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House Gets a Gift Too

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Happy New Year! We survived the cruise and had a great time with our family.  We only spent about $100 total on the cruise, which is probably less than our weekly expenses would be on a normal week with groceries and gas and eating out, etc.   A huge win for us.

Not to be outdone, our house decided it needed some attention today too.  The plumbing clogged!  At first I noticed our shower draining slowly, then a little bit later, the toilets began to back up and trust me, it only got worse from there.

In our last rental house, I paid a plumber $100+ to clear a clogged drain.  I watched him, though, and realized he just ran an electric snaking auger through the main plumbing line through an outdoor access pipe and cleared the drain in minutes.  So instead of calling a plumber today, I went to Home Depot and rented the snake myself for $43, and cleared it out myself.  A big savings!

We are determined to make this a great year of paying off debt, even to the point of digging through our own sewage to save a few bucks!

We are behind on our administrative stuff due to being away, so hopefully in the next week or so we can post a debt update.  We also intend to get a lot more serious about budgeting in the new year.  So we’ll be digging into the numbers here soon.

Happy 2014! Make it great!


14 Comments

  • Reply Janet |

    Of all the DIY jobs to pick to save money, that has to be the worst! I think you have proved your commitment to saving money to the naysayers! And well done on the holiday spending.

  • Reply debthaven2 |

    Kudos to you! Unfortunately, in my experience, it is unlikely that you will never need to use one of those again. I’m guessing it happened because you had more people around than usual because of the holidays. It could happen again, the next time you have a full house, or when you have kids.

    If it does happen again, it might be worth purchasing one.

    We have also had to have our drains professionally “flooded”, twice. After the second time, our son came up with a great solution. Once a year, we fill up all the bathtubs and sinks, and simultaneously release the water / flush all the toilets. It’s not ideal, but our house is very old, and it’s a lot cheaper than paying hundreds of dollars in our VHCOLA for a professional to “flush out the system”.

  • Reply Heather |

    Wow! I had no idea you could rent those at home depot, thank you! This April we had to pay someone $350 dollars to get our main drain snaked, and all he did was use the same thing for about 15 or so minutes (I wasn’t counting the time, but short!). Thank you for teaching me something new!

    I was told for preventive, it doesn’t hurt to have it done once a year incase roots start to grow back, but I haven’t looked too much into it.

  • Reply Kristina |

    This has nothing to do with getting out of debt…but please tell me y’all watched that Wild Card game.

    • Reply Adam |

      yes! i was sitting with some friends who were laughing at me at halftime when I said Luck was the Comeback Kid. They laughed even harder when he threw that interception in the beginning of the 3rd quarter. But they stopped laughing when the points started piling up. great game, instant classic.

  • Reply PonyRyd |

    I am curious if we could get any details around “about $100 total on the cruise”? There was a lot of talk before you left about how to save money on the cruise, just wondering if you could comment on what worked or didn’t.

    • Reply PonyRyd |

      I find it interesting that you would both take time to reply to the message about football, but neither one replied to a direct financial question on a financial blog. Maybe this is why you get so much grief in the comment sections. Just saying!

      • Reply PonyRyd |

        Crickets! Please consider a new blog where you can talk about whatever you want and leave this one for someone who wants to blog a debt reduction and finances.

        • Reply Adam |

          Please consider finding a new website to frequent. Maybe mentalfloss.com or buzzfeed.com.

So, what do you think ?