Fear of spending too much money and maintenance

so as I have been getting my house ready to sell, I have found that things that have bothered me for 5 years take only a little bit of money to resolve. Point in case, at my house, when I bought the place, I found that there was no key to the front door. So what did I do? Did I go find a locksmith who could change the lock on the door for me so that I could use the same key for the back and front? no. For 5 years, I lived with a front door that I couldn’t open from the outside. Only until last week, when I called a locksmith to fix it (took 15 min) that I finally had a key that opened both doors.

And this is typical for me. I just end up living with the compromise of various things around the house, not because i don’t care, because I do, but that I am afraid that I would spend too much money. You see, for me, the fear that I paid too much is so excruciating that I would rather just live with something because hey, paying nothing and living in a less than ideal place is better than thinking “oh man, I paid too much for something”

Now after looking at the sillyness of not getting the lock changed for nearly half a decade is started to hit home that this is a untenable position to take. Seriously. If I looked back at the 5 years and saw the corners that I tried to take, which literally cost me tens of thousands of dollars, I find myself, saying, “why didn’t I just spend the $500, $1000, $50 bucks to get it done right back in the day so that I could actually enjoy having a front door I can walk through?” It wasn’t that I didn’t have the money. I had the money. I had roommates who were paying me rent. I had a good job. Yet I became a cheapskate. not frugal, but a cheapskate.

So I’ve resolved myself if I ever get back into a house again, that I’m not going to scrimp on things when I don’t have to. It’s one thing to not have any money to do something, but another thing to have the money and so worried that I’m going to spend it half hazardly that I end up not spending anything at all and not improving my situation. Lessons learned. I wish it just didn’t take me 5 years to learn it.