Welcome to How To Money. I'm Joel and I am Matt and today we're discussing renovating your home on a budget.

Alright Matt, before we get into all that stuff I want to mention that my friend Katie sent me an email based on our frugal versus cheat podcast when I talked about buying a fan for our rental property.

I was really excited to see a fan for me that was super, super small. Yeah, with the Uber short fan blades. Yeah. So I kind of gave myself some crap for that and that was definitely a cheap out as opposed to a frugal purchase. Yeah, it looks dumb. It looks terrible. And actually is incredibly ineffective. It doesn't really move the air quite as well. No, because it looks like it belongs in a four by four room as opposed to a 12 by 12 room, which is kind of what it's in. I think it's a desk fan mounted to the ceiling. Yeah, it looks so ridiculous. So she sent me this really interesting article from this site called YounghouseLove.com.

And it turns out, oh, no, that site. Oh, really? Yeah, dude, that's the house renovating sort of site, John and Sherry. Kate and I used to what you like buddies with these people. No, but Kate and I used to keep up with that site all the time back in the day. When we first got our house, they were constantly doing sort of these DIY projects and they would inspire us to try stuff out at home. But then they kind of stopped blocking for a while. So I guess they fired it back up. So cool. Yeah, so I don't know if this was a recent article or what. But this was an awesome suggestion. I guess they too found themselves in the same way.

They had a fan that had fan blades that were way too short and just didn't circulate enough air. And what they did was they reached out to the manufacturer apparently. And they asked if they had fan blades that were longer that would fit this exact same fan. They sent in the model number. And the manufacturer just sent them some new longer fan blades that fit perfectly. And the fans still worked fine. So now I'm going to reach out to the manufacturer of my fan and see if I can do the same thing. See if I can get some free fan blades. And just make it.

I think work properly. That's awesome. And I love that. Well, this is going to sound ridiculous. But I actually reached out to the manufacturer of one of our fans because the LED panel for the light went out. And it sat there for a little bit with sort of this half dim light and mood lighting. Some people call that with the staff dim light. Yeah, that's right. And we knew it wasn't working properly. But I was just kind of lazy. But I finally reached out to the manufacturer with a part number. And we had a pay for that part. However, there's only 14 bucks.

And because that we basically got our lighting back in our living room when before it was totally dark. That's something I'd never really done before actually reaching out to the manufacturer. I think maybe in a previous life, I would have looked at that and been like, eh, the fans got to go in a couple years. Just let's just get rid of it. I remember doing that a while back with a craft for a coffee maker. He kind of busted. Like he just kind of fell apart. And so I reached out to the manufacturer. I told him the model number I was working with. And I was like, I really, really love the coffee maker. I don't really want to buy a new one. Yeah, there's a lot more life in this thing.

If only I had the glass part. Exactly. And so they, yes, I mean, other one free of charge, which is super. They hooked you up. Yeah, dang it. So I feel like pay for my light, dude. Well, 14 bucks is not too bad. It's not bad. I was pretty happy with it. But that's a downside to LED lights in general. Right. Like they say that, oh, LEDs are, you know, they're going to last for 20, 30 years. Unlike traditional incandescent lights. However, the electric boards will sometimes kind of short out. And it's not that the LED itself is going bad. But the circuitry sometimes may not be quite up to snuff.

But I think it's really important to realize that it never hurts to ask, right? Maybe I can reverse my cheap ways, turn into a frugal win. I mean, it's a beautiful thing.

Yeah, man, I love the discussion between frugal versus cheap, right? It makes me think a couple weeks back we had a listener in our Facebook group at how to money. Ben, he said, frugal or cheap. My daughter has outgrown her sippy cups. And I use them to take milk to work because I hate the powdered creamer. They provide for the coffee.

I fill up the milk at home and place it in the fridge in the office break room.

What do you think about that, man? I love it. I love it. Man, we've got so many freaking sippy cups around our house.

And my girls for some reason love to love to still use like some of the ones they used as babies. They just think that's the coolest thing ever. And you know what?

I should probably take some of them to work and do something with them. So something a little more creative. Yeah.

But I love that Ben's not putting them out the pasture, tossing them in the garbage and he's getting a second life out of them.

And I just think that's funny because if I was his coworker, I would probably ask for an explanation. But why is there a sippy cup in the fridge?

Right. But then I would have a good laugh and probably use the creamer that he brought because he's right.

Powder cream sucks. Well, I had a bonus. If no one ever knew that that's what was in it's his coworkers wouldn't steal the creamer because I guarantee they probably think it sucks too.

And they're like a powdered creamer. Do we hire a baby around here? Where's this baby, man? I've got my boss baby going on.

All right. So let's go ahead and mention the beer that we're going to have on the show today. It is from Prairie Artisan ails and this beer is called Apple Brandy Barrel Noir.

This is an Imperial style aged and Apple Brandy barrels. And before we kind of get to the what it tastes like.

I wanted to mention that this was donated to us from Jeff and Val of Monday morning pancakes.

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