A Surprise Anniversary Gift
Today is Mr. Sense and my four year wedding anniversary! My wonderful parents are taking the kids for the evening, and we’re looking forward to a decidedly un-frugal dinner at the fancy French restaurant we went to the night we got engaged. We agreed a while back not to buy each other anniversary gifts, and we both made cards for each other rather than paying $8 each for a card from Target (I had to catch my breath after seeing the greeting card prices–wow).
However, a mini disaster struck in the Sense household this week that caused me to receive an early anniversary present after all… our refrigerator broke down. The timing wasn’t ideal, since we’re hosting thirteen or so people for dinner on Christmas Eve.
Non-FIRE individuals in our position would have looked at the broken fridge, groaned, and headed straight to Lowe’s. We are blessed to be in a financial position where this was a reasonable option. There is a big range in new refrigerator prices, from a little over a thousand dollars to five figure super fridges. Obviously, a (sort of) normal family like ours could make do with a normally priced fridge.
But instead of panicking and dropping four figures to solve our problem, Mr. Sense calmly moved the stuff out of our current room temperature fridge outside, where the weather has been in the 20s at night and high 30s during the day. Then, we sat down and talked about our options.
The broken refrigerator was pretty old. I recalled our home inspector had marked it well past its prime three years ago when we bought the house. After pulling the fridge away from the wall and inspecting it for an obvious cause of the issue, we decided not to invest any funds in repairing the old dinosaur.
So, we needed a new refrigerator. My parents had just purchased one for themselves, and my dad advised me that pricing was similar across the major retailers like Lowe’s and Home Depot. I browsed their websites and took note of the holiday sales prices. Not too bad.
But, we’re a FIRE household, which means we’re going to try to save money on boring household expenses wherever possible. So I turned to Craigslist.
Fortunately, Staunton is located less than an hour away from Charlottesville, VA, a wealthier area full of people who seem to enjoy six figure kitchen remodels. And these nice people are then left with perfectly functional appliances that don’t match their new aesthetics but take up a lot of space.
Mr. Sense reached out to three people who had posted about selling their old refrigerators. One had already sold, and one didn’t work out when he got the measurements of the appliance and realized it wouldn’t fit through our kitchen door. But one seemed promising.
Mr. Sense negotiated with the seller via text, which was easy because people who are selling their old appliances on Craigslist are typically very willing to work with you. The seller was very helpful, even removing the fridge doors before Mr. Sense showed up since we would need to take them off to get it through the door. He also provided a couple pallets to prop the fridge up in our truck bed (you should not transport a refrigerator lying flat, because it can damage the compressor).
By the time Mr. Sense and Boy Sense returned home with their quarry, it was dark and very cold outside. All four of us worked together to remove the freezer drawer (again, to fit the fridge through the back door). While the thing weighed hundreds of pounds, the four Sense family members were able to get it inside with minimal difficulty. The biggest winner of the operation was a neighborhood cat who is always trying to get inside our house. He saw the opportunity– all four of us focused on getting the fridge up the steps– and leapt inside, to the great amusement of the kids. (Kid Sense locked our own cat in her room to avoid a confrontation, and she evicted the invader after we got everything else settled.)
It’s been a couple days now, and the new refrigerator is humming along. While there’s a good chance it has less life left in it than a brand new one, we paid a fraction of the price and it’s getting the job done. We also learned how to hook up a refrigerator and detach/reattach all the doors and other parts. We saved well over a thousand dollars on the fridge, and avoided the surcharge for removing the broken one (Mr. Sense and Boy Sense managed to get the old one to the dump by themselves– it helped that they weren’t concerned about it getting dented up in the process).
This one frugal win most likely won’t speed up our journey to financial independence by a whole lot. But the attitude behind this adventure is exactly what we’re counting on to propel us to FIRE in a few short years. Mr. Sense chose to put in the effort of contacting and negotiating with Craigslist sellers, driving a few extra miles, and putting some muscle into the operation, rather than taking the easy way out and just pulling out a credit card to make the problem go away.
If we can approach more of our needs and wants in this way– calmly reviewing our options and being willing to throw in some of our own physical labor to save money– over time, we will not only add to our brokerage account, but also to our physical fitness and bank of knowledge (Mr. Sense now knows how to connect a fridge and where our water shut off valve is!)
