Private Portfolio – Maintenance is a good Investment

One of the best way to invest your money and with rather high returns, is to not neglect a simple duty such as maintenance. From what I can see the art of maintenance should be taught at school because almost everywhere I look I see little evidence of regular maintenance.
Let me give you a few examples. When a sidewalk or street has been covered with interlocking bricks, it requires regular maintenance by spraying the weeds growing through with a weed killer. In Auas Blick where we regularly go for a walk, I see how the interlocked bricks are physically pushed up by the weeds and the side-walk becomes unwalkable. I can mention many other examples of negligence.
If you do not maintain your house by caring for the garden, repainting the walls from time to time and fixing items that break, the capital value of your house will quickly start reducing. This could bring you under the false impression that property is a bad investment.
If you do not have your car serviced regularly, do not check the oil level and tyre pressure for example, soon your car will not be reliable any longer.
The money you spend on maintaining any or all of your assets is money well spent and is not  money lost as you are certain to get more than this amount back when you eventually sell the asset in question.
I was at Namport in Walvis Bay some time ago and I saw dozens of heavy second hand trucks destined for the DRC. When I asked why the DRC is importing so many trucks, I was told that they do not maintain their trucks, that they drive them until they are beyond repair and then simply replace them with new ones. I’m not joking!
Just about everything requires maintenance. Your house, car, clothes, shoes, marriage, family, pets, I can go on and on…
The problems we see at the state hospitals and schools and many other government owned assets are also hugely to be blamed on a lack of maintenance.
I even saw an SMS in one of the newspapers the other day, somebody was saying that something is not working where he/she works and was asking what they can do? If they were taught the basics of maintenance at school, the answer is simple and should not even be asked. Just fix it!
Fixing small problems is not costly. If the nurse sees that a tap is leaking, just tell the maintenance people at the hospital to replace the seal if they cannot see it themselves. If you ignore small problems they will eventually become big problems requiring lots of money to replace or fix.
But I guess that is where the tender system kicks in and somebody will make a packet out of the tender that should never have been required.
Please make maintenance a subject at school so that our children can learn how to maintain their belongings – if there is anything left to maintain by then.