When I was younger, I never wanted to listen to my parents.
They were behind the times.
I saw everything they did or liked as old fashioned. I learned to listen to my mom and dad the hard way. My thinking that I knew everything cost me a lot of money. I could have saved time and money by listening to their advice. I will never forget the first time I realized my mom and dad were the very best source of advice and information. I had just bought an older home. It required a lot of renovation. I am not handy, so I hired various professionals to perform the updates and repairs for me. Whenever possible, I found opportunities to cut costs. Most of the time, these decisions turned out just fine. I paid some people under the table and didn’t worry about licenses, certifications and approvals. I was still getting the work done. Then I ended up with a disaster. The house is heated by a boiler system. The heater was super old and needed to be replaced. Since all the hookups and pipes were already in place, I figured that updating the heating system would be easy. When I told our Mom I had a guy who would do the job for half the price of all the other estimates, he advised against it. He cautioned that a heating system is complex and a large investment. He told me all the things that could go wrong, but I didn’t listen. I went ahead with the deal. The problem came as soon as the boiler started up. The guy installed a much larger boiler. The oversized heater caused excessive water pressure that the the older pipes couldn’t handle. I ended up with a flooded basement. The guy said it wasn’t his fault and told me to find someone else to deal with it. I had to hire a professional HVAC contractor who then told me I needed to entirely replace all the pipes to accommodate the bigger boiler. It turned into an expensive mess. From now on, I will hire qualified techs.