Beating Broke

Using Youtube for DIY

November 28, 2012 By Shane Ede 6 Comments

When you think about DIY, it’s not very likely that the video site, Youtube comes to mind right away. If you’re thinking anything video related, you’re probably thinking about television stations like HGTV or the aptly named DIY Network. Youtube, however, can be the best friend you’ve got when it comes to DIY.

This new age we’re entering where information is super duper easy to disseminate means that we can hop on the internet and find just about whatever information we need. And that includes how-to videos on just about any DIY project you can imagine.

When I was working at a computer repair shop last winter and spring, one of the things that I did on a regular basis is search on Youtube for the steps to replace a part on a computer. Each computer manufacturer makes their machines a little bit differently. It’s very evident in their laptop models, so often, what will take one apart will break another. Faced with a new model, the easiest way to figure out what you’re doing before you end up replacing it for a customer is to do a quick search for a repair video. Just about every time, you’ll find a video of a technician doing the exact same repair that you’re about to do.

Armed with that knowledge and experience, one of the first things that popped into my head when our clothes dryer stopped heating up two weeks ago was to see just how hard it would be to replace the heating element. A couple of videos later, I was reasonably confident that I had the skills necessary to make the repair myself. I ordered a new heating element and a new non-resettable fuse (just in case that was the problem and not the element) from Amazon. The parts totaled less than $40.

Once the parts arrived, I was able to make the repair to the dryer in about 45 minutes. Probably a bit longer than a technician that repairs appliances all the time, but for me, a pretty reasonable amount of time. Once the new parts were in place, and the dryer was put back together, I hooked it back up to the vent and the electrical and gave it a test spin. And it heated up! I win! 😉 For less than $40, and about an hour of my time (if you include the time spent watching the repair video), I was able to successfully make the repair.

I don’t know how much it would have cost to have the local technician come and repair the dryer, but I can guess that the part alone would have cost almost twice what it did for me to order it. Even if I guess conservatively, the labor would probably cost me about $50. All told, it could have cost me about $100-$150 to repair the thing. We bought it used, for about $200, so that wouldn’t have been a very smart thing to do. And, if it had come down to having someone repair it, you can bet I would have looked at the cost of a new, to-us, used dryer first.

It’s not the first time that I’ve used a Youtube video to learn how to repair something. Remember when I repaired my iPad myself? Guess how I learned how to do that!

Have you ever used a Youtube video to learn how to DIY something?

Investing Made Simple

November 26, 2012 By Shane Ede 4 Comments

Investing Made Simple: Index Fund Investing and ETF Investing Explained in 100 Pages or Less

By: Mike Piper (ObliviousInvestor.com)

I had the opportunity to meet Mike at the first FINCON in Chicago last year. He’s a thoroughly nice guy. I knew him from his blog and website, but for some reason I hadn’t known the extent of his authorship. I found out at FINCON that he’s written several books (9 of them if I count right) on personal finance. They mostly lean towards the topics of investing, but even encompass Social Security and business structure. After meeting Mike, and learning about his books, I made it a point to pick one of them up to read and review. Well, over a year later, I finally made it to the reading and reviewing part.

Since I’m not much of an investor, I thought that it would be a double good idea to pick up the Investing Made Simple title he wrote. I can review something he’s written, while probably learning a few things along the way. Investing made Simple is an excellent book. It’s short, which makes it an easy read, and the writing style is light, without all the technical investing jargon that’s typical to investing books.

It’s not an in depth book on investing, but it wasn’t intended to be. What it is intended to be is a short (100 pages or less) book that will give anyone the basics of investing while setting them on the right track to a successful investing portfolio. I think he accomplished that.

I think one of the things that many beginning investors, including myself, get bogged down in is that the world of investing is a pretty big world. There’s all these different ways to invest in something. There’s shorts, longs, calls, margin, options, commodities, ETF, bonds, and the list goes on. And on. But, when the beginning investor, who knows little to nothing about investing goes looking for information to get them started, it’s a whole lot of overwhelming. Piper lays it out simple and easy. He gives you the meat of what you need to successfully invest for the long term, while quietly informing you that you’ll likely be better off ignoring most of the stuff that’s confusing you.

What you end up with is a book with all the basics of investing in a small package. But, you also end up with something that, for most people, is also a complete investing manual. Keep it simple, and invest wisely is the order that I took away from reading Investing Made Simple. I think it should be recommended reading for all beginning investors.

Capitalism Requires Participation

November 21, 2012 By Shane Ede 8 Comments

I recently had a small discussion on Facebook with Glen, of Free From Broke. It started when he mentioned in his status that he had been at the doctors office waiting on his appointment for 44 minutes. He asked if he should just say to heck with it and reschedule the appointment. I suggested that he wait it out, then send the doctor a bill for his time spent waiting. Most people, when I make a similar suggestion, think that I’m joking. That’s only half true. I honestly think that if you’re waiting for a long enough time, you ought to send a bill. I’m not the only one, either. Check out this article, and this one on CNN.

Now, I’ll be completely honest. I’ve spent plenty of time waiting on doctors, dentists, and the DMV. I’ve never once sent a bill. I’m chicken. 🙂 Really, I think that we’re preconditioned to expect that we’ll wait for a doctor, and since we’re paying them for the service, and we need the service, we don’t dare rock the boat. But, there’s a couple of good arguments against that being true. The biggest of which is that capitalism requires participation.

An economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market.
Merriam-Webster

Capitalism and the Free Market

In particular, I’d like to point out the last part of that. “determined mainly by competition in a free market”. What drives that competition, and as a result, the free market? The law of supply and demand. In the law of supply and demand, the prices of goods and services are determined by the supply that exists for a good or service, and the demand that exists for that same good or service. If demand is high for something, and the supply is low, or limited, the people who have the supply can charge more because the ratio of supply to demand is higher. But, what about something like a doctors visit? Doctors aren’t exactly in a low enough supply to warrant higher prices. While our insurance companies are able to negotiate cheaper prices for services with a doctor, we very rarely will even ask if there’s a better rate. And, we’ll willingly sit in a waiting room for extended periods of time, which, anyone familiar with the concept of time cost will tell you, costs money.

Participating in Capitalism

In order to change that status quo, we need to start participating in our capitalism. The clinics and hospitals that many of the doctors work at are requiring their doctors to schedule appointments in 15 minute or 30 minute increments. How many times have you gone to the doctor and spent more time than that in the exam room? I know I probably do at least every other time. Obviously, that’s not a very efficient way to schedule the time. But, they do it so that the doctors can squeeze in as many patients as possible. It’s ruled by profit. The more patients a doctor sees in an hour, the higher the profit is for the clinic. They’ll never change that unless the profit starts to go away. How does the profit go away? Well, either the doctors become so expensive that they’d have to see many more patients in a day than physically possible (they’d just raise rates), or they start getting bills for the patient time they are wasting.

If patients begin billing for the time they spend in a waiting room, eventually, it becomes more expensive to keep patients waiting than it does to change the way they schedule appointments. Consider the last time you had cable hooked up in your home. You likely called the cable company to set up an appointment, and they gave you a 4-5 hour window when the technician would be there. What if you then told them that your time is valuable to you, and that they can expect a bill for every half hour past the beginning of that window that you’re kept waiting on the technician? Do you think he’d make you wait the full 5 hours? Not very likely.

The prices of goods and services, including the time those services take to perform, are determined by what the market will bear. As long as the market continues to pay the cost of the goods or services, the provider can continue to charge that price. Sometimes they’ll start increasing it. But, when we begin to value our time, and hold service providers accountable for the cost of time wasted waiting on them to perform a service, we can begin to tell those providers that the market will no longer bear the cost of lost time. In short, we begin to participate in the free market economy we call capitalism.

Would you ever bill a service provider, doctor or otherwise, for time spent waiting on them? If not, is it because you don’t value your time, or because you believe that the service provider is truly doing all they can to proved the best services? Is the service providers time more valuable than yours, and that’s why you won’t bill for your time?

img credit: mishra-ajay, on Flickr