FREE NEWSLETTER
Go to main Forum page »
During the last couple of months I’ve saved around $1000, and I’m not very happy about it. It’s money I really didn’t want to save. I’d rather have blown it big time. My most earnest efforts and hopes to do so were thwarted by circumstances entirely beyond my control.
During this timeframe I’ve had the misfortune of being hit by a string of low level, unrelated plumbing issues. A shower diverter valve jammed, a toilet cistern flush button broke, and a different cistern decided to continually overflow into the bowl. A little shut off valve then developed a tiny leak the moment I turned it off, so we didn’t have to listen to the overflowing cistern all night. I had to spend a lot of time and effort fixing all of it myself, because I couldn’t find a tradesman willing to waste his time on jobs so small.
Then, as if the house itself had joined some conspiracy against my finances, the little rain cap on the wood burner’s chimney chose this exact window to snap clean off and sail away in a gust. This left the flue open to the elements. Naturally, no tradesman was interested in hauling out a ladder for a part that costs about thirty dollars.
So I found myself clinging to the roof tiles with the wind doing its best to reintroduce me to the ground, fitting a replacement cap myself and muttering about how this was somehow going to be the job that finally broke me financially. It wasn’t. I came down, dusted the soot off my hands, and grimly totted up yet another job I hadn’t paid anyone else to do.
By the time the plumbing had calmed down and the chimney was capped, I looked at my bank balance and felt genuinely aggrieved. There it sat: an extra thousand dollars, entirely unspent, entirely unwanted, and entirely my own fault for being so infuriatingly incapable of attracting a trade person. I had “tried” to give this money away, to plumbers, to roofers, to anyone with a van and a vague willingness to charge me for thirty minutes of work, and every single one of them had turned me down for being too small a job. What, precisely, is the point of having money if nobody will take it off you?
I suppose there’s nothing for it but to keep the money invested and let it grow, on the off chance some future household disaster is finally significant enough to attract a tradesman willing to take it off my hands. Until then, it just sits there, patiently waiting for the next crisis it fails to solve.
Two quick points: (1) I often feel that I am not at financial equilibrium unless I have any extra money that comes my way snatched away from me by unexpected repairs, replacements or other home- or property-related events. (2) Dr. Atul Gawande, author of the best seller Being Mortal, says the most important rule as one gets older is “Don’t fall down!” That seems to have cascading bad impacts on the health of aging people. Even healthy and athletic seniors should play it cautious when falls are possible. That may not keep you off a roof, but it may lead you to secure the ladder and inch up and down more slowly, with two hands on it.
The rule on safety on ladders is three points of contact at all times.
Martin, I completely agree with your point about falling. Every time my late mum had a fall and later recovered, her baseline level of robustness ended up noticeably lower than it had been before.
As for ladders, I’ve never been comfortable on them – which is a bizarre state of affairs, considering I spent years rock climbing. In fact, later this month, a few old climbing friends and I are planning to rappel down a section of An Bhinn Mhór, a 650‑foot sea cliff with a massive 200‑foot scree and boulder slope, and then climb back up using our belay points… yet put me on a fifteen‑foot ladder and I get instant wobbly‑leg syndrome. Go figure!
Mark important article. Before 70 years old, I tackled every home issue, except like a new roof. I have been there done that, but when in my 70’s my wife would not allow me on the roof etc. The solution is a local Handy Man, who can take care of just about any household chore for $50 per hour, a REAL bargain. Check for one with your neighbors who has a proven reputation.
William, I would definitely have been on your wife’s team… working on a roof in your seventies? Definitely a hard no!
Toilet cistern? You must in Europe somewhere. Here in the US we call them toilet tanks. Look at it this way, you acted as your own trade person (repairman in the US) and were paid $1000. Plus you know the job was done right. Go buy yourself something special, like a bigger tv.
Tim, I might need that bigger TV if I fall off the roof and have to spend weeks recovering from a broken leg!
You speak to a main pain point in my retirement life. Over the years, I did my own repairs to save money. I even spent 2 years painting my two story house once. But, on retirement, my interest is no longer there. Money is not the issue. The issue is I have a deathly fear of trusting someone else to work on my house and do competent work. And, that applies to small jobs, too, like clearing the leaves off the roof. It is difficult to find a trustworthy source for competent, reliable people to do home repairs small and large.
The problem is no one cares about your property as much as you do. When I was interviewing for fine gardening (not heavy landscaping) jobs my first summer in retirement (just for fun) I told the proprietors that I would treat all the properties I worked on like they were my own. Not surprisingly I was offered a job with each company.
Competent work.
I reroofed my front porch roof several years ago and found the tarpaper under the singles didn’t even overlap.
Who ever had reroofed it years earlier, besides the lousy tarpaper job, couldn’t figure how to keep a long piece of flashing below two windows at the top of the roof from popping up. A 2X4 was then nailed at the bottom to keep it down. Over the years water built up behind the 2X4 and rotted the tops of the roof joists and decking at every nail. I had to sister on new joists and redeck most of the roof.
One of the things to be concerned about in the US is whether or not the tradesperson has insurance. As others have mentioned for folks in our general age bracket, being on a ladder can be hazardous. If a worker without insurance is on your roof and falls, you might be liable for their injury. Asking for a Certificate of Insurance (CoI) is one of my automatic requests when speaking to contractors.
Their insurance is to protect you, your insurance is to protect you from others. That’s why we have a million dollars umbrella liability policy.
I’m curious…any idea why US liability insurance is so low? My standard UK home owners policy gives me £5 million as standard ($6.5 million)
You are one very lucky person. My $3M policy went up 104% this year due to a very heavy load on the insurer pay out about $1.75 for every $1 taken in, due to big rewards on lawsuits in 2025, due to fires and the like.
Maybe one of our more experienced property/casualty guys can jump in here. The max liability found in home owners insurance is usually about $500K. That’s why we have the umbrella policies that Dick mentioned. Those policies can be much larger than the $1 million that Dick owns. I think a million is the minimum we can buy.
The Umbrella Policy offers extra protection on all of our policies, not just the house.
We have a two million dollar umbrella policy. The difference in cost is minimal.
Yeah, one million just ain’t what it used to be. I need to increase our coverage (still at one million).
Great point, Jeff. There are probably over a million so-called handymen in the country, and many of them go without insurance, both business owners liability insurance and Workers Compensation. (In Ohio, the certificate of insurance only proves the former).
Years ago a man died cutting down a tree for a neighbor of ours. The family of the worker successfully sued my neighbor.
Mark, this gave me a smile and I think Jonathan would have loved it to. There’s a certain irony in wanting to spend money and finding nobody willing to take it. More importantly, you reminded us that one of the best investments isn’t in the stock market, it’s the ability to solve problems yourself. The savings were nice, but the confidence that comes from knowing you can handle life’s little crises may prove even more valuable. Thanks for the laugh.
Andrew, there’s an even deeper layer of irony in my recent hunt for a tradesperson. Twenty years ago, when we remodelled and extended our home, the contractor was a personal friend, and I labored for him during the build to keep costs down — I actually helped install the chimney flue in question. Then, with the recent bathroom plumbing issues: six years ago during COVID, I couldn’t get a contractor. I got sick of looking at our new bathroom suite cluttering up the garage, so I installed it myself. Maybe my current struggle to find a contractor is karma — word must have gotten out that a non-union guy did the original work!
Please keep writing about the joys of home ownership! We recently sold our home of 40 years and now rent. (yes, love it)
It’s good to have First World Problems!?
Same thing happens on this side of the pond. Knowing how to do something and having the skills and tools to do it aren’t quite the same thing.
Currently trying to find a less “qualified” thermostat so I can own it, understand how the damn thing works, and doesn’t require a subscription for it to work.
Ah well, technology at its best.
Definitely good to have first-world problems lol. I’ll admit my ignorance: I have no idea what a smart thermostat actually is. My ‘dumb’ one works perfectly well—what exactly makes an upgrade smart?
Smart like it knows if you are home or not so it increases or decreases the temperature accordingly. Smart like you can change the temperature using your phone via the app, in the house or if you are away. Only problem with our is it keeps saying it’s off line even when my wife “reboots” it over and over again. This started over a year ago and as a result it is dumb.
Smart like it returns to the home temperature setting from the away temperature setting but only when yo are about a mile away from home so it doesn’t have time to appreciably change the temperature. No way to adjust the distance it kicks in, ie worthless feature
Smart like it uses a motion detector to set a schedule when you are home and away such as when you have a regular work schedule. But if you have it I your study because you work from home with the door closed to save energy it worthless.
We replace the downstairs programmable thermostat with a Nest and after a year of frustration trying to figure out how to keep it connected to the internet we are going back to the original programmable thermostat that came with the house.
Thing is it worked fairly well until Google bought Nest. My wife said we should buy a new one because it’s probably not working because it’s out of date. Funny because the programmable one that came with the house we built 10 years works fine. I’ve never had to replace a thermostat in any house other than upgrading from a manual to a programmable. The last house it worked fine for the entire 22 years we owned the house. Never thought about it, and ever spent hours and hours trying to get the “advanced technology” to work.
David, that seems like an awfully complicated way to simply control the room temperature. I’ll stick to my time clock with each room having an individual, thermostatically controlled heat source.
There has to be a price-point at which no job is too small for a tradesman to take on.
I guess it’s easy to see the tradesman’s logic. Given the choice between a $25,000 bathroom remodel and a fiddly $100 cistern repair, the bigger payday is always going to win out.
I’ve been waiting nearly three weeks for a quote to add railings to our front steps. He came quickly to size up what he said would be a half day job. Crickets.I have now reached out to two others. I’m not holding my breath.
My operating theory on contractors…contact 3-5 contractors to get a quote, 1-3 come look at the project, 1-2 will provide a quote, 0-1 will show up if awarded job.
I’m supposed to get a visit from No. 4 tomorrow. Not holding my breath. Ah, who needs railings anyway.
And one of my railings, only about seven years old, just snapped off in the middle. I’m going to wait until I have several small jobs before I call one of the local fix-it gentlemen. I’m lucky with my plumber – he will first give me a suggestion about how to fix the problem, but then comes by very soon if I can’t take care of it. There was a local panic when he briefly decided to retire and move away. You could hear the town-wide sigh of relief when he changed his mind.
I’ve had that kind of week myself. In the last seven days the oven quit ovening just as we needed to bake a dish to take to a pot-luck dinner with friends. The self close hinges on a kitchen cabinet failed. A section of our gutters was clogged with debris clause the rainwater to spill out all over our patio. All problems too small for a handyman to consider. So parts were ordered, ladders pulled from storage and repairs made. Thankfully all were successful.
Terry, I feel your pain. You have to wonder, though — getting a degree costs so much money nowadays. If I were doing it all again, I think I’d forgo the higher education route and set up as a small-job handyman instead. There seems to be a large market out there to make good money from.
Please look harder and find a local handyman your neighbors been using for a reasonable price. If I could do that so can you.
The money for such pop-up repairs is patiently sitting in the bank waiting to be disbursed. However, there are a few reasons (other than my being a tightwad) why I perform the job myself. One is that I get some satisfaction from DIY jobs, and the other is that DIY is easier and faster than searching for a repair person and waiting for them to show up.
As we approach our expiration date, it’s important to be honest with ourselves about what we can safely accomplish without the help of a professional. Ladders, roofs, and electrical service issues are some examples of things that I won’t tackle.
When I turned 80 I promised my doctor I’d give my 6ft. ladder away.
Kept the step ladder, he’s uaware of.
It was my wife who broke her wrist tumbling off the bed swating an insect.
By the way, I know two handymen.
There’s a usual 2 to 3 week wait, at $80/hr., 3 hrs minimum. Ck or cash only.
With good reason, Dan. I know a story of a do-it-yourselfer that’s too sad to share here.
My motto is I will not pay someone to do something I can do myself (see post below), however my enthusiasm for doing so is waning.
Dan, I’m with you on the roof-working point… believe me, I tried. I really, really wanted to pay good money to get that rain cap replaced. Unfortunately, it proved impossible — I felt like I was scaling the north face of Everest! I was very happy to get back to terra firma.
Mark,
This summer is turning into the self handy man summer. Few weeks ago I had to seal a leaking crack in my basement. I thought there goes a grand out of my account. After watching a video on Utube Indecided I could do this myself. Mission accomplished.
Then I realized that the ten year life of my new home’s smoke etc detectors was coming to an end. I figured there goes another grand for an electrician as I discovered that my model no longer was being manufactured and feared the bases would have to be changed out. I decided I would email the manufacturer to see if they had new detectors which would fit into the existing bases. Sure enough there are with an adaptor plug I could utilize to replace them myself. Still cost $400 just for the replacements
Finally the sink in the primary bathroom is telling me it needs a cleaning.
UGH!
David, YouTube tutorials are an absolute godsend — they’ve bailed me out of the odd problem more times than I can count over the years. Would you believe I recently had to watch one just to figure out how to get the back off a remote control to change the batteries! Anyway, enjoy getting that sink sorted.