As a homeowner, keeping the costs of running your home as low as possible is the name of the game. From cutting down on your electricity use to trying to only take 5 minute showers, the amount you can fork out for the bills needs a lot of control. But when your home breaks down on you, it’s hard to stay within your budget.
Repairs are often needed in an emergency, and the bill for the callout reflects that! However, it’s not totally impossible to maintain an affordable cost here. If you’re proactive and have some emergency savings in place, home repairs become far less scary to deal with. Here’s what you need to know.
Brush Up on DIY Skills
Your own DIY skills are going to really come into their own here. After all, packing out your own toolbox could cost you around $100, but the value you can get out of it is priceless. Be sure to put one together if you don’t have one stored in your shed!
Once that’s all sorted, you can get online to follow tutorials regarding simple and easy DIY jobs; even if you have no technical skills, you can make a real difference to your home when someone is showing you what to do.
Have Regular Maintenance Checkups
It’s best to have a repair person come in from time to time to check your home’s systems, such as a Plumber or a boiler repair service. This is especially true if you’re living in an older home that was built pre 1960s. Your pipes could be of questionable quality right now, and you wouldn’t even know without opening them up!
So get a callout done around once a year or so. Book for the cheaper months, which tend to be seasonal. For example, getting an AC unit optimised in the winter period, rather than waiting for the summer right when you need it.
Get to Know Repair Job Prices
This is the best way to build an emergency budget bit by bit. If you know what you’ll have to pay for ahead of time, you’ll be far more productive in building a safety nest egg. Look up the average prices in your area to get started here; you’re going to be using local tradesmen 90% of the time, and it’s these quotes that matter.
Then set some mini goals along the way, such as aiming to put away enough for the most immediate jobs that’d need doing ASAP. A broken heating system could be releasing dangerous gas into your household air, and that will need seeing to straight away. Once you hit a goal, set another one until you’re secure.
All homes are going to need some maintenance upkeep from time to time. However, these jobs can cost you an arm and a leg if you’re not careful! As such, make sure you’ve got some good DIY skills under your belt and try to keep some emergency savings around.
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