Well, I guess this is my first post here though I hope to be posting more in the future. But my burning question, as of this moment, is as follows:
Couple months ago, our 20-year-old dishwasher leaked all over our 20-year-old wood parquet kitchen floor, resulting in an insurance claim in which our entire kitchen floor will be replaced (in addition to having the whole place dried out). It's an opportunity to go for a different style of floor if we want, which we do. We feel that wood in the kitchen is just not for us. Too much risk of something similar happening again and would rather have a more water-resistant floor.
We have two options: vinyl or Duraceramic, which looks like ceramic tile (big squares of hard stuff with grout in between) but isn't exactly. I won't bore you with the details.
Anyhoo: if we go for the vinyl (many styles are offered, and a lot of them are basically a great big photograph of ceramic tile, or stone, or whatever you want), we will have $0 additional out of pocket (having already paid the deductible, of course). In fact, depending on which one we choose, we could potentially get a few hundred bucks back which use in paying ourselves back for the deductible.
Going with the Duraceramic route, we'll have about $1000 additional out of pocket. I could probably cull some funds from various budget categories and cover this without dipping much into our savings. (I might get into this more in a future post, big picture is that we are nowhere near FI but it could be worse...only debt is our mortgage and we're living well below our income though I can't tell you the exact percentage at this moment)
My question is: given that the Duraceramic is, like, light years better than the vinyl IMO (looks tons better, more durable, better impression if we ever want to sell our home), would it be totally antimustachian to shell out the $1000 to get this nicer product? Several of my friends, who are of course not acquainted with mustachian ways, agree that with the kitchen being so much the hub of the home, and with this being a decision that we'll be living with for a long time, it's worth paying the extra (within reason) to get something that will make us happy.
So putting the question in more generic terms...who here thinks it's worth setting yourself back a little more (delaying your FI by however many more hours it adds up to) in the case of a home improvement such as this?
I know that we're really the only people that can answer that for US...I'm just curious to know what all of you Senior Mustachians would do. :)