The most expensive mouse you will ever meetThere are several key parts to arranging your financial affairs so that you are regularly improving your quality of life. One of those things is preventative behaviors. So many of the problems I have heard could have been prevented if the proper actions would have been taken prior to the issue becoming a large problem.
I recently learned this lesson the hard way. My house is surrounded by wooded area. That means there is lots of wildlife living not far from my home. In the winter time some of that wildlife would like to come live with me in order to keep warm. In particular, mice can be a problem. Every winter they seem to find a way into my basement and I have to set traps or they start to destroy things. The preventative step of traps costs about $10.00. I should've known it - here comes the problem
Well sure enough two days later I woke up and the house was freezing. It was 50 degrees. My fear had come true. The furnace had tried to warn me for two days that there was a problem but I didn’t do anything. Of course this happens during the end of January and when a stronger cold front was moving in so I called the heating company and asked for service. Two guys showed up and got to work. About 15 minutes into their work they called for me to come look at what they had found. In the blower assembly was a mouse that had got caught up in it as the blower turned on. He remained stuck in there and as the blower went round and round the furnace had to work harder to pull the assembly past his little body. That is what was causing all the shaking I had felt. The blower broke off its brackets and that caused a chain reaction of problems that led to the furnace shutting down. They had to replace several parts in the furnace in order to get it running again. The total I owed for their labor and the new parts came to $660.00! That was the most expensive mouse I had ever met. A $660.00 lesson So what can we all learn from this example? I knew from past years of experience that if I didn’t take preventative steps to control the mice in my house during the cold winter months there would be a problem. The fact that I didn’t take the regular preventative steps in dealing with this problem led to bigger problems. I didn’t set any traps but the biggest trap of all, the furnace blower, blew up when the mouse got caught in it. That cost $660.00. Shame on me for allowing this problem to cost me $660.00 which would have been better spent on so many other things. Just like every other year $10.00 would have taken to prevent the problem in the first place. Don’t let your quality of life be robbed or minimized because you are paying for problems that could have been prevented. Spending money to prevent bigger problems is a responsible practice and should be part of your budget. The research you do in order to put together a good budget often reveals problems out on the horizon that need preventative measures in order to be stopped from becoming larger issues. Make a list of those issues and what preventative steps must be taken and then follow through. Doing so will improve your financial condition and your quality of life. Bowman’s Money College offers consulting and educational advice to individuals and families on personal financial matters such as starting a small business, writing and following a household budget, and rebuilding credit. For further information visit BowmansMoneyCollege.com or email mike@bowmansmoneycollege.com.
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One thing is
for sure. The money clock is running the second you stop taking
preventative actions to stop problems from happening. With every passing
moment your problem will end up costing more money. I have often seen
people who put off paying their local taxes. They paid their federal and
state taxes but since their employer doesn’t withhold local taxes they
don’t follow up and make a yearly payment on their own. I know people
who told me that five years later they get a notice from the municipality
that they owe 5 years worth of tax, penalty, and interest and don’t know
where they are going to get the money from. The problem, that could have
been prevented, always catches up with you. 
This year I
was lazy. Really lazy. I did not set any mouse traps. However, the winter
weather came and so did the mice. Here is what happened. I was sitting in
my home office located over the furnace in the basement. The furnace
turned on and the floor began to shake. It had never done that before. It
was as if the furnace was working so hard that it was shaking from the
effort. In the back of my mind I knew this wasn’t normal but I thought I
could just ignore the problem and it might go away. That was the first
problem. I should have worked on the problem the moment it came to light.
