Don’t do it yourself

Spring is here, allegedly, and all of a sudden the ads are on television telling us what great deals there are on products to help us paint our bedrooms, treat our lawns, plaster our ceiling or lay decking.

Fewer activities are more likely to end in failure, family strife and complaints from neighbours about excessive noise than a DIY project which gets started on Good Friday and ends up still being ‘almost done’ by the August Bank Holiday.

Similar aggravation prevails when we try to take on a professional task ourselves. Comments like, ‘I don’t need a lawyer to write a will; Smiths do a form for a tenner’ or ‘I built my own company website’ are fine until you find that the will is invalid as it wasn’t signed properly and the website gets no traffic.

We’re all good at a few things but none of us are good at everything.

Do what you’re good at and pay others to do what they are good at for you. If you need a will then go to a solicitor. If you need a website, hire a web designer.

If you need financial planning and advice then engage a financial adviser.

If you had a tooth ache, you wouldn’t get a pair of pliers, a drill and a mirror and start on your own teeth, would you?

As for that decorating project, get a decorator in and spend the bank holidays with your family.