage than remain paying on a house that is worth less than what the purchase price was, or that has had payments adjusted higher.

Bankruptcy OK!In the same way, the obligation to pay credit card bills, auto loans, and most other consumer debt has been sidestepped.  It’s no longer a social stigma to declare bankruptcy.  Many, knowing they are about to file for bankruptcy, will go out and max out their credit lines in anticipation of the bankruptcy cleaning the slate.

As these sidesteps become more and more common, the social stigma will decrease even further.  If everybody is doing it, it’s hard to demonize something.  You might demonize your friend.  Or relative.

Of course, this isn’t to say that defaulting on a mortgage should never happen.  Or that bankruptcy should never be declared.  It happens.  It’s the rampant social acceptance of these situations that is troubling.  What happens when it becomes commonplace for mortgage borrowers to default?  The loans become more expensive.  The banks have to cover their costs to repossess the house, the staff to service the loan, and associated costs with trying to resell the house.  Where is that money going to come from?  They aren’t going to just pay it out of the kindness of their hearts.  They’ll pass it on to the customer.  Suddenly, mortgages will become even more front loaded with fees and interest.  When bankruptcies become more commonplace, credit availability is going to decrease.  We’ve already seen that recently.  People who could easily get a credit card before will be denied.

All of this is all the more reason to avoid debt whenever possible.  If society isn’t going to do it, hold yourself to your obligations as a buyer.  Obligate yourself to paying off your debt.  Then, obligate yourself to paying in cash from then on.

photo credit: EJP Photo