No matter how carefully you plan car repairs, home maintenance, or appliance replacements into your budget, the unexpected is likely to occur and mess up your whole scheme. Case in point, we were doing some home repairs and flooring replacements this year when in the midst of this project, our water heater died. Rearranging our budget a bit, we replaced this necessity of life. A few months later, we were working on putting in a bathroom in our downstairs when our clothes dryer quit and was beyond repair. We had originally wanted to get a set when the time came to replace our laundry equipment, but unfortunately, with our lifestyle, we can’t do without this appliance. About 3 month after that, our washer quit beyond repair as well. After 17 years with the same washer and clothes dryer, I’m sure it was time to give up these dinosaurs, but again, it didn’t fit in our budgeting plan. Thankfully, we had replaced our refrigerator early in 2011. We were afraid the one we currently had would give out. The new one runs like a charm. The old one? Still running great in our photo studio, of course. I wish I could say the same for our dishwasher that died about a month after getting the new refrigerator. Talk about miscalculating replacements!
So, what are your options when emergencies such as this occur? Appliances are thousands of dollars now, and they can’t easily be worked in a budget. We were fortunate enough to have a family member that worked at our local Lowes and he talked to us about their scratch and dent area. This was a lifesaver to us. I rarely go into scratch and dent areas because I’ve never seen anything of interest that the discount warranted purchasing, but it’s a bit different with appliances. We were able to replace our dryer with an energy efficient, $1100 dryer for $425. You’d think from that price it would be in really bad shape, right? It was in near perfect shape with one dent in the bottom that you had to bend over to see. Otherwise, it was unnoticeable. With our washer, same deal. There was a small dent in the side on the bottom. It would be in the side next to the dryer, so no one would ever see it unless they moved either of these. We had originally hoped to get the match for our dryer so we could stack them, but considering that we got a great washer with a sensor on the water fill that had been marked down from $899 to $329, who cares if we can stack? Both these appliance have been great so far, and I only wish we’d known about scratch and dent when we purchased the dishwasher!
Next time you have appliances breaking on you right and left, give scratch and dent a try.
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