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My next‑door neighbor bought that house years ago at a bargain price and now rents it out to three families. But because it’s an old house, repairs never seem to end. He’s 81 years old, and from what I’ve seen over the years, he tries to fix most things himself. The problem is, he’s neither a handyman nor young anymore, so it always looked a bit dangerous. Whenever the work becomes too much for him, he brings in another elderly man to help—but that man clearly isn’t a handyman either. So the two of them patch things up cheaply, feel satisfied for the moment, and then end up spending even more money fixing the same problem again.

 

Recently, he started replacing the old staircase and wooden deck at the second‑floor entrance with a supposedly permanent plastic material. He tore out all the old boards, cut them into small pieces so the garbage truck would take them, and spent several days running an electric saw during the day—creating quite a bit of noise pollution. Then he installed the plastic boards, but the problem is that this material is much heavier than wood and tends to flex. When you step on the stairs, they bend downward, making them feel dangerously unstable. Now he’s buying loads of lumber to reinforce the underside, working himself half to death. Watching all this from next door, I can’t help but feel sorry for him.

 

It’s a textbook example of the old Chinese saying, “small greed leads to great loss.” If he had hired a professional from the beginning, it might have seemed more expensive at first, but he would have avoided all this waste. In the end, it would have been safer, easier, and more economical home maintenance.

 

 

Seeing this, I realized two things. First, cheap things are cheap for a reason—you end up paying more when you try too hard to save. Second, don’t try to do everything yourself—when something requires a professional, leave it to a professional.