Boomer Business Idea – Fixing Things

If Joe the Plumber can do it, so can you. Fix things, I mean.

Forbes Magazine says that personal and home repair and maintenance services are one of the 10 most profitable home businesses, ranking up there with consulting and brokerage services. And a home repair business doesn’t take a lot of education or capital investment to begin. Forbes says the average pretax profit on this type of business is 10 percent, which is pretty good.

My brother-in-law did repairs for several years after he retired; he worked in a large apartment complex, doing everything from installing new air conditioning units to supervising carpet layers, to cleaning out toilets.

Benefits of a home repair service business:

• You can take jobs when you want to and not take those you don’t want

• You don’t have a big capital outlay; many baby boomers have a nice supply of tools and things like nails and screws built up, so you shouldn’t need to go out and get a bunch of stuff to get started
• You can work out of your home and save on costs of an office

Drawbacks of a home repair service business:

• Cleaning toilets!

• You might get called in the middle of the night to fix something
• People can be difficult, particularly when it comes to their homes and money. What they wilingly agree to today they may decide was too expensive tomorrow, after you have done the work. But then, there are difficult people in any line of work.

If you have some expertise in fixing things around the house, and you want to make extra money while you’re waiting for the stock market to come back up, consider a home “fix-up” business.

One note: Apparently, the joetheplumber.com domain name is taken, so you will have to look for another name.

Image source: picapp