What is your "Car Guy" ticket worth?

From a net positive cashflow point, have you stopped to consider what your value as a "car guy" is to the household budget?

Was in the process of rationalizing yet another tool purchase to Mrs NOHOME and her reply was that I should stop and save my breath to cool my soup.

In the last ten years we have not payed a mechanic, carpenter, plumber  or electrician.  People put beer in my beer fridge cause they are happy that I have fixed some of their car issues.  She loves the fact that I have an Aladdin's cave full of magical tools that fix her problems. Not to mention solving her elderly parents house and car issues.

Some of the above is due to my tool addiction. Some is due to skill development over the years on the car side that carries over to other stuff like appliances. Other is a network of people to trade with or just help cause they beer-can. 

So to anyone just starting out with what a spouse might call a "dumb car hobby"; persevere. I assure you that there is a payoff as you progress down the road.

Zero given my car and related expenses.

It's fairly significant :)

From a cashflow standpoint I'm confident that the cost of tools and equipment balanced against the saving from doing everything myself results in positive cashflow.  However, my car guy ticket is also responsible for project cars, race cars and racing which I have no doubt results in a fairly significant net loss.

Don't know, will never know, will never care! Lol

Multiple I did a quick Cost/benefit analysis to decide if I should buy the expensive tool or bring the car to the dealer. 

 I always came out ahead, a lot, buying the tool and doing the repair myself.  Then I have the tool for the next time.   So I have lots of tools.  

My ex-SWMBO thought I was wasting all kinds of time doing repairs on the cars, plumbing, etc.   

I installed a new garbage disposal one time.  The whole time I was saving  probably $300 in plumber costs she was popping in every so often wanting me "to call a plumber".    The heck with that.   I'll pay someone to haul a hot water header down the attic steps but a garbage disposal is easy-peesy.

I've personally never evaluated it that way nor would I want to.  I "play with cars" because I enjoy it.   I've certainly made some good money on cars, and I've spent a ton of money on them and the associated tools as well.  

Shortly after my wife and I were married I changed her opinion of my hobby by kicking her a few hundred any time I sold a car and that made her happy.   But when we moved and I invested more than both of our DDs combined cost in a new shop with lift, tire machines and more, neither of us were thinking about how it would "pay off"  What she has realized after 19 years of marriage is this is my version of meditation.  Its what I do to disconnect from the day to day and that is an invaluable commodity.   

 

I basically grew up in the trades, followed my Dad around from an early age and helped out as I got older.  He did everything he could himself and what he couldn’t do he had friends in other trades that could.   I ended up in HVAC after school and working as an engineer for a bit, so where to begin...  

I’ve installed entire HVAC systems, a gas boiler, hot water heaters, etc for the house. Wired the summer house (my Dad was still licensed at the time which was a huge help), did a lot of the interior work once it was framed.  Basic carpentry, cabinet making, appliance, lawn equipment and car repairs.  I have a decent woodworking shop and enough hand tools to tackle a lot of mechanical repairs.  

My wife still cracks up after over 30 years of this and asks “ how much would that have been?”  She grew up in a house where you called someone to fix things so she’s always been amazed by my Dad and me just taking care of things.  She’s never once questioned a tool purchase either.  It can be a curse sometimes I guess but it’s nice to be able to take care of most things myself. 

Probably still negative since I change cars so often, but I've certainly saved a lot of money as a general-purpose DIY guy. My kids, in particular, have really saved some coin with Dad's Garage. If I wasn't fixing things myself, we'd have well over what we paid for my son's Volvo. And yes, I make him help me so that he can do this himself some day.

Honestly, the biggest issue I have with my wife is that, since I'm more capable than average, she just assumes I can build or fix anything. She has ambitions for my house that I'll never be able to address. 

SWMBO has never questioned it. The money saved in mechanical, plumbing,  electrical, etc...is manifold and she recognizes  that.

I have skills that a "just pay a professional to do it" guys will never see.

Just yesterday, a proper, working flare tool would have saved me an hour of running around and raging against the internet. To me, that's worth the cost of buy-in.

I'm just a cheap bastard. I know my limits tho. Can I replace my broken ac unit and probably update to propane vs fuel oil? No. Did I replace a broken gas water heater? Yep.

Not really asking if your car hobby is profitable, more a case of how much do you not have to pay for day-day services because you have the tools to do it yourself. 

I have a hard data point - when we moved into the house we own now, we got a quote from a contractor of $62k to do the work that absolutely needed done. And that was the lower of two bids, from the more reputable contractor. I estimated $40k to do it myself and came in $7k under that! So $33k vs $62k. I didn't even do all the work - ie, hardwood floor refinishing, carpet installation, I farmed out to subcontractors I picked myself. We absolutely would have paid the $62k if we had to, and still had the house be a good deal.

I think the $29,000 difference more than justifies every tool I own. The 1,600sf shop maybe not so much but that's why I keep doing awesome stuff to justify it.

It depends on where your effort is directed. 
 

Personally, I know many spouses who would rather their partners work a high paying job, be home by dinner, and spend all of their time focusing on kids or helping out around the house. 
 

Ironically I also know couples who pay for babysitters while they work on house projects together. 
 

Either way, my wife respects my "me times" but gets tired of me constantly retreating to the garage when the kids need fed and bed. Doesn't leave much time to work on projects - cars or otherwise.

I couldn't even begin to add up how much I've saved over the years. I do almost everything myself. Partly because I'm a cheap bastard. Partly because I want it done right. Partly because it's usually faster to do it myself than to schedule and wait for an appointment. Partly because I enjoy fixing things. I'm trying to learn to step back and just pay the man to free up some time, but I've not been very successful at it. My wife is very appreciative. 

I feel like there's a ton of value in just learning how to do a simple brake job. Some of my friends go to the stealership and are charged $500-600 just for pads/rotors. That being said, I literally dropped the wife's Lexus off at the dealership yesterday...$150 for a brake flush seemed pretty reasonable, especially considering I don't have the tech tools to activate the ABS module in her modern car.

So much to the point that my wife gets bummed out when something breaks that she knows we aren't running out to buy a new one cause I can most likely fix it.  Although when we redid the kitchen I did finally let the new appliances roll in.  It's kinda a feel good thing having the knowledge to fix most anything, maybe it's more of a sense that it's already broke what's the worst I can do to it mentality.  Only downfall is you get called on a lot to check out things for people when you need time to do your own stuff.  I've never said no but having to help put together a Costco gazebo this weekend I think I may have been wrong to say sure. 

Its not just the cars. Its the mower, the house, sheds etc. We built our deck, saved us $5k because I knew how to design and build it. Mower needed an engine, the engine cost us $1000 including the exhaust but it was a $2100 quote. OIl changes cost us about $18 per vehicle, 3 times a year per car compared to $30. We haven't oaid for an alignment in almost 10 years. Tires I have mounted myself for .... 10 years. We haven't paid for a brake job in .... Well since I started driving in 1992. 

I'd say in a year I save us beween $1500-2000 a year in misc maintenance and upgrades average. That's $40k and the hassle of having to deal with others time schedules etc. All y projects combined are less than that before selling and recouping some of that money.

I'm in the camp of not having to be hard core about it. Just basic competence of being "handy" with simple tasks saves the most time and money. The knowledge of what tasks are quick and simple and what are big and difficult saves stress.

It feels good to have the choice of whether it makes more sense to do a job yourself or to pay a specialist to handle it for you.

Probably 10 years ago me and the wife had this convo. I figured out with quick and dirty math even with my limited skill set I have saved us 10's of thousands of dollars in cost of repairs and maintenance for the vehicles. So much so that when I need a new tool for a job she has nothing to say. The flip side is my wife is such a great cook that she has also saved us thousands of dollars over the past 30 years in eat at home meals vs eating out and being healthier in general (Also saving 10's of thousands on medical bills I'm sure) that when she wants a new tool for the kitchen I have nothing to say. I'm happy to help her in any way I can. We also work together on home improvement projects rather than paying someone to do it. I will say that once our house is paid off next year we are going to pay someone good money to completely replace the flooring throughout the house as well as new baseboards and interior doors. Happy to finally be in a position to pay someone else to do that so we don't have to.

Its definitely a negative number.

If I just drove a Prius, didn't have a garage, and didn't do any "car guy" BS I would save many thousands per year.

My wife does not begrudge me any of the tools that I've bought nor the expense of the shop space that we rent.  In fact whenever I'm hemming and hawing over if I should just try to make it work or go buy "the tool that does that thing", she's the one that's usually pushing towards buying the tool.  Her take on it, and she's correct, is that not only do we not need to pay to have cars fixed or maintained but we don't have to wait around for a shop to get to it or work around any schedule but our own.  Whenever she comes up with a costume idea that she needs a prop for, we've already got the space and in many cases the materials to build it, so it keeps her hobby moving forward as well.  And in the spirit of "the gifts that we have, we are given to share" whenever a family member or friend is staring down a big repair bill, we can help out. 

Just the other night, one of her work friends brought her car over because it needed front pads and rotors.  She's one of the lowest paid folks in the office and she was stressing out about having to shell out whatever a shop would charge for that work plus having to take time off work to get the car there and everything.  $150 in a Power Stop kit from Rock Auto and a six pack of beer and she brought it over in the evening.  The ladies chilled out in the AC in the office, I put the car on the lift and had the brakes done in no time.  And honestly, I didn't really need her to bring me the beer to do the job, but I think it's important for people to feel like they're contributing to that sort of effort at some level at least.

One of my friends from work had the PTO shaft on his mower snap about a week ago.  Apparently his brother got a little bit overly aggressive while hogging bush (not a euphemism).  I happened to be over at the shop anyway, so he brought the shaft over at about 2230 or so, we cleaned it up, I threw a bead on it, and he was back to bush hogging the next morning.  I got a couple dozen farm-fresh eggs and a bunch of summer squash out of the deal as well as an opportunity to sit around and sip on a little Kentucky-made brown liquor with a friend and catch up for a while.

Those tools and skills have bled over into other areas as well:  I've been able to keep the various appliances running here at the house for longer than what most "normals" would consider possible.  Heck, my mom was just facing having to spend something like $4-5k to replace her washer and dryer set.  For about $200 in parts, I was able to get it working better than it's worked in a decade.  A friend from work recently got a quote for over $500 to have the HVAC guy put a new capacitor on his A/C compressor/fan.  I've done that same job for about $20.

I guess the only downside is that when something does break, the normal calculus would drive most folks to get new appliances.  If it's $400 to have a guy come out, look at the dishwasher, and fix it, why not just spend another $400 and get a new one?  But for us, it's more like spending $50 or $100 on a part and spending an hour or two making the repair versus dropping $800 for a new one.  It makes it a little bit hard to justify replacing things sometimes.

In reply to gunner (Forum Supporter) :

Mine is hte same way with tools. The few times I went to rent whatever she just said "buy it, you know you are going to need it again." 

NOHOME said:

...her reply was that I should stop and save my breath to cool my soup.

How have I made it 55 years and not heard this before? Consider it stolen. 

Value? Significantly more than the cost of the tools. I will frequently buy a tool just so I don't have to pay someone else to do the work. 

I damn near bought a 48" slip roll this week to roll a piece of 1/8 3003 aluminum. My current machine wouldn't touch it. $2k was a little more than I could justify but you can bet I'll be keeping my eye out for a used one.