Calculating Savings with a Home Warranty

PUBLISHED: May 8, 2016 • 6 MINS READ

HomeWarrantyReviews.com has, for many years now, been the only place online that homeowners could trust for free reviews and ratings of home service contract companies in the U.S. That is changing, as companies like Yelp offer consumers reviews on a great diversity of different products and services, home warranty included.

In the past we did our best to help our readers with their decisions, making it possible for them to find ratings and reviews from real customers for a wide range of home warranty companies. But we know that consumers today need more than just reviews.

Readers need to know that the products or services they’re considering are worthwhile and worth the expense. That’s where our new calculator can help homeowners who are not yet certain they need a home warranty.

Use our free tools to calculate your savings at HomeWarrantyReviews.com

Before we start going into the details of how our calculator can help with the decision to buy or not buy a home warranty, let’s look at the home appliance maintenance calculator page for a moment.

The calculator is designed to give the user a fairly accurate estimate of two costs. One is the cost of a home warranty, and the other is the cost of annual home repairs. These are only estimates, of course, but they’re based on data that we believe is fairly close to what the average homeowner will incur in annual repair costs versus the average cost of a home warranty and its service call fees. For a homeowner trying to decide what to do in advance of things around the house breaking, it’s extremely helpful to have a calculator like this. That’s why we took the time to create it and share it with our readers.

Here’s how it works for the user:

There are three tabs present in the calculator, and each one helps with a different part of the decision a reader may be making about a home warranty purchase.

The first tab calculates the estimated annual appliance maintenance cost. It allows the user the option of customizing the cost settings or using the default settings, with regard to the age of the house, the age of certain parts of it which might be covered by the service contract, etc. These defaults are often perfectly suited to a house, but when they’re not then the customization becomes important. Changing the defaults to the exact specifications of the user’s own home will produce an even more refined result and give better insight into the estimated cost of a home warranty versus the estimated cost of average out of pocket repairs.

The second tab provides the estimated average home warranty cost. It is broken down visually in a pie chart, so it’s easier for a reader to gather how much of the cost is service call fees, typically paid to the repair technicians, and how much is the premium paid to the company.

The third tab shows the estimated average home repair costs, the out of pocket costs a user might expect to pay out of his or her own pocket each year for unexpected problems around the house. Side by side with this estimate is the home warranty cost from the second tab. Again, there’s a helpful chart which makes it clear which estimated cost is greater.

In addition to the basic items covered on the list of things that influence the price of the home warranty on tab one, there are also appliances that a user can choose to add. In addition to that, a user of the calculator may also choose to select a zero dollar service call fee on tab one, something that comes in handy when talking with companies that offer their customers this lucrative incentive to buy.

What about users of the calculator who know that their service is more than the $60 factored into these calculations? That’s a pretty easy problem to fix. Assume that a typical homeowner will file four service claims per year. With that assumption, simply multiple the amount over $60 by 4 and add that to the home warranty cost in the second tab. So, for a homeowner who has an estimated annual cost of $650 for a home service contract, including the service call fees (or deductibles) the math needed for a service call fee of $100 would look like this:

$100-$60=$40
$40×4=$160
$650+$160=$810

By simply adding in the different amount you pay for service call fees a user can make this calculator’s results even more precise than before. And customizations don’t need to stop there. A homeowner who knows he or she has more or less than four service calls per year may make those adjustments as well. The calculator does a lot of the work in estimating average savings with a home warranty. But any precise detail a user can add in will help in making a more informed decision about whether to buy a home warranty or put money in savings to cover future repairs.

Readers who try out the calculator may want to read more about how much they might save with a home service contract. To learn more about this, here on HomeWarrantyReviews.com, check out this helpful article about the things that affect a homeowner’s savings from a home warranty. Combining the information from that article with results from the calculator can really help with what might otherwise be a tough choice.

And the help we can offer our readers does not end there.

Take a look at the comparison banner at the bottom of the calculator. It’s visible under each tab. By clicking on it, users can quickly begin to compare companies that provide home service contracts. To do that, click on the banner, or just click here to compare the top ten home warranty companies. To fine tune your results, just follow these steps.

Click on the “Filter by State” box, and choose the state your house is located in.
If you would like to compare companies then click the checkbox provided for each company you wish to compare. As you click these boxes you should see the company logos appearing in a comparison box, with a button marked “Compare” beside those images. Once you have all the companies you’re interested in selected, then you just click that button to start the comparison process.
If you’d rather just get quotes from one or two companies then you can click on the “Get Quote” button next to the company or companies you’re interested in, or dial the toll-free number assigned to the company or companies that interest you. There is never a good substitute for talking with a representative from these companies. Only with their help can you be sure that you’re getting the best home service contract for your house and your budget.

HomeWarrantyReviews.com is proud to offer the home appliance maintenance calculator and the company comparison tools. And of course, our main mission is to bring our readers first-hand experiences from other consumers who have bought home service contracts and filed claims with specific companies reviewed and rated here on our website. We invite readers to take advantage of the tremendous amount of information here on our website and make the most informed decisions possible about their home warranty purchases!

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