I’ve talked before about how you can make money renting out your tools, but what if you’re looking to rent tools for a home project? Obviously, if it’s something you’re going to use regularly, you may find it more cost effective to buy, but maybe it’s a one-off project. Check around with your neighbors, but if you can’t find anyone to borrow from, did you know there is a Home Depot tool rental service?
What can I rent from Home Depot Tool Rental?
The question is more like “What can’t you rent?” At Home Depot, you can rent indoor tools, outdoor tools, power tools, and large equipment. You can even rent things like generators if you’re planning a camping trip or need it to power one of the tools you’re renting. And of course, Home Depot will even rent you a truck to transport the tools if you don’t have room in your personal vehicle.
I have to admit, I was pretty impressed when I learned I could rent everything from a carpet cleaner to a mini excavator. Not that I have any business attempting to use a mini excavator. But for the low, low price of $289 a day, I can rent a 1-ton mini excavator.
How Much Does Home Depot Tool Rental Cost?
Okay, let’s be honest, I’m not getting a mini excavator from Home Depot Tool Rental. But let’s say that after the most recent storms, our basement flooded and now we need a professional grade dehumidifier to help remove all of the moisture. In my area, I can rent a professional grade dehumidifier designed to remove up to 29 gallons of water a day for $75 a day. Of course, you usually need a dehumidifier for more than a day, and the week-long rental cost is $300. Not an insignificant amount of money. Looking at Home Depot, I can buy a similar professional grade tool for over $1800. Sure, I can buy a small in-home dehumidifier for around $300, but that’s not going to do what I need it to do after a flood.
One project we have upcoming is tiling our backsplash in the kitchen. To do that, we’re going to need some kind of a tile cutter. It’s a small project, so I looked into renting a manual tile cutter (if you have a bigger project, you might want an electric tile saw). I can rent one for $13 for 4 hours or $19 a day. I can buy a similar one for $45, but we’re looking at a small area, so I don’t see the need to have one for more than a few hours.
Is It Really Better to Rent?
Let’s say that I’m building something and need a circular saw. At my local Home Depot, I can rent a Makita Electric Circular Saw 7 1/4″ for $24 a day. If it’s a one day project, that’s pretty cheap. I can buy a similar saw for $159, but I can also get a lower powered one for around $50.
I know what you’re thinking. If I need it for two days, isn’t it better to just buy the lower powered saw? I supposed it depends on what you’re doing. If you don’t need a lot of power, maybe. But it would certainly be frustrating to discover that the saw you bought isn’t powerful enough for your project, plus then you’ll have to store the saw. Additionally, how often will you be using the saw? I don’t know about you but I don’t do a lot of sawing, so I’m not sure that it’s something I need to own. We also don’t have a lot of additional storage space.
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Megan is a 40-something government employee in the Washington, DC area. She got interested in Personal Finance when she got out of college and realized that her paycheck wasn’t going to go as far as she had hoped. Since starting this blog, she has managed to buy a house and make a solid start on her retirement goals, and hopes to help others do the same. Here is her story:
In 2007, I was a gainfully employed 20-something with no debt but not a lot of knowledge about personal finance. It was a co-worker’s comment about Roth IRAs that sent me to the internet, searching for information. It was then that I realized that I really didn’t know a whole lot about personal finance and that my current financial situation was due a lot to inherent frugal tendencies, generous family members, a fear of debt, and good luck. While that was working for me, clearly I needed a better plan.
While I had no debt, I was also pretty much living paycheck to paycheck and not worrying about going over budget (I say this as if I had a real budget) because I had an emergency fund set aside to cover any overages.
Except that’s not what an emergency fund is for.
So I did a lot of research, read a lot of blogs, and decided that I needed a plan. I needed to budget. I needed to know what I was spending my money on. I needed to prepare for the future.
I decided to create a blog not only to make myself accountable to others but also to share the knowledge that I gained along the way. I’ve learned so much from my fellow bloggers, and I hope that my readers can find something useful in what I have to share as well.
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