by Tricia
This week has been a pretty expensive week for us. We had relatives coming in, and I am super proud to say that I only spent $20 in anticipation of their visit. In the past, I’ve gone overboard with buying things for our house to make it look “better.” One could think of it as trying to make it look like we are better off financially than we are.
I did spend the $20, though, to use to start to fix our walkway. We were going to try to see what we could find throughout the summer to use (maybe some free bricks or something), but with the impending visit, we went out and bought some new bigger patio bricks that were $2.00/each on sale.
The funniest thing about buying them? Right after we paid for them, it started raining and it pretty much didn’t stop until our relatives arrived. All we were able to do was set them down on the ground and nothing more. At least it shows that we were working on it, right?
I don’t know about the rest of you, but when we have relatives visit…we like to treat them to meals. They took the time to come up to visit (a 10+ hour drive), spent the money on gas and a hotel room, so I want to pay for their meals. Being as the relatives were my in-laws, it was a struggle to be able to do that.
The one restaurant we went to I thought I had it all set up with the waitress. When she took my order, I quietly slipped in that she needs to give me the bill. She agreed. Come bill time, it was sitting right next to me. I was reaching over for the take home container and my mother-in-law went for a mad grab for the bill. I was onto her though, and with cheetah like reflexes I grabbed the bill with my other hand. It was an awkward move, but I secured the bill. That was a close one.
Now, before everyone starts saying that we should have let them pay the bill because they appeared like they wanted to, we did let them pay for the first restaurant meal. They also had a reason they wanted to come up to visit us…they were going to help us put on new doors.
Way back when, I’ve discussed how we’ve had a hard time getting a handiman out to our house to do some much needed repairs. That repair has been our doors. At the time, I didn’t want to publicly announce it because our doors were so bad that one could break in with little force. The winters were horrible because the doors were so old and the moisture would get in them (they were wood doors) and they would swell and contract and they were splitting. I am still amazed they remained intact over the winter. It was a very bad situation, but one we lived with because of our troubles to get someone out to our house to do them. With the handiman, I thought I was getting somewhere. But again, I left messages with him and never heard back. Very frustrating.
Well, my father-in-law is a retired carpenter. He knows how to put in doors. So they decided to come up to visit for that purpose. They also live in a major metropolitan area versus the rural area where we live. They purchased the doors down there, and the grand total came to $500 for two steel doors, a storm door and good lock and deadbolt sets. For us, the cheapest we could find the same doors locally was for $500. That is only for the steel doors!
With them bringing the materials to us, we are already saving over $200. Then with my husband and father-in-law putting in the doors, we saved even more money on the labor. Now we have great working doors that will keep our home secure and help to keep us warmer this winter! Words cannot describe how happy I am to have them. They were a long overdue repair.
In total, we probably spent around $600 that we normally wouldn’t have spent in a given week. My husband does have work at the moment, so I do believe we will end up in the positive this month even after spending this money. As a plus, we didn’t have to tap our savings account to pay for the doors. We may have to tap it to pay some medical bills that I haven’t paid yet, but that’s another story developing.
All in all, the $600 was money well spent for now I can put my mind at ease when we leave the house and this winter I don’t have to worry about our doors breaking. Sometimes, peace of mind is worth it.
Yeah, I’d say the doors qualify as an “emergency”, and as such, needed to get repaired one way or another. As a side note, usually, when I’m visiting someone out of town, I pay for their meal as a thank you for taking time out of their busy schedule to play host. In this case, I think it was apporopriate for you to pay for your in-laws’ meal, since they were visiting to do you the huge favor of bringing and installing your doors.
It’s funny, I’ve been thinking the past few days about your repair situation, and wondering if you had been able to get anything done. I guess this answers my question 🙂
How wonderful for your in-laws to take the time and effort to come and put your doors in for you! Having such kind, generous relatives is certainly a great benefit, and it was entirely right that you should pay for the meal. I would have done the same thing.
Handy relatives and spouses (mine included!) are fantastic. They can save you up to 300% of a cost of something (take for example, the old truck my father in law found for Husband, that was selling at a quarter of what it was worth, only because he happened to talk to someone)
With an improvement on your home like this, you might be eligible for further discounts on your homeowner’s insurance. You might want to call your agent – it’s worth a shot.