Do you really need to pay $95 an hour every time you have a clogged drain or $150 to have someone hook up your TV? You might want to learn how to handle those and other tasks yourself. There are more resources than ever, many of them online, to help you do anything, whether it’s grooming your dog or changing your car’s air filter.

Take a course. Community centers, colleges, libraries, and other local organizations offer adult-education courses free or at a low cost.

Try a web search. CRMA’s editors typed “replacing a faucet” into Google and found many useful resources. Also try searching with and without the words “do it yourself.” 

Use forums. Find forums on do-it-yourself and specialty Web sites devoted to the subject you’re researching, such as automobiles or home improvement. A major resource is Usenet, with thousands of newsgroups devoted to many subjects. On alt.home.repair, users discuss repair and maintenance projects. On rec.bicycles.tech, visitors talk about bike repair. 

How to help online.  Just a few of the many online do-it-yourself resources include DoItYourself.com, DIYNetwork.com, ThisOldHouse.com, and AutoZone.com.

What to Do if Your Home-Equity Credit Line is Frozen

This year, hundreds of thousands of home-equity lines of credit (HELOCs) have been trimmed, or frozen altogether, by lenders. Affected homeowners can borrow less or may not be able to use their HELOCs at all. This can be especially painful if you were about to draw that money to remodel your kitchen, say, or pay a tuition bill.

If your line of credit has been affected, you might not need to do anything if you have cash reserves and no immediate plans for a major expense that would require drawing on it. In an emergency, you are better off withdrawing from your cash reserves.

But if you’d like to restore your credit line, call your lender and ask how to do it. Typically, you’ll need an appraisal to show that your property has held its value. Contact an appraiser who is approved by the lender and familiar with your neighborhood. You can also try to refinance with another lender.

If you have a credit line and expect to draw on it, you should probably act quickly. You can park the money in a bank until you need it. You’ll pay about 5 percent interest and earn about 3 percent on your funds, so your carrying cost will be about 2 percent.

CRMA'S Simple Quiz Can Help You Assess if You're Ready to Retire

It’s hard to put on a happy face when the economy is shaky, home and stock values are falling, and food and gasoline prices are rising. But you don’t have to be a billionaire to remain optimistic. That’s because your retirement readiness doesn’t have to fluctuate with the health of the economy. Instead, it should hinge on three things you can control: your spending habits, how much you’ve saved for retirement, and how you’ve invested your money.

Here are some of the questions CRMA experts recommend asking yourself to see if you’re well prepared to relish your retirement years. If you don’t ace this quiz, you might need to consider changing some of your spending, saving, or investing habits.

Will you retire debt-free? Eliminating high-interest credit-card debt before you call it quits is a no-brainer, but you might also want to pay off your mortgage. But don’t let the tax deduction you get for mortgage interest cloud your vision. Even at the highest income tax bracket, you’re still bearing 65 percent of the cost of your mortgage.

Do you know how much you’ll spend when you retire? Don’t assume that your overall spending will go down after you quit working. Some experts contend that you’ll need more because of inflation, rising health-care costs, longer life spans, and the decline in defined-benefit pensions and employer-sponsored medical benefits for retirees.

Will you receive a pension? If your employer sponsors a defined-benefit plan, the kind that provides a set income stream for life, you won’t have to rely as heavily on your personal savings to supplement your benefits from Social Security. But make sure you really have a pension coming to you before you buy a big-screen TV with money that you should instead stash in your 401 (k) plan.

Consumer Reports Money Adviser is a monthly newsletter that answers tough money questions and provides expert financial advice. Its proven information and successful strategies make any financial decision an easy one. Each month, CRMA provides feature articles and helpful investment, savings, and spending advice that will prepare consumers for anything life may bring them.