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Question about that advice to track every single expense...
A guy on a different forum told me last fall to log every dollar I spend on supplies and tools, so I started doing it in a spreadsheet... turns out I was blowing $80 a month on specialty fasteners I barely used. Now that I see where the money went, I'm wondering if anyone else has found a specific category that was quietly eating into their earnings?
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barbaradavis2d ago
Oh man, I feel this in my bones. I once counted up all the "just in case" caulk tubes I bought and it was enough to seal a small swimming pool.
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shane_wilson2d ago
Barbaradavis, that line about sealing a small swimming pool really got me. I know exactly what you mean. I've got a whole corner of my garage devoted to stuff I bought for one specific project and never used again. There's a half-used bottle of wallpaper remover that's been sitting there since 2012. It's like we're all just collecting museum pieces of our best intentions.
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caseywalker23h ago
Doesn't it feel like there should be a support group for this? I actually read an article about how we hold onto project leftovers because it makes us feel prepared for future work that never comes. It called it the "optimism bias" of home improvement. My personal museum piece is a full gallon of deck stain I bought for a repair job that took me like 20 minutes. Now it just sits there, slowly separating into a science experiment. You ever wonder what the half-life of a promise to "get to it next weekend" actually is?
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