You may have read a little while back that we are having a bit of a bad year with our house. We have had one thing after another break and some things were pretty big… like a bad storm blowing a chunk of our roof off. Sometimes I think we forget how stressful being a homeowner can be and it can be easy to miss the days where a landlord or letting agent took care of these kinds of things. So, with us having such a bad year I thought it was important to start thinking of ways to cope when life throws you these unexpected house repairs that can’t be put off.
Have an emergency fund
The most sensible thing would be to have an emergency fund put away for if anything bad happens. We did actually have a sort of nice amount in a bank account up until a couple of months ago but this is what we spent on the house repairs. Unfortunately, now the emergency fund is no more and we need to start building it back up again when we have some spare money. Without the money we did have saved up I’m not sure how we would have paid for everything.
Quotes
Something we have been guilty of is just getting someone in as quick as possible to fix our problems. This has caused us to pay emergency call out fees and probably higher rates than we needed to. It really pays to shop around in most situations and that’s definitely the case when it comes to tradesmen and services.
DIY
Some jobs might be smaller than you think and could maybe be done yourself. We have searched on Youtube before calling out a handyman or tradesman to see if we could do something ourselves. This isn’t always the case, especially if you have something like a roof falling off or a sink that falls apart but there is plenty that can be done with a bit of research. Also, you might be able to do a quick fix cheaply and then save up to have a job done better a little bit later down the line.
Regular maintenance
Something I have started to do this year is to put together a list of jobs that we need to get done around the house. This could be anything from repairing some of the pointing on outside walls to draught excluders ready for winter Being able to see problems before they happen can save you loads of money in the long run if you can prevent an emergency fix from happening.
Even with all of the planning in the world sometimes we are caught short and need help quickly. You may need to borrow some money until payday comes around and CashLady offers short term loans that could help you out in an emergency.
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Disclaimer: This is a collaborative post. All opinions are our own.