Today we are having our annual inspection and maintenance of our plumbing system. We have been living in this home for over three years at which time we had it built. While the technicians were here, they check all pipes, drains and connections to ensure there are no small items that need to be addressed.
Cleaning out a pipe that is not draining in a normal fashion can identify if there is a larger issue of something blocking the pipe which would need to be addressed before it totally was clogged up and water backup into the house and ruined furniture or flooring which would cost a whole lot more than the cost of a maintenance visit.
Various Things Need Inspection and Maintenance
The visit by the plumber today reminds me that it is not just physical assets that need to be inspected and maintained but also your financial assets, emotional wellbeing and relationships.
A lot of the time, we just let things run until they break down or become non usable. What if we did that with our finances or our relationships or better yet our emotions?
I hate to say this but I think a lot of people do not ever inspect or maintain these types of assets until it is way to late to fix the small issues. Afterwards the small issues become great big problems that will consume most of our time and money that if we would have just taken a little time periodically to review it would have greatly reduced the stress in our lives.
Set a time and Inspect it Yourself
For most of the things in our lives that need to be reviewed periodically, we can do them ourselves first before hiring a professional to come in and maintain or fix the issues.
Let us take finances as an example:
If you periodically review your spending and compare that to your income, you would have a feel for if there was an imbalance between the two that would need to be addressed. This would let you know if your spending was getting out of control and needed to be cut back or if you needed to find an additional income source.
This is an instance of something you can personally do. However sometimes if you do not have the knowledge, you can do some research or you could hire a professional if you considered the issue to be greater than you were capable of addressing on your own.
Extends Service Longevity
Performing maintenance helps increase the lifespan of your assets. If you have annual maintenance on your car, it will extend the life of the car and you would be able to use it for several additional years more than you would have been able to do otherwise.
Maintains Asset Value
An asset that has been maintained on a periodic basis has a greater resell value. Think about it this way, would you rather buy a car from someone that had taken great care of it and had it inspected and maintained each year or from someone that never did any upkeep to it at all and the engine sounded like it would stop working any moment.
I know which one I would choose so why would you not maintain the assets you have on a periodic basis anyway.
However Balance is Needed
However I have found that sometimes the cost of periodic maintenance is way too expensive as compared to the original or replacement cost of the asset being considered for maintenance.
Here is an example: Our coffee maker stopped making coffee. Since I am not a mechanic, to have a professional look at it for possible repair would cost a service charge of $35 not counting the cost of parts and labor to actually fix the coffee pot. However I know that I can go to the store and get a coffee pot for $35 or less depending on the features that I would like.
This would be an example where the asset had a small value that would actually hurt your finances to perform maintenance on it.