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Always an Occasion to Spend

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@tarazkp
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Tomorrow, it is Smallsteps' birthday and on Sunday, the seven year itch anniversary for my wife and I, so it is a pretty celebratory weekend. Though my wife and I aren't doing anything more than heading out to dinner for a couple hours together. Prior to that, it will be more renovation tasks, as this week has been too busy at work and the evenings have been taken.

Gotta get moving!

We had a bit of an issue with the dishwasher we ordered, as the post office called about the delivery and said that someone hadn't tied it down in the back of the truck and it had been knocked around. But, the outer box wasn't damaged. Because the box was okay, the company we bought it from won't take it back immediately and replace it, but we have 7 days to test it to return it. Which is "fine", however we won't have a kitchen for another 6 weeks, so if it is damaged, we have to do a full reclamation on warranty for it...

Assholes.

Why can't people just do the job they are paid to do??

Don't we all slip sometimes?

I guess it is about the probabilities and at the moment, since we have so many "moving parts" with the renovation, some percentage of them are always going to go wrong, and because dealing with them takes a lot of extra time, the percentage of what goes wrong and the time spent correcting it is skewed. With the kitchen so far, most of the things have gone according to plan, but the things that haven't, have taken far more time than we budgeted.

Money too.

The difference in material costs from just last year is between 40-60% up, and neither of us have got a payrise anywhere near that. Which means extra time is also taken in order to shop around for deals and alternatives. If we could just buy whatever we wanted without having to worry about the wallet, then things would go much faster and leave more time for other things. But, if we did that, the difference in total cost would likely balloon out by twenty percent or more, which is a fair chunk of change on the price of a kitchen.

It is also why the old dishwasher (it doesn't fit into the new kitchen) lasted 12 minutes on an open marketplace, as many people are looking hard for ways to save money too. I have heard several people who have complained about the prices in op-shops also - not as cheap as they used to be.

Everything is affected by supply and demand.

But, I have also seen plenty of reports and anecdotal evidence that a lot of people are taking the "I don't care" approach to the recession and spending money as if it is going out of fashion. Which ironically, it kind of is, but not as fast as it is going to need to be to save many of these people from some uncomfortable and largely self-inflicted, times ahead.

I wonder how painful it will be for us.

This definitely isn't the "right time" to be doing the kitchen, as there are plenty of investment opportunities out there we could be taking advantage of now, that generates an income later. However, here we are, kitchen stripped, things ready to go. One reason that we continued on is because we have been buying pieces of the kitchen (like most of the appliances) for almost six months already, meaning that we are over the cost hill for the most part and what is to come shouldn't be catastrophic to our budget. Buying early has also meant that we were able to miss some of the largest price inflations, as well as waiting times.

Could be worse - we could be buying a car.

The kitchen is hopefully going to be with us for the next 20 years and hopefully, most of the appliances we bought will survive near that long too, so once this outlay is made, we are aiming to start clawing back into some investments with whatever extra we have. Next year, the plan is "nothing major" but as always, plans may change, because the conditions they are made for don't stay the same either.

I would however like to get into a position where there is more money coming in, than going out again. It seems that it has been a while...

But life keeps on asking for us to spend more.

Taraz [ Gen1: Hive ]

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