How Long Appliances Should Last: More Than 4 Years

Doing the math on whether to fix an old appliance is fairly easy: If the repair cost is more than half the cost of a new appliance, and the item is more than half-way through its useful lifetime, then it's time to buy a new one.

No sense in spending money on repairs for a machine that will likely only last a few more years anyway, which we've covered before at WalletPop. But how long should a large home appliance last, given regular usage? You'd think much more than four years, especially since they cost hundreds or thousands of dollars, along with many dollars each month to run.

The Consumerist recently reported that a woman paid $3,000 for a KitchenAid double oven that broke after four years of use, only to find that Whirlpool (KitchenAid's parent company) doesn't make the replacement part anymore.