The best thing that ever happened to me was when I wound up in the environmental contracting/consulting business. Before that time $100 look like a lot of money to me. In that business some job of less than $2,500 wasn't hardly worth messing with. The environmental business I started with grew from sales of $80,000 to $8,000,000 in about 5 years. The dollars we turned and the business was phenomenal. Myself and one man with a trackhoe went on a job for 5 days and after all the bills were paid we had $21,000 profit. Those were the good ole days that are now gone but that experience helps me not to be afraid to charge a fair price. These days we often present repair estimates in excess of $1,000. There is no hard sell. We tell them what we found and what is needed. If there are repairs that can be postponed a few days we let them know that. We will even put the items in order priority wise. If a car isn't worth fixing we will also advise them of that. It is amazing how many $1,000+ tickets we sell. We had one for $1,300 today.