The one about money…

I’m going to ignore the water and mud in the basement of our house and talk money. Because – I just can’t. But here’s a few pictures for fun — back story, the team dug a trench to run utilities to the detached garage and then left for the holiday week. Trench (not filled in) became a river of mud and water, delivered directly into our basement. Party. 🎈 🎉

In related news, I’m ready to enter the construction industry for reals. It can’t be this hard.

Ok – on to money. Money flows out so fast in this process and you really need to be diligent about where you are at financially. I have zero interest in any debt on top of the obvious mortgage debt, and the flow is not endless (wouldn’t that be nice!). Here are the techniques we are using to force tough decisions and budget diligence:

I purchased a subscription to You Need A Budget (YNAB) per recommendation from my friend Kat. It’s an app you hook up to your financial accounts. The theory is money cannot sit without a purpose, so no general savings — weird at first. Every penny we have is budgeted to a purpose. Just because it’s budgeted, I don’t have to spend… It just sits in it’s budgeted “category” until an expense hits against it. In addition, it doesn’t allow you to budget money you don’t have.

If you overspend in a category (real life – I over spent $300 on vacation – whoops), the app allows you to reallocate. So I took the extra fun money from our furniture budget… making me feel the pain for sure. I think that’s the point, though. And why I’m loving the app.

Once we get on the other side of spend craziness, the app is going to help us prioritize our upgrades. Here are the major categories we have on the wish list – now to get dollars assigned to them. (And crap – I’m missing the landscaping upgrades!)

We also are forced to get multiple bids across some suppliers. We are / never will be “lowest bid buyers” as you get what you pay for. But our first landscaping budget is double what it should be – making us seek other options.

This is the largest financial undertaking Dave and I will take on in our lifetimes. For two very financially conservative people, that is strange. We have lived in a one bedroom (plus den) condo for over a decade — stockpiling our savings for this very moment. We will liquidate nearly everything we have, keeping our properties (for now) as rental investments. However, if these need to liquidate, we are not afraid to make that move.

I’m looking forward to getting past the next big spend categories (furniture, BASIC landscaping), closing on our loan, and moving into the next phase of this adventure. Soon. Maybe.