A testimony from Taylor from Stain Removal 101
I’m a work-at-home-Mom of three, so needless to say, I am on very friendly terms with our washing machine! In addition, as part of my home business, I test and review a lot of various laundry supplies and laundry detergents with that very same machine, at Stain Removal 101, so you could say my washing machine and I are a team.
That’s why I was very sad when my “team member” bit the dust during the middle of one of my stain removal product tests. Normally, I’m all for fixing broken appliances instead of just replacing them; however, it didn’t make sense financially to do that this time.
We briefly considered purchasing a lower-end model new appliance, but even the new washing machines without many bells and whistles were quite expensive. In our situation, it made more sense to buy a used washing machine that didn’t have an inflated showroom value anymore.
Plus, buying a used machine also meant that we had enough emergency savings available to pay for it with cash, without dipping too far into those reserves. Yes, we could have purchased a new washing machine with cash too, but I knew how long it would take to replace all that money from the fund if we dipped down so low.
We weren’t comfortable having such a low fund since emergencies are unpredictable — and this ended up being a wise decision, since we also got some wind damage to our roof and needed to use some emergency funds to pay our deductible.
If we’d bought a new machine we would have eaten up too much money at once.

We chose a used machine that was six years old and cost only $250. That was about how much the repair of the old machine might have cost us, and we got a machine 10 years newer!
So far, this machine works great and I hope it will last us as long as our old one did. If I can even get five or ten years out of it, instead of the 13 my previous used model gave us, I’ll have gotten a great bargain. Plus, we’ve still got money in our emergency fund for any curve balls life might throw at us!
Taylor Flanery is former lawyer turned writer, who blogs about all things domestic while working at home with her three kids and husband. You can find her at Household Management 101, Stain Removal 101, and Home Storage Solutions 101.
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