It never fails. We renew our commitment to build our savings to a higher level and things start breaking. In this case, our dryer decided to stop working. Knowing that you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to work on a dryer, I did some testing and discovered that the main control board in the dryer was shot. I researched the price for the part and discovered it was $100. There were a couple reasons that I opted not to buy the replacement part. 1) It would have taken over a week to ship it and we didn’t want to have to go to a laundromat. 2) I didn’t want to put $100 in to a 9 year old dryer. 3) My wife has been dying to get new front loader machines.
I spent some time shopping around and my wife and I finally settled on new Maytag front loader machines. It was killing me to buy both a new washer and dryer just because the dryer quit working but I guess I finally hit that frustration point where I just wanted the problem solved. Total cost for my indifference: $1400. They are due to be delivered on Friday.
Today I was talking to my neighbor across the street telling him that the dryer had died and that we’d bought new machines. He said, “Oh, you should have told me sooner. I’ve got a washer and dryer that are in great shape that I need to get rid of in the garage.†At first I said, “Naaah. We really don’t want to have mismatched units since you see them as you walk through the hallway downstairs and my wife wants the new ones.†Yes, I know. Pathetic. Anyway, I decided to just take a peak at his units since we were standing right in front of his house. They are an exact match to what we have. Not close. They are an exact match. So, I bought the dryer for $50 and am heading down to cancel our order at Home Depot tonight. At least I finally realized I was being a bonehead.
I have the same internal debate alot, is it worth fixing it? I bought an $85 seal to fix the $150 washing machine I bought on ebay. I figure if I was going to buy a new one it would have cost me way more. What’s the life expectancy of a washer dryer anyway? I don’t know. My grandfathers been using his for 30 years. Maybe 8 years it’s not that old?
My parents had a front-load Maytag and had nothing but trouble from it. They even got a whole replacement washer from Maytag and it was also trouble. They went back to the old top-load kind.
I would really recommend checking out reviews of those Maytags before making that investment.
Nice recovery. Our dryer stopped working a couple weeks ago and it turned out it was the thermostat – $35 for the part online and about an hour of my time and we are good to go. Much better than dropping $1k+ on a new pair although we were looking closely.