If you live a busy life in the city, you may have noticed that you’ve been paying for a lot of services from haircut to car wash. A serious saver would sometimes wonder if some of those services can be self-helped. With the economy heading into recession, you may feel more pressure to explore any possible ways to save money. If you consider do-it-yourself approach, here are some thoughts:
The first thing you should consider is of course, cost vs. benefit. Ask yourself whether it’s relatively easy to do the job yourself (instead of hiring somebody else). For example, washing a car is probably an easy job that anyone can do. But if you live in a city condo, it may be out of the question. Most apartment owners prohibit their tenants to wash cars in parking lot. On top of that, there may be no water source nearby, making the task more complicated. Even worse, some tenants may have to park their cars far away from their building (on the street). So to those people, self car washing is not an option. Others may realize that it takes too long and too much work to complete a car wash, that it’s not worth saving $10 to $15 for regular carwash services. On the other hand, those who park their cars in garage or in their own homes, sending their cars to carwash services is very likely a waste of money.
The second consideration would be about acceptable quality of the services. For example, you may have thought of saving $12 haircut by grabbing the scissors and cut your own hair. Wait a minute, $12? Yes, I know most services charge a regular men haircut in the upper $20, but if you go to a cheaper barber in China Town, you can get one for $10. Now, unless you know exactly what to do, or at least really enjoying cutting your own hair, you may realize it’s not that simple. If you’re not happy with your hair going out, saving $12 is never worth it. If your haircut looks ugly or bothersome, remember that it will bother you for a whole month, not just one day. It may end up costing you more, as you may give up and go to a barber anyway. And even so, your hair may be too short to be fixed properly. So make sure that the quality of your work is acceptable to you, or else forget about it.
There’re tons of stuff that you can save by doing the job yourself, such as replacing your window panes or fixing your vacuum cleaner. I know that many of us don’t have the expertise to fix a computer or do our own tax returns, but small chores that a handyman can do, it may be worth to take a look at. Even a tool box is relatively cheap (compared to labor cost) to own one in your home, and taking apart (and putting together) mechanical things such as a bicycle parts is pretty easy and can be fun. For example, your vacuum cleaner breaks down. It’s very likely that the belt is worn out and broken. It costs only a few dollars to get a new one and change it yourself, whereas asking a serviceman to fix it can cost more than ten times as much. Believe me, once you grab a screw-driver and open up the machine, you’ll realize that it’s pretty much a no-brainer.
I know there are people who think a garbage disposal problem is beyond their ability to fix. Wrong! Because I was one of those people, until I realized that it’s a laugh. A few months ago my garbage disposal suddenly stopped running. When I turned it on, I only heard a tiny humming sound. So just when I was about to call a serviceman to take a look, I got curious and started to search Google for a similar problems. Much to my surprises, there’re a bunch of websites talking about similar problem with garbage disposal, some of them even post video instruction on how to fix it. And voila, I searched under the sink and found the tool that comes with the disposal, and used that tool to turn the blades around. There was nothing stuck in there really, it worked again like nothing had happened! After this little event I learned two things, first: I should always try to fix things first before hiring someone; second: it’s very helpful to search the Internet first, because it’s very likely that many other people already experiened the same problem and posted their solutions online.
Lastly, if you have time, try learning a bit every day about areas of expertise such as computer system or accounting. If you understand enough to file your own tax or fix your own computer, it’ll save you money and time. Perhaps that’s where knowledge really means power.