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Spring arrived bang on cue at the start of March, and the weather gods actually delivered some proper early sunshine. I seized the moment, dug out the power washer, and set about bringing the yard back to life. Forty-five minutes in, my trusty 20-year-old yellow Kärcher started making alarming noises and belching smoke. That was that.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Things don’t stop breaking just because you’ve retired. The last week has been a particular case in point. The microwave began staging its own light show, little electric storms crackling away if you so much as looked at it. Then the car picked up an irreparable sidewall puncture, which meant a new tyre, which, once the garage pointed out the tread on the others, escalated into a full set of four. And now the power washer, waving its little white flag in a cloud of smoke.
Your house, your car, and every appliance you own didn’t get the memo that you’re on a fixed income now. Boilers, roofs, washing machines, cars — they operate on their own schedule, entirely indifferent to yours. When you were working, an unexpected $1,000 tyre bill was an annoyance. In retirement, it’s a budget conversation. And somehow it all arrives in clusters, as if your possessions held a meeting and agreed to go down together. A sensible rule of thumb is to budget around one to two percent of your home’s value each year for maintenance alone, before you’ve even replaced a single white good or put four new tires on the car.
You might think at length about drawdown rates and portfolio diversification. What you really need to think about is the relentless, low-grade financial drip of stuff just… wearing out. It’s simple to plan for. Build a contingency fund, keep it topped up, and try not to raid it for anything that doesn’t actually need fixing. Future you, possibly standing in a smoky yard holding a dead power washer, will be very grateful.
Is there a silver lining to a machine dramatically giving up the ghost on a sunny March morning? There absolutely is. Because now I get to browse for a new one.
There is a very particular pleasure in researching a replacement for something that has finally, legitimately, died. No guilt. Full permission to spend. I have fallen down a deeply satisfying rabbit hole of reviews, PSI ratings, and heated forum debates about whether you really need a hot water feed. My Kärcher served me faithfully for two decades. I feel it earned its rather dramatic exit. Its replacement will be researched with the thoroughness of a man on a mission and purchased with the quiet joy of a person who has an excellent excuse.
Spring is coming. The yard needs doing. And somewhere out there, the perfect power washer is waiting…just remember to budget for it all.
We recently performed water and air radon tests. For those of you who don’t live in NH radon is a radioactive gas that is emitted by granite. NH is called the granite state for a reason. As you can imagine breathing radiation into your lungs is not good. Radon is actually the leading cause of lung cancer in non smokers. Remediation is a 10 K+ cost which must be addressed.
If you have read my posts in the past you know we do not have a dedicated emergency fund. My philosophy is that all of our retirement money is available as an emergency fund. So although it’s not fun to spend money on something this, nor is the thought of having a mini municipal water treatment plant in my basement, it is a necessary evil.
So how will we pay for it? Every quarter I perform a quarterly review of our finances and top off our estimated 1 year cash reserves. For now we will expend the cash and April 1 replacement cash will be raised by rebalancing our portfolio to our target allocation.
Guess the dream of having an on demand generator will have to wait for next year, which is what I said last year when our loosely defined home improvement budget went towards a top coat of asphalt on the driveway.
Your last comment reminds me of our old generator. Our first several months in our last house, if a butterfly flapped its wings nearby, our power would go out. The solution to this problem was a generator that cost almost five figures (including a service package). It was connected directly to our gas line, and would test itself once a week, come on automatically when the power went out, run nearly the whole house, and not turn itself off until it was sure we had steady power. After a few years of ownership, a hurricane took out our power for a week. That generator paid for itself in that week alone.
Btw, I’m with you on the concept of the emergency fund.
As far as rules of thumb go, 1% of a home’s value for repairs and such seems like a pretty good one; that would be about $4K in our case. When I was a landlord, I used to budget 10% of the rental income for this reason.
Just don’t carry the new power washer to the top rung of the ladder in order to spray off the roof; Suzie may have to research getting a new handyman.
Thanks for another good read.