I am working on a budget. Ouch! No wonder I always feel broke! :-)
1. Have any of you installed those black screens over your windows? If so, would you recommend that for improving your utilities? If so, what company would you suggest?
2. We have always had pest control. Has anyone had it, then dropped it, and if so, how did you feel about that decision in the end? I rarely see "pests" other than a rat in our garage one time and occassional ant hills in the back yard-- not sure if that is because we don't have much threat or it that is because we have pest control services.
3. Same question only with a lawn fertilizer company-- anyone go from having it to not? If so, did you find it much of an overall savings doing it yourself? How labor intensive? Did you have problems with your home owner's association?
Thanks in advance for your help!
A.
We dropped the quarterly pest control services and just call to have them come out 1 or 2 times a year as needed. We see a few more little house spiders in the corner, but I just vacuum them up. Otherwise not much difference. My husband does organic fertilizing on our yard himself. It only takes about 30 minutes twice a year. It's a little smelly, but it's gone in a couple of days and we've had no complaints.
I have an answer for #2...We don't use a pest control service. Every spring, we buy the spray at walmart or Home Depot and spray around the house (exterior only). This always seems to work great for us! Hope that helps!
Here is what we do... I don't sit down and budget things out, we figure out what is best for our situation and go from there....
1. Black screens....No. We do, however, have window tinting throughout the house and it was not done due to sun issues. We did it because we wanted it. You can't see in my windows during the day which I like and the furniture is protected as well. We spent about $2500 for this back in 2000 and I can't say we got our $ worth but I would do it again. We don't have the dark tint, just subtle.
2. Pest control......Nope. We have never had issues with bugs. We live on a very large wooded lot and we have 3 indoor dogs. My hubby treats our yard himself. We bomb the house about 2-3 times a year (pain in the rear but worth it), when we do the bomb, we immediately do the perimeter of the house and the entire yard. We probably spend around $200 to do this but we have no bug issues and never have. It is simply some sweat equity in the process.
3. Lawn fertilizers, etc.....Nope. Again, you can easily do this yourself.
Lawn service.....we have fired 3 companies because of constant fungus our yard got, cutting too short so it would die out and they would not have to work as hard, etc. We paid on average $220 a month for 12 months for this service and finally said ENOUGH.
This past spring, my hubby went out to Plano Equipment and bought what he needed to do the yard himself. We spent around $2000 by the time we got the mower, blower, weeder, etc. This year, our yard was in better shape than EVER and for the first time, cared for the way WE wanted it done. Yes, a lot of sweat equity again and time consuming but worth it.
Security monitoring.......Nope. I see no reason to have this when there are so many false alarms. We use it for the babysitter chime which we like and I only arm the system when hubby is out of town or something like that. My neighbors, although not that close to us in perimeter, know that if they hear my system....check up on me and call police.
What WILL save you money.......We installed about $2000 worth on extra insulation in the attic. We installed and upgraded completely the AC/Heating/Furnace ($17,000). Installed and upgraded garage doors and openers ($2500), Installed and upgraded hot water heaters ($1800). Yes, we spent a small fortune but our $700+ electric bills we had last year are gone. This year we never hit $400 for our 4000+ sq ft home. Of course, these upgrades were not all done at once. Another thing...when you have a major upgrade that is costly.....offer to pay cash for a discount and you can usually get a percentage off your bill.
We built this home in 2000 and we'be slowly been rebuilding and redoing what the builder did. The monthly bills on the house have consistantly been going down with our upgrades to more quality systems.
Now is a good time to refinance if you can. DO NOT roll closing costs into the new loan, do not do escrow. We pay our own taxes and insurance. During the year WE get the interest on that money. It takes discipline because there is no doubt that we will have a huge tax bill in Dec and insurance bill in Feb. We plan.
If you use credit cards....make sure they are paid in full every month. Do not carry car loans, etc. Remember to always PAY YOURSELF first.
Hope some of this info helps in some way.
we got rid of the pest and lawn fertilizer company. never been a problem, not a big deal to do it yourself, and yes, it's definitely cheaper to do it yourself.
we also renegotiated our monthly alarm contract.
you should also get rid of your satelite/cable since so much of that you can get on demand off the internet.
We have the Solar Screens that you are talking about and absolutely LOVE them!! They make our house much more comfortable in the summer and, if I remember right, are fairly affordable.
We do have quarterly pest control, but it goes along with our termite monitoring. We had termites (just in one small spot) years ago and had to have the house treated. Now we are monitored. My MIL is a realtor and said that once you have them you must stay monitored to keep up for when you are ready to resell the house. I'd say that if you have never had termites that once a year maintenance (including termite inspection) would be enough.
We do our own fertilizer, it's not that big of a deal and is MUCH cheaper to do yourself.
