To DIY, or not to DIY, that is the question
The benefits of letting the experts do the work for you can be bigger than you might think
So, You Want to Fix Your Own Boiler?
There's a particular kind of stubbornness that strikes some people the moment a tradesperson quotes them a call-out fee. You know the feeling. The number lands, you do a quick mental calculation, and somewhere deep in your brain a voice says: 'How hard can it be?'
For my friend that voice was very loud indeed.
When my friend’s boiler stopped working a few years ago, he did what any sensible person does: he called a plumber. Then he heard the call-out charge, he hung up, rolled up his sleeves, and pulled the boiler apart himself. To be fair to him, he is an engineer, albeit not of heating systems. He diagnosed the problem correctly — a damaged circuit board — and set about sourcing the part. The plumber, it turned out, wouldn't buy the board on his behalf. So, he found one himself online, ordered it, and settled in to wait.
Seven weeks, as it turned out.
Seven weeks of cold showers. Seven weeks of extra jumpers and surprisingly few attempts to shower. Seven weeks during which — and this is the bit that really matters — he had nothing to do but stare at a dismantled boiler and think.
So, naturally, he decided to power flush the system while he waited.
When the circuit board finally arrived, he reassembled everything, fired it up, and it worked. A moderate triumph. Except that the power flush, in doing its job a little too well, had dislodged years of accumulated sludge that had been quietly plugging some pinhole leaks in the pipework. Suddenly, he had a boiler and a leak.
A few months later, the sludge reformed and the leaks sealed themselves. Normal life resumed.
When I asked him whether he regretted his actions, his answer was immediate: no.
He'd enjoyed taking the boiler apart. He was capable of doing it. He'd saved money and there was genuine satisfaction in having navigated the whole thing, leaks and all.
But — and he was honest about this — he also acknowledged that someone who actually knew what they were doing might have told him not to power flush the system in the first place. That one conversation could have saved him months of worry and a floor full of towels.
Which brings me, perhaps not very subtly, to financial advice.
There is a version of managing your own finances that looks a lot like my friend and his boiler. The information is out there. The tools exist. ISAs, pensions, investment platforms — you can access all of it yourself, and plenty of people do. Some of them are very good at it and genuinely enjoy it. For them, the DIY approach makes complete sense.
But for many people, the experience is closer to ordering a circuit board and waiting seven weeks in the cold. The research takes longer than expected. One decision leads to another, and another. Something that looked straightforward reveals unexpected complexity. And occasionally, in trying to fix one thing, you dislodge something else that was quietly doing a job you didn't know it was doing.
The parallel isn't that DIY is foolish. My friend was right — he could do it, and he did. The parallel is that expertise doesn't just fix problems. It stops you from creating new ones. A good plumber wouldn't just have fitted the circuit board. They'd have said 'I wouldn't power flush that system if I were you.' That sentence, delivered at the right moment, would have been worth every penny of the call-out fee.
Good financial advice works the same way. It isn't only about picking investments or filling in forms. It's about having someone in your corner who has seen what happens when you make a particular decision, and who can say — before you've already committed — 'that might not go the way you're expecting.'
My friend has no regrets, and I believe him. He's the kind of person who finds cold showers and leaking pipes a reasonable price for the satisfaction of understanding how something works.
But he'd also be the first to admit: not everyone is. And not everyone has to be.
Sometimes the smartest thing you can do is call the expert before you start taking things apart.
Warning – this is not a recommendation to attempt to fix your own boiler. A Gas Safe registered engineer must conduct all work on a boiler.
The value of your investments can go down as well as up, so you could get back less than you invested.
Daniel Stansall is a financial adviser based in London.
After completing a Masters in astrophysics Daniel embarked on a ten-year career trading interest rate derivatives. He decided to retrain as a financial adviser in 2014 and achieved chartered status in 2019. Daniel has excellent technical knowledge and enjoys helping clients to understand their goals and helping them achieve their financial objectives. Daniel is a keen cyclist and an Arsenal fan.
daniel@mwafinancial.co.uk | LinkedIn