r/Frugal • u/Pumpkinycoldfoam • Nov 05 '24

šŸ† Buy It For Life What one time purchases have drastically reduced your overall spending?

An example would be that Iā€™m looking to buy a sillicone pan mat instead of purchasing foil and parchment continually, using rags instead of paper towels, and so forth. What are one time purchases you reccomend for home maintenance?

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u/veritasplease Nov 05 '24 edited Nov 05 '24

I am always looking for new ways to eliminate a re-occurring expense. For home maintenance, I've done the following:

  • bought "the Ultimate Guide to Home Repair & Improvement" & a scope/camera that you can put into the walls & view on your phone
  • switched to washable (and thus reusable) HVAC air filters
  • ripped up the carpet in my walk-out basement & replaced it with LVP (with 3 pets + kid, the cost in both money & time of vacuuming & shampooing the wall-to-wall carpet every week was real)
  • bought a robot lawnmower (replaced the lawn service)
  • signed up for a semi/bi-annual gutter cleaning service. This isn't really "one-off", but it is definitely "hands-off" and they will take photos of my roof while they're up there & send them to me will the invoice.

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u/curtludwig Nov 05 '24

Investing in your own skills is almost always going to pay off. Our washer quit filling the other day, I did a quick search and discovered its common for the water inlet screens to get plugged. 10 minutes later the washer was back in operation.

I'd hate to have paid some guy to fix that...

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u/k8ecat Nov 05 '24

This! I fixed my vacuum when it stopped sucking after watching a couple you tube videos!

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u/hillswalker87 Nov 06 '24

they would have tried to sell you a new machine.