This post is a follow-up to my last post and plays to my personal desire to be self-sufficient (What Happened to Self-Sufficiency?). 

Simply put, I don’t like to be helpless and knowledge is power.  I have found that there isn’t much I can’t learn how to do—the library, the internet, or the bookstore usually has the answer, or the help of a knowledgeable person at the store.  I will add there are some things that I want a pro to tackle due to safety (to borrow from Clint Eastwood, “A man’s gotta know his limitations . . .”) or lack of highly specialized tools. 

As an example, not doing the basic maintenance on your auto?  You will never learn about you car and you may, at some point, end up on the side of the road helpless.  Are you changing your own windshield wipers, headlights and taillights, air filter, batteries, and wiper fluid?  Congratulations!  Now it’s time to move up to your oil and filter, antifreeze, tire rotation, and spark plugs. 

Besides saving yourself a boatload of money (outrageous labor costs and sky high markups on parts), you start to learn about your car.  You will have to open the hood and the owner’s manual.  Doing this means you may not be entirely helpless when a problem strikes.

I won’t do alignments, tire mounting, and heavy mechanical work for safety reasons or for lack of specialized equipment, but I am not unfamiliar with my vehicle and I owe much of that to basic maintenance work I tackle.  What else can you apply this philosophy to?  Perhaps home improvement and repair?

Learn, grow, and save . . .