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Money OUT!

February 20th, 2012 at 02:53 pm

It's funny because they told us it would be a week (in store) to get the dishwasher, but we ordered it online last night and it should be installed tomorrow.

Woohoo!

We ended up paying $650 for the dishwasher, delivery and installation. We paid a $150 premium for the stainless steel interior and for it to be about 10% quieter. This might have been the quietest one we saw in our price range.

We just paid $10 for them to haul away the old one, partly because I found a $15-off coupon. So, mostly a wash. Basically, couldn't be any easier on us.

We will also save $100 on energy rebates and credit card rewards, which brings the final price to $550 when all is said and done.

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WE just ordered the garage door opener last night too. That one will be a couple of weeks because we ordered it online, but not feeling a rush on that. (In store they told us they could install it by today!)

Anyway, the ugly grand total on that was $350. Basically a $200 unit with $150 taxes and installation. & they will take the old one.

(Apparently Sears has one price to install everything, BUT the garage door is pretty intensive to install and they would have charged an arm and a leg to deliver the washer anyway, so we didn't feel the price was bad considering the convenience. Then again, last time they installed our garage door opener they installed *everything.* It's probably easier to rip out the old one and put in a new one. They had needed to install some rails last time?).

That is dh's belated birthday present. He's been wanting a quieter one forever.

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We save $425-ish a month for home repairs, next car purchase, stuff like that. So, basically won't really even need to dip into savings. We spent $425 (I think exactly?) to fix our heater in January. This will be $900 after rebate, rewards and all. Funny how that works? Pretty darn close to Feb/March savings.

I feel a *shrug* about it because it was extremely foreseeable and we had already talked about replacing both in 2011.

Dh asked if he should hold off on the garage door for cash flow. Nah. We carded it and it will be due around 4/1. So I won't even have to touch savings. I should get my OT bonus 4/15. It would be hard to plan it better for cash flow.

Of course, come 4/1, I will be whining about all the bills. Property taxes, life insurances, IRS bill and all this will be due. But all of the above is already saved for. I just gripe when I pay $4,000 of bills in one week. I always will!

Of course, I Feel "okay, okay, I didn't really expect *everything* to break this year? Can we cool it?" Wink Will see how the rest of the year goes. But I do share because I think sometimes people focus on the pain of savings, but don't seem to realize that this is the upside. Something breaks, you go out and fix it, and maybe we can even splurge a bit on something real nice. & that's it - absolutely no stress! & if it's tax season and you have no time but are making a extra money, then whatever. Fast/convenience wins.

This is why I am planning to save 100% of my overtime check. It will buy me bliss sometime down the road - and that is a fact! (& If I wasn't prepared, I'd be using my OT to pay all these bills, anyway?)

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I frankly don't remember the process when we bought our last garage door opener. Maybe *I* wasn't even involved. Though "buying the cheapest thing we can find" is generally not our way, I am sure it was much more in our young 20s. So, I wouldn't be surprised if that was how we bought our last garage door opener.
(We did own two homes and wouldn't be surprised if we just went cheap with it - was one of the things that did not come with new construction). All we had to buy for this house was a fridge and a garage door opener, so we just went with Sears. (Yes, I like Kenmore!) & we bought a really nice fridge, so probably went cheap on the door opener?

I thought yesterday was fascinating, in comparison. About 2-4 hours of shopping and research, and we picked out the most top-of-the-line appliances we could find in our price range. Maybe our brand loyalty is silly (I don't have many brand loyalties and usually poo-poo them), BUT there is a huge element of just narrowing it down. I think Kenmore had 20 washers in our price range and to our liking, know what you mean? I couldn't imagine adding more brands to the mix. I think one brand was all I could handle.

The process of reading reviews, narrowing down, reading consumer reports, checking them out at the store, and then coming home to re-check the reviews on what we liked in person, was an extremely fast and efficient process.

On the garage door opener, dh spent some time looking up other stores since we weren't married to a Sears specific garage door opener. But, we couldn't find a better deal anywhere. We were initially enticed by a faster door with a battery backup (same price, on sale), BUT the reviews were not favorable on the batteries. (They didn't last long, were expensive to replace, and one leaked on a car and ruined the paint - ouch). Plus, our power is pretty stable anyway (very rarely out of power). So we quickly changed our mind on the batteries. We are replacing our chain with a belt though. It should be much quieter, which dh has always had a thing about.

I just don't remember ever gathering so much useful information so quickly on the internet, when it comes to a big purchase. But I haven't bough an appliance in about 7 years. Thank you internet!!

In the morning I Was kind of feeling dread about big appliance shopping, but the day ended with confidence that we purchased some high quality products, and that it wasn't a painful process after all. Yay!

2 Responses to “Money OUT!”

  1. rob62521 Says:
    1329753006

    Isn't it handy to have such information literally at your fingertips?

    We were watching Hoarders last night and a retired school social worker didn't want to throw away a set of 1976 encyclopedias because she wanted to donate them to a school. The "cleanup expert" tried to explain that giving them a set so old would mean giving them misinformation. I thought about a few years ago a teacher wanted a new set of encyclopedias and was told that it wasn't cost effective when one could get a subscription to online encyclopedias for far less and it was more current.

    Have fun with those great money saving purchases!

  2. Looking Forward Says:
    1329761682

    A new dishwasher will be so nice! I agree with you, that type of appliance gets a lot of use so buy something that will work the best.

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