Repair, Used, Or New

Our Washing machine has been having a few issues over the past few months. Every time it seems to fix itself or was livable with until a few weeks ago. We had a freeze that partially froze the pipes to our house. This caused our home's water pressure to be practically non-existent. We learned how washers (at least older ones) use the water pressure to turn off. If the pressure is so low, the washer will not be able to stop the incoming water, and overfill. We thought that it would be fixed when the pipes thawed and the pressure was back to normal, but that wasn't the case. After everything thawed, the washer continued to overfill. We did all sorts of trouble shooting thanks to the internet and narrowed it down to three parts. All over $100 to replace. It would almost $100 to have an actual repair man come out and look at it and then we'd still have the cost of the repair.

So when do you decide to call the repairman, to buy a used item, or to break down and pull out the money for a new one?

My husband's opinion is to buy new every time. He says that a true sign of poverty is feeling the feeling/actuality that used is all you can get. My instinct is to repair or buy used, if you can find it. So when this comes up in our marriage we are normally a bit at odds with who's perspective wins out.

A time my perspective worked out for us, is the dishwasher that was in our house when we bought it stopped working because the electrical panel that controls it had been fired by the steam from the dishwasher. My husband agreed to a repairman. That cost us $80 just to come out and look at the appliance. The part, the electrical panel was going to be $200 and the repairman warned us that because of where the design put the panel this will most likely happen again within the next two years. I then got on craigslist and found someone that was upgrading all their appliances to match and was selling their stove and dishwasher. (Sometimes I wish I bought their stove too). Bought their dishwasher for $60 and my husband installed it. It doesn't match the rest of our appliances, it has no frills, and is old as heck- but it works fine and has now lasted us almost 7 years and still working. I call this buy used a win.

However this time with the Washer, I don't feel is a win. My husband to help me feel better calls it a *wash*. I made the pun not him, he is not a punny person.

So I went out and looked for a washer. I found one being sold. The owner said their old washer had broken they got this one from a friend who had a dryer die and they bought a new set, but that this one (being a front loader on a pedestal) didn't fit in his laundry room. I didn't know how I felt about it. He didn't speak a lot of English (or he was pretending not to), and he knew nothing about the washer itself. I did some quick searches on my slow phone internet (because I was in the middle of no where Arizona), he went down to $80 on the price. I decided that it was the cost of the repairman so we wouldn't be out any more than if we had tried that route. When we got it home there was a connecting pipe that was busted. (We honestly could have busted it moving it just as much as they were selling it that way and I didn't see it). But looking on line we were able to purchase a replacement for $6 including shipping. So not that much more of a loss. It came a few days later, my husband installed it, washer worked fine. Life goes on. Until 2 weeks later it just out of no where, in the middle of laundry day, just stops working. The door will no longer close. I troubleshooted on the internet most of my laundry day. My husband spend some time on Saturday, and then after a complete breakdown on my part, we went to Sears and bought the simplest and most affordable Washer we could find. Brought it home and installed it. After all what is the emergency fund for? If not for appliances when you live in the middle of no where and are a family of 6.

My husband says it wasn't a bad choice, it all cost us no worse then calling in the repair man.

Back to the original question: How do you decide what to do- repair, used, new?

rules of thumb my husband and I have developed:

1. What is the price of a repair man for just coming out?
2. How often have we repaired an item (ourselves or a repairman) prior? How trustworthy were those repairs? 
3. What is the going range for NEW of the item at your local stores or online?
4. Is this a now item or is it something you can do without and save up a few weeks/months for? Is this something that we can borrow, substitute, go old school? Can we wait to at least until a better time of year (seasonal sales, moving sales, holiday sales)?
5. Have we exhausted our diy options when it comes to fixing it ourselves?
6. How long have we had this item and how many more years it is reasonable to get out of this type of item?

What are your rules of thumb when solving broken items? When do you choose to repair over Used, or Used over New?

Christmas wasn't a BUST

We had a Christmas budget, and we kept it!! How many people can say that?
When we set up out budget to be the smallest amount we could make Christmas happen at.
When all the final numbers were tallied and we came in 85 cents under budget! Yay for us!

Budget Christmas

We have always tried to keep our Christmas simple. I have no control over grandparents. But this year with the tightening of our belt we are forcing ourselves to have an even simpler Christmas.

How are we doing this?

• two gifts per child. Santa gift included. One toy and one other (in this case it is a clothing item), with a strict already saved limit on each child's total amount. If what they wanted wasn't in the budget they just aren't getting it.
• we rotate my siblings, this year we have my sister's family. I'm making their gifts.
• E-Christmas cards. With my digital scrapbooking business I made a beautiful card. We then emailed it, put it on facebook, sent it as personal message on facebook, and even sent as a picture text to a few people. With the exception of a few people exactly 6 that don't do the internet we printed and mailed to them. Spent, including stamps, $7.16 on our cards total. Even with the best deals you might get in printing out there. Once we started adding the stamps the cost of our Christmas cards was just taking a ton out of our Christmas budget.
• We decided to not do gifts outside our family this year. Normally I make some fun and cute baked good with cute packaging. Not this year. No cute packaging and no baked goods. A small part of this is that I had surgery and although I'm mostly healed I decided the stress of getting the few we were going to do was just too much. In the past we would put together about 50-70 plates ect. This year I was going to do a mash up all the left over packaging from previous years (and not buy anything this year). 
• No new Christmas decorations. In the past we've bought a few new things every year. New string of lights, replacement for broken items,  new ornaments, new cute item I thought was so fun. But we decided that we were going to buy nothing this year. No moments of weakness. No frivolous purchases, No replacing broken items. Not this year.

Here are some ideas of homemade gifts:

Jar treats
Pillowcases
pillowcase dresses
polar fleece knot blankets
aprons
artwork

Anyone of these can result in lots of options search them on pinterest.

Life will *always* be CRAZY

When Life happened before we started our financial revolution I saw it was life happens and I don't want to think about it. I would then hand whatever it is my credit card and not think about it.

So EVERY month there has been something or multiple somethings. Each time one of these things come up it has created two responses. First, getting upset at how this is delaying our ability to pay off the debt. Then second, as we change our budget around it shows us that we can take care of this, stay on track, and have managed to still pay off some debt.

Examples:

• Between August and October our family over $600 in dental work.
• End of September I chopped off the tip of my finger and we found ourselves at the ER. Between all the bills it cost us over the next couple months over $300
• In August and September everyone got sick at least once (some twice) and we had about $200 in medical bills (doctors and prescription).
• November brought us two blown tires. That was another almost $400 to fix everything connected with it.
• My doctors have been urging me for a year now to get my tonsils out. Since we've had sooo many medical expenses this year we decided that financial we'd get the best price for having them removed if we did it before the end of the year. We now added all the surgery expenses to all our crazy medical bills this year. 

But we have to remind ourselves that we are still staying afloat.

We are making progress. Since starting in June. We have paid off almost $8000 in debt. There is a small part of me that looks at all of our "life happens" expenses and think about how that is another $1500 we could have paid off. But I need to remind myself that no matter what "life happens" and will continue to happen, but as long was we are trying to do it right we'll survive. 

The month was long and I fudged it

So near the end of September we were talking about some upcoming things in October and how we wanted to budget it.
October is the LDS General Conference, and since we are Mormon that is a thing for us. Our family started what we wanted to be a tradition almost 2 years ago is to have Eggs Benedict for Conference morning breakfast (one of the two mornings). Now from my last post I ranted about the price of eggs. Plus the extra cost in the budget of buying English Muffins and the sauce mix package (I have never successfully make good tasting hollandaise sauce).
Conference is the first weekend in October, and once it was "October" I wasn't going to have time to run to the grocery store and do even a short trip. So since the money was "already" in the account for the first half of October I wanted to "borrow" from October to do purchase the items for Conference weekend. He wanted Eggs Benedict, but he was uncomfortable with me "borrow" from the next month. With considering some other upcoming events, my husband agreed to let me "borrow" to pick up what we need to cover us until our next "once a month" shopping trip.

The eggs were costly. The hollandaise sauce was more than I remembered, I normally buy two packs for our family, and the English muffins just felt so costly... That all being said I decided to take some chances, I felt guilty that I was going to spend so much on one meal. I decided to try to get buy with only one pack of sauce, and to try making my own English Muffins from scratch. I have been watching a show that is new here in the States, but has been in Great Britian for a number of years now, The Great British Bake Off. I am in love with the show. It gives me hope that maybe one day I can be a baker too. I very much recommend watching it. It is fun and educational, and makes you so hungry. I have learned so much about baking and it has inspired me to try to make more things myself. It is available on PBS.org  To learn to make the English Muffins, I found this Youtube video from a Brit. She gives a nice step by step and you know what my muffins were so tasty. In addition, I love Alton Brown. He has an episode where he makes Eggs Benedict- I love Alton, but I have tried his recipes, and although they are not impossible, as a beginner I did not succeed.

So everything turned out great. Still used a ton of eggs. But I tried to stave and be creative in other ways- and my kids loved them! But now I start my month $60 down from what I normally have. 

Ugg the cost of EGGS!

With the cost of eggs going up I have really been feeling the pinch in my grocery budget. Just as my husband and I start talking about maybe getting 2 sets of 5 dozen eggs so that we can enjoy eggs more often for breakfast. It then becomes even more not realistic in the cost. The cost last year around this time for 5 dozen eggs was about $10, often $9.99 with on sale deals of $7.99. Right now at the same store 5 doz are now $15.99. Yes I know the reasons why, but lets get realistic here- are the cost of eggs actually going to go back down- I doubt it.

We slowly been eating less breakfasts that are giving each person their own egg or two. When we first started this path 3 times a week we had eggs with toast for breakfast. Each time my family has eggs and toast we went through 9 eggs sometimes 11 if the twins decided they wanted two eggs that morning. Almost a whole dozen eggs just for one meal. Considering that is a meal that is about $3.20 for the eggs and about a half of loaf of bread that I bought at .50, yes it isn't terrible, but for $3.20 I can do a box of cold cereal and some milk for my kids and they will be just as happy. But it isn't saving us any money. Nor is having to plan on once a week going through a whole dozen eggs just for breakfast fitting that many eggs into my fridge when I do once a month shopping.

So I have increased my search in finding less egg non cold cereal breakfasts:
as a review here are some we have been doing for a while now-

• Skillet Breakfast
• Fried Rice (using rice cooked from dinner earlier in the week)
• Waffles
• pancakes
• rice pudding (overnight in the crock pot)
• Oatmeal 

This was our rotation with cold cereal once a week and eggs and toast once a week.

New recipes I have found for breakfast-

• bread pudding (been saving all the heals and make it in the crockpot overnight), here is a suggested recipe, I don't make it exactly but until I figure the perfect one out and make a post out of it this one will do
• Muffins- how did I miss this one. You  go get coffee/cocoa at a shop and you pick up a muffin, easy to make, the thing that takes the longest is heating the oven, but can also be done the night before and stored.
  I recommend this recipe by Better Homes and Garden. The only cookbook my husband owned when we got married was their big "Cook Book", tons of basic recipes that is where you need to start. I use their muffin mix recipe and then experiment with my own add ins and such. The recipe even comes with a few variations suggestions. For my family of six I often double the recipe but only use one egg (recipe says one but would be two after doubling and either add extra milk for the missing egg or I use the flax seed substitute. )
• cream of wheat or crack wheat

It makes me sad that enjoying a fried egg for my breakfast has become such a luxury. Especially since when I was in college and first married it was a super cheap breakfast compared to cold cereal. 

We haven't Given Up!

The end of last month marked the end of 3 full month of us making over our money by making over how we deal with our money. When we realized that we celebrated by pulling out the bottle of Sparkling Cider we had saved for our anniversary but when we were both sick forgot that we had it. We celebrated that we had stuck with it, that it was getting easier, and that we were slowing changing our mindset and starting new habits.

So last month's grocery budget:
It was blown. I can't find all the receipts so I can't give you exact numbers (hence I didn't report at the time), but we decided to support a school fund raiser, that ended up costing us a lot more than we initially thought. Just about everyone in our family got sick, needed a doctor visit and a prescription, initially we budgeted that the random prescription would come out of the grocery/household budget, but this experience changed our minds. After everyone got their unexpected prescriptions we were down out of grocery a little over $20. That hurts when you're only doing $200 a month. Add to that our fund raising budget fiasco and our grocery budget was left to $140. Early in the month my parents stopped at Costco for me and we ended up having them pick up more than we should have given the big picture. Opps. I had gone shopping early in the month to pick up a couple "stock up" items we use constantly, store well, and were the best price I've seen in years. Oh and each trip to the pharmacy, also ensued an item or two to make life easier for all the sickies or on me making food for sickies. When all was said and done and I went to the store for my once a month shopping I had only $75. We upped the grocery budget for the month, taking from our snowball (and a few other places in our budget to give us $110, so I could get everything we needed for a full month. But I felt like a failure. How did it get so out of hand. How it all those things add up so fast? Why does living feel like it costs so much?
But we made it through the month. We've made it through 3 months. We've paid off my student loan and my mini van. We have made progress!