Ounce of prevention can be invaluable later
- B.J. Yoder: Young Money
- June 9, 2022
- 580
“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” is a sage saying I never understood until I had things that broke down — cars, housing appliances, even my body.
I was always reactive instead of proactive, and that normally resulted in a higher bill because it seemed like I would always wait for something to go bad instead of making sure something doesn’t go bad.
Take for example what I’m running into right now. My car just turned 100,000 miles, and as it did that, a notification popped up saying “please change timing belt.” I didn’t know anything about that, so I called around to some mechanics and found out through research that it is not a quick, cheap fix. It takes a day if not two days to fix because the engine must be taken apart. Time spent means money, but like I told a mechanic I was on the phone with, I would rather spend the money now to fix it instead of letting it go and down the road spend more if it affects the engine.
Another thing could be as simple as a filter for the furnace in your basement. When I bought a house, I had no idea it needed changed, and I never informed the renter either. Thankfully, nothing happened, but I was a lucky one. If I wouldn’t have changed that $20 filter every three to six months, it could have resulted in overheating, clogged air, and it would have caused the furnace to work harder than it needs to. Does that $20 filter seem like such a big deal when the HVAC guy is out to fix the furnace and the bill will be much higher than that?
The last thing is your body. I ran a couple of marathons a couple of years back, and for training, I would simply get out of bed and run cold straight from that. I wouldn’t stretch, warm up or anything, I would just go straight from sleeping all night to running more miles than I should have. Eventually, that caught up with me, and my Achilles tendon seemed to become rock hard and the only thing that would loosen it up would be more Icy Hot than I should have used.
This eventually resulted in my Achilles tendon hardening, and now it cracks daily. Of course, hindsight is 20/20, but if I would have done the correct stretches, warmed up, I wouldn’t be paying (not financially) for this now. The prevention would have helped the cure.
On this topic, the people who know the most about this are truckers because they do what we call preventative maintenance. This is regular maintenance on their trucks so the trucks they own don’t unexpectedly break down in the middle of nowhere and then time and money is lost. This isn’t foolproof, and it does not have a 100% hit ratio, but I would guess no trucker or truck company owner regrets doing this. For truck owners to do this, it takes preparedness, intentionality and strategy to make sure there is routine maintenance on the trucks.
Now we’re not driving 18-wheelers down the highway, but on a much smaller scale, we can still be taking steps to ensure we don’t have large expenses that could have been helped: small things such as getting your oil changed on time, taking care of your body by eating correctly so the cholesterol stays lower and you don’t have to buy pills, or clearing the gutters when you notice they are not doing their job. It’s the seemingly unimportant things you do that will prevent (some) large expenses from happening.