We are two months into the new year and, man, I'm feeling the cost of everything right now. 2025 had the orange menace come into power in the US and immediately our grocery bills doubled here in Canada. My wife was on maternity leave for the year so the sudden increase to how expensive everything was, wasn't super pleasant.
Per usual, when it rains, it pours. We had a car breakdown, dishwasher breakdown, and several other repairs during the year too which ramped up our debt higher than we had expected. Now, two months into the new year... and my washer and dryer both crap out on us.
$3400 for some new units, which isn't the cheapest we could have done but is the cheapest with the appropriate functionality (front load, right dimensions, etc) that I could find without going for used stuff that has a 'who knows when this might break' question attached to it and still often a $300 or $400 price tag per item... so I could take a risk on used for 800, do all the work myself hauling everything in and out and disposing of the old broken pieces... still not knowing how long they'll last or what real condition they're in... or I can just bite the bullet and replace with new.
Well, I went with replacing with new, of course. It's tax season in Canada at least so that'll help offset some of this cost, but man - I'm old enough to remember when you could spend like $600 on a set that would last you 20 years. Now, it seems like if you get 5-8 years out of an appliance, you're ahead of the curve. It's wild. Everything costs 3x what it feels like it should, and then breaks 5x faster! What the hell.
Anyhow, I'm just complaining because we're finally both back to full-time work and making progress, and then something comes out of left field and kicks us in the jaw. The joys of homeownership.
Its moments like this where I need to remind myself that, while we might get smoked with random surprise expenses... at least owning this place I'm not going to have some idiot in a unit below my apartment light my house on fire - which we experienced once when we lived in an apartment. So... it's annoying, and i'm gonna be dramatic about it, but at least it's not apartment life.