[quote=Scarlett]Zero for maintenance?? I am shaking my head. Ok, I can see painting DIY. Forget about handiness (which we don’t have). What about plumbing and wiring issues? Fixing, or maybe replacing a roof? The materials cost a ton even if you do it yourself. Let’s say you buy an older house that needs the roof to be replaced? How much is that? can you pay it out of one of your monthly paychecks?[/quote]
No, it’s not really zero.
I am merely suggesting that the expenses of maintenance displace other hobbies you may have had prior to being a homeowner. Instead of say taking your family of 4 to 5 baseball games a year, you repaint all your bathrooms and install a new vanity. Instead of that expensive ski trip to Tahoe, you replace the dishwasher AND the fridge.
This is what some people call pride of ownership. Others might call it being a slaveto your house. To each his own. Taking a cue from scaredy (Walter) for me, working on my house is worth at least $500 per month. The exercise alone is keeping me from becoming obese and in the end will save me medical costs.
People always point to a new roof as the end of the workld. A new roof every 20 years adds up to about $600 per year. I have owned 4 houses for a cumulative total of 26 years. So far I have put on 1 new roof for less than $8000. And that was in 2009.
For my personal budgeting my houshold maintenance comes out of my entertainment and recreation budget. The year we needed a new roof, we downsized our vacation.
If you want a number for long-term costs, I have a great example of a beaten down early 60’s rental property where everything was original when I bouight it, nothing is new and everything has broken at least once over the past decade. Over the past decade we’ve replaced the carpet, linoleum (gross I know), faucets, garage door, hot water tank, furnace, disposal and dishwasher (3 times) and have repainted the interior twice, and exterior once. Including the costs between tenants to clean and repair miscellaneous items (e.g. screen doors, etc) I estimate that our costs for this over 10 years is about $36K. And that’s with no DIY.
SO, assuming $300 per month for a beaten up house is within reason. If you can DIY or if the house is in better shape the numbers can go down from there. If it’s a fixer, you might need $36k in the first 2 months just to make it liveable. It all depends.
In summary … for budget purposes add $300 per month for houshold maintenance and remove $300 per month from your entertainment budget.
