I started replacing some things before they failed several years ago. Like water heaters and car batteries. The kind of things that will certainly fail at a time that’s inconvenient and possibly risky. It may be a little more expensive to replace an item prematurely but that beats being inconvenienced when it eventually fails.

The newest (2010) car’s battery just got us though. We bought it used about a year and a half ago so I didn’t know how old the battery was. Because we weren’t sure it was the battery, it was taken to the shop. Now we’ll pay for a new battery and labor. Not next time though. I will place a tickler on the online family calendar to replace this battery at the end of its warranty.

Battery cost with labor: $198