Information Missing from Your HOA Budget

A budget is more than just determining how much will be spent based on historical costs. It's more than just numbers on a paper to use as a guideline. It provides the information needed to make economical decisions and determine what is a bargin and what is not. The only problem is that most budgets are missing the information nessasary to know bargin shopping.

The information missing is the per occurrance or per unit cost. For instance a typical HOA budget will list a monthly figure and an annually figure for propane, sprinkler heads, sprinkler line repairs, plants, pool cleaning, legal work, letters, etc. But, they do not tell anyone how much is alloted per MMBTU, unit, repair, plant, or hour for each occurrance is budgeted. If the cap on sprinkler heads is .75 each and 80 is expected to be replaced and your being billed 1.00 per head. You either need to negotiate a lower price or supply your own. If each repair is alloted for 1 hour in labor @ $19.00 and parts (other than sprinkler heads) are alloted at 15.00 and your alloted 20 a year. But, each one is taking 2 hours @ $23.00 and parts are $20.00. You need to address this with the landscapers. Anything over the amount per occurrance alloted is deemed to be excessive.

Now you can take the per occurrance costs and use that information to find a bargin to actually save money. Since your were expected to spend X dollars each occurrance but, found the same or better quality for less money. You've found a bargin and saved money.

Because you saved money by bargin shopping that savings is required by law to be passed onto the ownership. After all it is our change. We only pay for actual charges made during the year and that is it. What's left over is our change and keeping it, is dishonest, immoral, illegal, socially unacceptible, & not something a god fearing person would do. It's something that someone who is trusted and is trained to manipulate and control behavior would do. Like a teacher!

To stay on topic, having this information is critical to knowing if your getting a bargin or a good deal or not. Just because you stay under the amount budgeted doesn't mean you saved anything, it means you didn't spend it. Having something occur fewer times but overpaying for the hourly, unit or parts. Just means your not shopping around to get the best deal and best quality workmanship for the community you can. Paying more for half assed work isn't something to be proud of nor brag about.

If your budgets don't provide this information request for the policy to change for all budgets to include it along with the existing information. The less details the more opportunity for waste and hiding of information by not communicating.