After a weekend spent working around the house, I was reminded of the value of being able to make simple fixes yourself. I’m a reasonably handy guy, and I take a certain amount of pride in being able to fix simple plumbing, electrical, etc. problems myself.
Beyond the satisfaction that comes from maintaining my own house, there are a number of financial rewards associated with doing this.
1. Doing it yourself means that you don’t have to pay someone else to do it. Given how much electricians, plumbers, etc. charge per hour, your savings can be substantial.
2. Depending on how you’re paid, hiring someone else to repair things instead of doing can cost you a decent chunk of money in terms of lost wages. Given that most professional tradesmen work business hours, someone will have to be available to meet them, explain the problem, and then babysit them while they finish the job.
3. Often times people put off minor problems off until they become major problems, primarily in the interest of saving money in the short term. But guess what? Major problems can cost disproportionately more to fix than minor problems. If you knew how to make basic repairs, you’d be able to head a lot of these things off before they get out of hand.
4. Finally, depending on the sort of problem that you’re experiencing, the fix itself can result in direct savings. For example, we had a couple of leaky toilets. The fix was dead easy — it took a grand total of about 2 minutes to replace the “flapper” in each toilet (ignoring the time required to buy the replacement parts). And yet, from here on out we’ll be saving money on our water bill. It might not be a lot, but everything counts.
The good news is that, if you don’t know how to do any of this stuff, salvation can almost certainly be found online. While I typically just end up Googling to find what I need, there are also some nice one-stop repositories of do-it-yourself, such as eHow.com, DoItYourself.com, and Instructables.com that can serve as good general resources.
(Note that Instructables tends to feature more cool hacks and fewer simple fixes, but it’s still worth a look. Thanks Tyler!)
译文:
要省钱，自己动手修理吧
在为这栋房子忙活了一个星期后，我开始意识到了自己做些简单的修理工作的价值。称我自己是一个手巧的人确实很合理。我对于自己能做些简单的修理工作，比如修水管，修电路等相当自豪。
除了由于我自身能够维护自己的房子因而产生的满足感之外，做这些简单的修理工作还有许多财政上的好处。
1. 自己动手意味着你不必再花钱雇人替你做这些事了。考虑一下如果请人来修水管、电路等，每小时你要花去多少钱，你自己动手节省下来的钱可就十分可观了。
2. 根据你的酬劳，再想想你花去的工资，自己不干活而雇佣他人会花去你一大笔钱。想想那些最职业的商人们吧，他们在工作的时候，有人会和他们会面，向他们解释问题，然后在完成工作后犒劳一下他们。
3. 人们为了在短期内省钱，通常都会把小问题搁置一旁，直到小问题变成大问题。但是猜猜这会造成什么呢？解决大问题所需的花费与解决小问题所需的花费完全不成比例。如果你知道怎么做些简单的修补，你会在问题变得超出你的掌控范围之前就遏止它们。
4. 最后，基于你所经历的问题，修理工作自身就能节省金钱。举例而言，我们有一些漏水的厕所。修理它们是在是易如反掌——你总共就需要花费两分钟把每个厕所里的阀门换一下（你买这些替代品的时间不计算在内）。还有，从现在起，我们还要节省水费。这些钱可能不多，但是点点滴滴加起来就多了。
还有一个好消息，如果你不知道如何做这些事，网上都能找到解决之道。我很典型，我就是在谷歌上找到了我所需要的，这里还有一些能让你一步到位的网站，比如eHow网站，DoItYourself网还有Instructables网，它们都能为你提供很好的资源。
（注意：Instructables网特色在于提供许多不错的工具，但是简单的修理方法较少，但是仍然值得一看。多谢泰勒！）