Unplanned spending

[Linea_Norway]

Congrats on the new guitar.
Did you have to do without a guitar for months? That must have been difficult.

[GuitarStv]

About a month.  I've got two electric guitars (always bring two when playing a show because I'm paranoid about breaking a string in the middle of a set) so was able to use them.  But I play my acoustic guitar every day around the house, and do most of my writing on it.

[Roadrunner53]

Just got my well pump replaced and the cold water tank replaced. Pump was 16 years old and tank was around 30. Both lived way beyond the normal lifespan. Paid $3,900 and money well spent but kind of unplanned. Now hopefully no worries for many years to come.

[middo]

Car issues last week.  Around $300 to fix it, some of which was to replace the spark plugs, oil and filters (which I did and was expected as the car was due for a service).  But - it also needed the coil pack replaced.  Thank you google and internet!  I did it myself for $190 and saved a small fortune.

While the expense ended up being reasonably small, it is hard to plan for the extra repairs like this.

[talltexan]

I was dumb. Latch on the trunk of my car broke, and I just paid retail to get it fixed. A guy in the office told me he'd just replaced his (on an Avalon, I drive a Camry), and--if i'd ordered the part--he could have helped me do it.

$400-ish and didn't learn any new skills.

[Linea_Norway]

Our 10 year old Subaru had service today, but needs some repairs. Approximately 2000 $, a quarter of the car's current value. :-(

[NorCal]

Water leak from the fridge that wasn't noticed for ~24 hours.  As a good mustachian, I have a $5000 deductible on homeowners insurance.

So there's a minimum $5K spend.

But replacing our floors is on our 3-5 year list anyways, and we would do them entirely differently.  So we're probably going to pay to completely redo the floors.  I'll spare the details, but insurance will only cover a small percent of that.

[talltexan]

Imma need to make one of those 3-5 year list things. Sounds like a nice way to be prepared in advance of a crisis.

[Dicey]

Water leak from the fridge that wasn't noticed for ~24 hours.  As a good mustachian, I have a $5000 deductible on homeowners insurance.

So there's a minimum $5K spend.

But replacing our floors is on our 3-5 year list anyways, and we would do them entirely differently.  So we're probably going to pay to completely redo the floors.  I'll spare the details, but insurance will only cover a small percent of that.

If you've budgeted for new floors anyway, is it worth it to even make an insurance claim? Was there significant other damage?

[NorCal]

Water leak from the fridge that wasn't noticed for ~24 hours.  As a good mustachian, I have a $5000 deductible on homeowners insurance.

So there's a minimum $5K spend.

But replacing our floors is on our 3-5 year list anyways, and we would do them entirely differently.  So we're probably going to pay to completely redo the floors.  I'll spare the details, but insurance will only cover a small percent of that.

If you've budgeted for new floors anyway, is it worth it to even make an insurance claim? Was there significant other damage?

This is still an evolving situation.  The water mitigation team came out (we used the insurers recommended contractor) and had fans and dehumidifies running for 4 days.  That was $1,500.

This insurance estimate for "like-for-like" replacement was about $9,000.  This is way more than I had expected.

There's also some drywall repair.  We're still waiting on a quote for this.  My guess is $500-$1000, but I don't know much about drywall work.

Based on my original thinking, I had assumed insurance would only cover a few hundred dollars.  If that were the case, it probably wouldn't have made sense to file the claim.

Now we're looking at a $5,000+ claim after deductible, so it's now clearly worth it.