Why is a 30 year mortgage better than a 15 year mortgage?
House Pictures
Everyone always says that owning a home always comes with the hidden costs of maintenance. When asked for an estimate of how much that would cost, no one can ever give you an exact figure. Instead, they generally just list all the things that could possibly go wrong.
With this page, I plan to keep track of all the things that I have had to spend money on, that I wouldn’t have had to spend money on at an apartment. I would like to note that my house was built in 2000, so it is still fairly new and shouldn’t experience any major problems for a while. I won’t be listing things such as buying a lawn mower. But if it breaks, I will list the cost of getting it fixed.
I will be listing things such as the cost of a home warranty, but at the same time only be listing the out of pocket expenses of repairs. So if the warranty covers it, it doesn’t cost me anything (after the deductible is met). Just to keep an accurate record though, I will relay what the cost would have been without a warranty.
| Date | Incident | Cost after Warranty | Cost w/o Warranty |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3/31/2008 | Fertilizer and a spreader | $49.17 | $49.17 |
| 3/25/2008 | Overhead Door Company | $302.20 | $302.20 |
| 2/14/2008 | Paint | $50.00 | $50.00 |
| 2/7/2008 | Terminix | $135.42 | $135.42 |
| 5/23/2008 | A/C Freon Recharge | $60.00 | $120.00 |
| 5/23/2008 | Terminix Quarterly Visit | $96.34 | $96.34 |
| Total: | $693.13 | $753.13 | |
It has come time to renew our home warranty. It’s like $550 a year. Write now, I’m thinking a big “no”…but I’m still thinking about it.
Update 8/22/2008
I was bored, so I figured that I would do a little update to this. The chart above is still pretty accurate, but I’m tired of fooling with it. I’m just going to give a brief run down of what has been going on and what the totals for this year are so far.
The Terminix man comes every quarter, but it is only like $90 or so. Everything else is listed above…so from January to now, the House maintenance expenses are at $702.18. I never can tell if I should include other types of expenses too…so I’m going to list them here just to give an accurate picture.
My “yard service” expenses are basically anything I have to spend on a yard — those come to $277.57 so far for this year, and the largest part of that was a weedeater. Other things include fixing broken water sprinklers, buying fertilizer, buying the spreader for the fertilizer, buying yard tools, buying bags to put leaves in…that kind of stuff.
So, less than $1000 so far for upkeep on the house. If you want to put that into perspective with other things I pay monthly in this house, here is a list of some totals of other bills.
Electricity –> $1,320.95. Cable, Home Phone, Internet –> $1,270.72. Cell Phone –> $1,132.35. Gasoline (just my vehicle) –> $1,799.43. Dining out (mainly lunches throughout the week at work) –> $1,975.61. Pet care (vet visits, grooming, grooming supplies) –> $747.
In comparison to everything else we pay for, home upkeep seems to be a very minor expense so far…and a few of the things are one time purchases (which I’m sure will continue to occur, since things inevitably break).