New Homeowner? Tips for Creating a Home Maintenance Budget
Being a homeowner is a big responsibility. When you rented a home from someone else, you didn’t have to pay much attention to home maintenance and repair jobs. If something broke down, you could just pick up the phone and call the property manager or landlord. They’d send over one of their maintenance workers to fix the problem—hopefully sooner rather than later.
Now that you are the homeowner, it’s all on you. But there’s no reason to start stressing out. Keeping your homeowner’s insurance current will make your life a whole lot easier when the big emergency repairs come along, but you’ll still need to handle some expenses yourself.
Taking care of a home largely comes down to a couple main things:
Address Small Jobs and Scheduled Maintenance Immediately
Deferred maintenance—the bad practice of putting off home repairs or maintenance issues until “later”—is something that you must avoid at all costs.
Procrastinating on small repairs almost always causes them to grow into big, expensive repairs. And those big problems usually end up spawning other problems of their own.
For example, a small leak in a water pipe might not seem like a huge emergency. But that leak can eventually lead to damaged drywall and wall insulation, which can be costly to replace.
Not only that, but allowing that moisture to remain inside your walls and ceiling can then create mold, which can easily spread throughout your entire home. That can cost you thousands of dollars in mold cleanup—and even health problems!
So Stay on Top of Maintenance and Repairs
Fix those leaks. Replace those AC filters every 90 days. Find what’s causing that new stain on the ceiling. Unclog that slowly-draining sink.
Shop online for quality parts from an HVAC equipment manufacturer so you can fix the air conditioner—or hire a handyman to do it for you.
You get the idea. Don’t just put it off for later. Do it this weekend, before it spirals out of control.
Budget Ahead for Big Repairs and Makeovers
Some homeowners like to delegate everything out to contractors and just let them handle all maintenance and repairs.
If you can afford to do that, then there’s certainly nothing wrong with that. For other homeowners, however, DIY repairs and home improvement projects become a way of life—whether it’s to save money or simply because they take pride in doing the work themselves.
Either way, you’ll need to plan ahead, because things will break down and will need to be replaced as the years pass. Plus, you’ll likely want to remodel things at some point too.
The house will need to be repainted. The roof will need repairs. The plumbing will need an upgrade. The washing machine will burn out. The heater will need maintenance.
Some of these will be covered by warranties or insurance, but for everything else you will simply have to cover the costs out-of-pocket.
So put some money away every month into your savings ahead of time. And having a separate savings account to handle maintenance and emergency repairs is a great idea too.
If you can only spare $50 or $100 a month at first, then start with that. Then, increase your savings commitment whenever you can.
Saving for home repairs seems to be a lost art these days. But those homeowners who commit to saving will likely save hundreds or even thousands of dollars compared to those who save nothing for years and then suddenly have to max out credit cards or take out home loans to pay for these unavoidable repairs and upgrades.
Taking care of your home maintenance and repair issues can seem complicated, but it all just boils down to saving up for repairs and then making those repairs happen right away before they grow into larger—and more expensive—problems.
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Category: Home Improvements
