Have you ever had work done on your car or home? Have you had it looked at by one person and think, how in the world am I going to pay for this? After you stress over it for way too long, you call someone for a second opinion. They take a look at it and like magic, it is only a fraction of the cost to fix. All you had to do was get a second opinion on what should be done.
This is the story of my life in contracting. I believe heavily on getting multiple quotes and opinions on jobs. A lot of time what I realized, is the opinions are not wrong, there different ways of doing things. For example, we are working on leveling out some floors for a customer. The right thing would be to jack the house up and level out the floors. However, this is not in the budget. The second option was tear up all floors and sister in boards to level out all floors, once again not in budget. These options were great but it was not what we could do to meet the customer needs. I brought in a couple more people to look it over and they said, the rooms that are really bad, we can pull up and sister in. The other rooms, we can do self leveler, and 1/4inch sub floor to level out good enough. The room will be off 1 inch from end to end, but it will be a gradual incline and will not be too noticeable. This fell in the customers budget and helps our timeline on the project by a week.
Another example was landscaping, my mom has some grading issues with water running to her basement, instead of away from the basement. The first estimate she received was for $25K. It would have been an extensive project, involving a lot of moving pieces. I believe it would be a good thing, however, $25k is far from in budget for a grading issue. 2 more estimates later, each coming in around $4k to level out the grading, she was able to go with the estimate that made sense. Those ones are a less intrusive projects, which can be accomplished in a fraction of the time, with the same outcome.
The idea of getting multiple opinions is not only for estimates on projects, it is also for your life. Multiple opinions on careers from people in those careers. Opinions from people who you admire and strive to be like. Opinions on your health and what are good things you should be doing to live longer and healthier. The main thing to remember, do not take opinions from people who have not done what you want to do or from people you would want to be like.
If you are stressed about something, maybe look at getting some more opinions on your situation.
Your life Tutor
-Shaun Tutor
Tutors of Life 