I think I've heard of something you can put in drains periodically to prevent root growth.

Even if the gutters and downspouts are not doing their job, water should drain away from the house.You can buy products that block leaves from entering gutters while allowing water in.Yet another option: Move to the Austin area, where it bugs me quite a bit that most houses have few gutters. 

It was a freaking waterfall, if there hadn't been floor drains in the middle of the house it would have been really bad luckily it was only 4 or 5 inches deep.

Coverage for back up of sewers and drains is pretty common.

When I bought this place though, the kids who lived here had drawn on the walls with crayons, spilled nail polish on the hardwood floors, and dropped small toys down the tub drain.  

Now, the way someone like me should be able to save money on that versus using a GC is to hire a crew to come in and excavate, then hire a crew to come in and mold the footers and install rebar, then hire a concrete company to come in and pour the footers, then bring the crew back to put up the wall molds and install rebar, then bring in a crew to install the piping for the drain tile and sump pump, then bring back the concrete company to pour more concrete, etc, etc, etc...But, given that I had never done a basement before, and given that I had no idea what order things should be done in or how to determine if things were being done correctly or incorrectly, I instead just decided to hire a turn-key foundation company to take care of everything.  

Was afraid of locking up all this debt, then being stuck renting where I live for the next 3 or so years until I'd be able to refinance, if that was even possible.Not concerned about the debt itself, more concerned about not being able to get my own house and just throwing money down the drain by renting my apartment for $800/month.

This is draining me of my funds and not allowing me to save any money for future investments.

I had fine cold water pressure and low hot water pressure, I shut off the power to the heater, drained it, pulled the lower heating element, and then vacuumed out a bunch of scale built up at the bottom... problem solved.

I paid $250 to get the drain unclogged.