The washing machine stops, the technician says $150, the flyer says $550. Your brain compares the two numbers — 150 versus 550, repair it, obviously — but it’s comparing two different things: a patch worth a few years against a machine worth ten. The honest comparison is per year of service.
How it works
Four numbers: the repair quote and how many extra years it buys; the price of the new one and how long it will last.
cost per year = what you spend / the years it gives you
The calculator runs it for both paths and tells you which wins, by how much per year, and the most useful number of all: how many years the repair must hold to pay for itself. If the technician himself wouldn’t bet on it lasting that long, you have your answer.
A worked example
A $150 repair that buys the machine 3 more years: $50 per year gained. The new one at $550 lasting 10 years: $55 a year. Verdict: repair — you save $5 a year, and break-even sits at 2.7 years: the repair just has to hold until then.
Now raise the quote to $180: it’s still only 32.7% of the new price — the shop-floor “50% rule” would say repair without blinking — but the cost per year climbs to $60 against $55: replace. The rule looks at prices; the math looks at years. When they argue, the math is right.
What the price tag doesn’t say
Repairs are quietly getting more attractive by law. In the EU, the 2024 right-to-repair directive (applying from July 2026) obliges manufacturers of covered products to repair at a reasonable price even out of warranty — and if you choose repair over replacement during the legal guarantee, the guarantee extends by a year: an extra year to enter under “extra years it buys.”
There’s a psychological catch too: if you already spent $120 on this same machine last year, that money pushes hard for “not throwing away what I’ve invested.” It’s a sunk cost: gone either way. Only today’s quote and the years it buys belong in the math — though a machine that calls the technician every year is telling you something in the numbers themselves: the “extra years” of each next repair keep shrinking.
Things to keep in mind
- Lifespans are estimates, as everywhere in this series. For the new one, warranty length and long-term reviews help; for the repair, ask the technician — they’re usually honest about it.
- The energy bill can flip everything. On dated fridges, washers and boilers the new model uses less: subtract the estimated yearly saving from the new one’s cost per year before reading the verdict.
- Repair has value outside the math — less waste, your data staying put, the object you care about. The EPA puts “maintain and repair” at the top of the money-saving practices: when the math is nearly even, it’s a good tiebreaker.
The twin of this page is cost per use — there you decide what to buy, here whether to keep alive what you own. Meanwhile, try the weak spot of every repair quote above: cut “extra years it buys” by one and watch how fast the verdict changes its mind.