MONEY OBEDIENCE

The best 8 dollars and 40 cents you will ever spend

Watches are the most important type of jewelry that a man can display as a status symbol. I am sure some people disagree with me. They say that heavy gold chains or diamond studded wedding bands do a better job telling everybody how loaded you are, but once you graduate from those status symbols you are moving on to watches. Trust me! It is so. And not just because I say so.

What says, “I am mega loaded” better than a Blancpain or a Piaget mechanical timepiece? These things, yes, they are just things, easily run in the 5 digits for an entry-level watch, sort of like a car does for most people.

I am not focusing today on such expensive watches. I don’t own one of these status symbols anyway. I am rather more interested in the digital kind, the ones that run on batteries. I have a few watches and they all run on batteries. The bad news about batteries is that you need to replace them regularly. In the past I have run into jewelry stores in Manhattan who charged me as much as $20 for replacing the battery in my watch. Highway robbery as far as I am concerned!

Recently I have noticed that none of my watches are telling time anymore. My trusted running watch has finally given up all life. It is done monitoring my pace when I go around the track. The last time it recorded was my finishing time at the Boston Marathon in the spring of this year. Now it is time to replace the batteries on my other watch(es). But who wants to pay $20 a piece for replacing a watch battery? I sure don’t.

So, a week ago I went out and bought a 16 piece watch repair kit which includes a wrench that lets me open the back of a watch. This makes it very easy to replace a battery. And guess what – batteries cost between $3 and $4. So, instead of paying $20 to have the battery in my watch replaced, it cost me $12 to do it myself, even after paying for the complete tool kit! But then, I get to keep the tool kit for the next battery replacement. Pretty neat, isn’t it?

When my wife reads this post, I am sure that she will ask me to replace batteries in her watches….. Hey, maybe this could even evolve into a little side business.

What other little deals do you know about that will let you recoup your investment as easily and as quickly?

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Posted in Budget and Expenses