While house hunting, we trotted through plenty of previously owned homes and new developer houses.  We encountered fascinating rooms that were all pink, all red, or some other strange 60s, 70, or 80s fade…  The ultimate fade was when we looked at one house and the bathroom was decorated in hot pink with a pitch black commode and bathtub.  Groovy baby!    

Of course I had to check out the demographics for each house we looked at!  Is the school ranked high, what is the crime rate, what is the composite of the types of crimes, what are the county and city tax rates, how do the utilities compare to surrounding cities, are the houses in the area appreciating more than surrounding counties… etc.  The list was extensive!   

Yep, all told, it took us over 6 months before we decided on a house and community.  My poor wife, she started saying yes to any house we looked at after about 4 months into the process.  She was tired (sorry honey)!   

So was it worth all the extra time and analysis?  Maybe, that’s debatable!  Initially it was perfect, but things have changed in the community since then that makes it a bit different.   

So what does this have to do with my title “Saving by Paying Attention – Over-Analyzers“?  Everything!  We wasted gallons of gas, driving from house to house, not to mention all of the personal time wasted checking out house after house.    

Who was to blame for all of this extra house analysis?    

That Over-Analyzer was me!  I’m the one that took way to long looking at houses, waiting for that magic moment when I would exclaim EUREKA, this house is the ONE!   

The Over-Analyzer‘s biggest waste is personal time and gasoline driving from deal to deal, or in my case, house to house looking for the best, smartest deal!   

How can this weakness be combated?

Planning and time spend measuring twice and cutting once.  By this carpenter’s saying I mean “take the time the do the research before doing the footwork”.  Today especially, you can use google, yahoo, or bing to do the information gathering for you.  Heck, there are some sites now that take you thru a  virtual tour of some of the places you might be interested in!
    

I’m the same way at Christmas, when it comes time to pick out the Christmas Tree that we chop down (really saw down 😉 ) for the house.   

Are you or do you know someone like this?  If so, please do tell!  This isn’t as bad as the Implusers I talked about yesterday… but hey it adds up!  

-D