Well, I gave it a go

I am really tired and a little brain dead right now but I feel like I have a lot I want to write about tonight. So I've chosen one of today's news stories (haha, I just called moments in my life "news stories") and I will be bringing you another installment of "How I'm trying to put Money Secrets of the Amish into use."

First of all today was a horrible spending day. Horrible! I don't even want to look at all the spending we did set side by side but I think I successfully put two of the book's principles into play. Our oven went on the fritz a few weeks back (and we do not own a microwave anymore). You know how much I adore baking? I haven't done any baking for several weeks except for one time when I decided I'd given the oven enough "rest" so I figured I could try to bake an apple pie. Yeah, um, it took about two hours for the pie to bake fully (it was supposed to take around 45 minutes) and the crust was weird and the apples dried out pretty badly. Epic fail and then "yep, the oven is really broken" reality set in.

My husband had said something about going to look for a new oven. I gasped and said, "Uh, no we need to call an oven repair man." He then goes, I kid you not, "do they have those and how do you think you're going to find one?" Have I mentioned that my husband is the exact opposite of mr. fix-it? Okay, deep breath... "Yes honey." Without telling him that a new oven is NOT in the budget, because really he's sick of hearing about what is not in the budget, I explained to him that our oven is really old but really nice and I am not prepared to scrap it.

The book Money Secrets of the Amish talks a lot about fixing things up that you already have instead of going out to get new versions. The author writes about how often times the Amish will go out and buy used and broken down items and fix those up instead of buying anything new.

Now here's where I could make this very long story short but my husband doesn't get that much credit so I must brag on him a little here. He took it upon himself to find and to call one of these oven repair men that he didn't even know existed. I didn't know until I got home from work one day that he'd scheduled someone to come by. He scheduled the first place that he could get a hold of (many of the numbers he called never answered). The place he scheduled has a $95 service fee. It's also a very high end appliance sales place in town. My husband all on his own decided that the $95 was way too high and that we were going got get raked. Then he got a hold of someone else that his mother recommended. This oven repair man stopped by last week, looked at the oven, ooh'd and ahh'd over the oven, said he used to own a less extravagant version of the same model, "they don't make em like the used to," and then said he'd have to order a part and would get back to us.

He left without billing us after chatting away with my husband for at least 20 minutes and came back today and repaired the oven. The total cost was $140. Here's the most interesting part to me. He said that they had "old" new parts for our oven in their warehouse. This would be a brand new part for the oven but old/ made a very long time ago (just like the oven). The old new part cost $40. The new new part would have cost $95. Mind you we never once brought up price or cost or any financial anything. He said the old new part is actually a lot better/ higher quality and he recommends it but a lot of people would prefer new. My husband was more than happy to pay $55 less for the same part. I guess all my "nagging" is really starting to sink in.

For a brand new oven, we'd probably be looking at a price tag between $500 and $1500.
For the repair we spent $140.
That's a win!

And the oven is working great now. Little Abe currently has handfuls of mini banana bread muffins in his fists. I'm not joking. We LOVE mini banana bread muffins and I've not been able to make any for weeks!