What I Learned From My First Time As A Homeowner

My first time as a homeowner, I made plenty of mistakes. For one thing, I thought that I could do my own interior decoration. Spoiler alert: I have terrible taste. For another, I thought owning a home was a passive endeavour. I had found my dream home and gotten a mortgage and assumed that was it.

It took less than a year for me to realize I had made a terrible mistake. Even though the home I had bought was fairly new, I had to spend a couple thousand dollars on maintenance and repairs. And there were things I simply could not afford to take care of due to a lack of funds.

It turns out that homeowning can be very expensive. Maintenance and repairs are a matter of when, not if. Since you're probably going to own your house for many years, if you don't regularly take care of these things, you will be left with a broken monolith that will be too expensive to fix.

One way of ensuring you can stay on top of repairs and maintenance is to get a home warranty. Let's take a brief look at what a home warranty has to offer.

A home warranty works as a kind of insurance for your home and its contents. You pay a monthly premium, and when something breaks, the company sends someone to fix it. Instead of waiting until you have the money for repairs, everything gets taken care of immediately and without you having to pay out of pocket.

Most of us simply don't have money left over at the end of the month, unless we choose to dip into our savings. A home warranty circumvents that issue.

But is a home warranty worth it?

There are a number of things you need to take into account when you are deciding whether a home warranty is worth it. Of course, you are going to start with the cost of the premium.

Different home warranty companies offer plans at various premiums. The cheapest might be a dud, but don't make your choice by how expensive a plan is.

Then you need to figure out how much you can expect to spend on maintenance over the years. This will depend on your home – its value, age, and contents.

You also need to think about deductibles and co-payments. Many home warranty companies cap how much they will pay for certain services through "limits", so be sure to look into the fine print for these numbers.

To assist you in coming up with the numbers, you can use this in-depth home warranty calculator.

Ultimately, whether getting a home warranty is worth it depends on a number of personal factors. However, as a general rule, it will save you money. Not only that, but it will ensure you have the funds available when you need them, without having to keep a separate savings account for this purpose.

Getting a home warranty will ensure your home is in a good condition for years to come. Rather than waiting years to get maintenance done, you can fix issues as they come along.