One of the most frugally liberating things ever is to learn how to do things for yourself. My husband is currently downstairs trying to fix my window washer thing in my car. It pooped out during my trip, and wow, I never realized how often I used it!
After years of saying that we wish we knew how to do things on our cars, we're putting our money where our mouth is. We're both trying to acquire more skills when it comes to our cars. My parents usually had our car serviced. My father knew how to do many things, but did not like to spend the time to do it. When he did, he rarely let my sister and I help. My husband's father did tons of things to their cars, but was the type of person where everything must be done perfectly the first time, and done his perfect way the first time. As a result, my husband did not do much work on cars in his child and teenagehood.
We had hoped to take a class on basic car maintaince, but the classes we've found so far have been far more advanced than we currently are! There is also the fact that we own few tools and do not have a garage or any place to store very many tools. But that is not stopping us. So far we've learned how to change oil. A friend of ours showed us, and while it was not as easy as I had been led to believe, it was not terribly difficult. I am glad that we had someone to walk us through it in person. Reading the book that I had checked out from the library was not quite as clear as our friend actually showing us what to do.
If you're looking for some extra income, and you know how to do these things, perhaps you should advertise yourself as a teacher of minor car repairs! I'm sure there are many people willing to pay a fair amount just to have you come do some hand holding while they learn to change their oil and other basic maintaince things. It's a thought!
In the meantime, we'll stick to books and the wonderful internet. Knowledge will save us money.
Update: My husband's replacement of my window washer pump worked, and the part he bought only cost 13 dollars. It took him about two hours, including looking up the directions, buying the part, and doing it.
3 comments:
An option for young adults (or even we old ones!) to learn some "common" skills is just to develop friendly relationships with neighbors. We moved into our first home here in Wichita as young marrieds and were blessed to have a lot of retired neighbors. We learned so many things from them, just by leaning over the back fence for a chat or by watching how they did things. Now that we are older and in a new neighborhood we are tickled when the "young folks" around ask our help or advice.
I've been so nervous about changing the oil in our new car. I'm going to do it today!
Thanks for the encouragement.
One of the best things I learned to do was change a car battery. Labor is the expensive part, and you can often find really good batteries on sale at places like AutoZone. We bought a great one for subzero temperatures on sale right before we moved to Buffalo and installed it ourselves. The total cost was $45 (and an old t-shirt that we used as a rag).
There are some pretty good books out there--my battery-changing instructions came from one that was written by a female mechanic who is probably in her 70s now. She worked on lots of muscle cars in the 60s and 70s and the photos of her in those days are really cute. It's called Lucille's Car Care. I believe the author's name is Lucille Treganowan.
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