Our apartment had a sketchy probably-built-by-the-landlord's-dad balcony over the downstairs neighbour's kitchen roof. Their roof started leaking, so the landlord has replaced their roof, the back of our roof, and the balcony. Our old slates replaced with plastic lookalikes, and the old dark metal balcony with a wooden deck. It's quite nice, but a big unexpected side effect is that the back of our apartment is at least 5 degrees cooler during heat waves, reducing cooling costs and increasing the number of days that we can make long-cooked things in the kitchen.
That got me thinking... one of the layers of safety built into FIRE is that we'll get better at doing stuff and find savings and life hacks. But we'll probably also benefit from stuff that other people do for us, things we can't predict right now.
Anybody else have stuff like this happen to them, where you go "thanks, universe!" and find yourself farther ahead?