We went to the “Parade of Homes” recently. You probably have one in your area. This year’s was an impressive collection of eight or nine homes, beautifully decorated, and all around the million-dollar price tag. Normally I’m just along for the ride with my wife and daughter, but this time a couple of the homes really caught my eye. They had some terrific spaces and in a couple I found myself thinking, “I could really see myself living here.”
But I have no plans to buy this home or any other. We’re very happy where we are and it makes me cringe to think about trying to sell our home or the impossibility of packing and moving.
But it did remind me that I need to do some work. The upstairs shower leaks from the faucet when the shower is on. It’s about time for a fresh coat of paint in the great room. I’ll probably need a new roof in another year and I need to have the cash set aside for that. And the backyard needs some more landscaping work.
Maintaining the things you have is almost always less expensive and a better use of your time and money than buying something new to replace it. That’s easy to see when we’re talking about a house, but it applies to a car or other vehicle, home electronics, and personal computing devices.
I just passed 90,000 miles on my six-year-old vehicle and I need to get some basic service and some not so basic preventative maintenance. It will cost me about a $1,000, but it’s money well spent. I plan on driving it another six years and putting at least a quarter of a million miles on it. I’m old enough to remember when you had to trade your car every couple of years and definitely before you hit one hundred thousand miles because it would fall apart. But if you purchase a well-made current vehicle AND maintain it, it should easily last more than ten years. And that means that even if you get a five-year loan for your vehicle, you have five more years without a car payment (and whatever you do, do not get an auto lease!).
Squeezing another year of service out of something buys you time, and time for most goods means that when you do get around to making that purchase, that item will be of higher quality and lower price. Especially if you follow my Tech Buying Tips.
And here’s a secondary benefit of maintaining your stuff: you’ll discover how much work it is to keep everything in working order, ship-shape and Bristol fashion, and soon strive to have fewer things to maintain – as well as buying higher quality items in the first place that require less maintenance and have a lower cost over time.
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