You’re making a major purchase or other financial transaction. Selling a car, buying a house, doing a mortgage refinance, replacing your carpeting, adding a bathroom to your home. These are major, expensive, time consuming processes. And you time is valuable. So should you just call the guy with the biggest ad in the yellow pages to do the job and call it a day?
Would but that it were that simple. When a great deal of money is involved, you have to do the dirty work. You have to make sure you are getting the best value for your dollar. I’m not talking about saving $20. With these transactions it’s often serious money. A recent example from my life. I had to arrange to get my Mother’s house painted. I don’t live very near her, and it meant a fair bit of my time for every estimate that we got. It would have been easy to just hire the first person with decent references. Instead I ended up getting 6 estimates. Was it worth it? The guy we hired was $5,000 less than the first painting contractor we talked to, had better references, more experience, and a spotless record with the Better Business Bureau. I think that’s a yes.
You always have to balance your time and the quality of what you’re getting of course. But when big dollars are involved, you have to do the boring picky work. That means shopping for a real estate agent who is cheap and good. Don’t pay 6% if you can pay 5% (or less) and get equally good representation. It probably means selling your car yourself when you upgrade instead of trading it in to the dealer.
Yeah, it’s a hassle. But we’re not talking about a $5 rebate here. If there are serious dollars involved, you’ll be much better off financially not taking the easy way out.