Episode 1860
Financing Your Home Renovation: Tips for 2024
Are you considering financing your next remodeling project or worried about rising homeowners insurance costs? This midweek update dives into these crucial topics, offering insights and advice on how to navigate the current financial landscape. Eric Chi discusses the challenges of financing home improvements in a turbulent economic environment, emphasizing the importance of being cautious and prioritizing cash payments when possible. He also shares personal experiences with insurance hikes, urging listeners to evaluate their coverage and explore options that could save them significant amounts of money. Tune in to gain practical tips that can help you make informed decisions for your home amidst the uncertainties of the upcoming election season.
Navigating the complexities of financing your home remodeling projects and understanding homeowners insurance can be challenging, especially in today’s unpredictable economic climate. This midweek update delves into practical advice for listeners contemplating home renovations, particularly as the fourth quarter of 2024 unfolds amidst political and economic turmoil. Eric Chi candidly shares his recent struggles with a severe cold, emphasizing the importance of health during these busy times, before pivoting to the pressing financial questions many homeowners face: Should you finance your remodeling? What are the risks involved with different financing options like home equity lines of credit (HELOCs) and home improvement loans? Eric cautions listeners against overextending themselves financially, highlighting the current interest rates and how they may impact long-term financial stability. He also shares personal anecdotes about negotiating insurance rates and the importance of having a trustworthy insurance agent, which underscores the necessity of being proactive about home and financial safety in these uncertain times.
Takeaways:
- Eric discusses the importance of having savings for unexpected home repairs and renovations.
- Financing home improvement projects could be risky, especially in the current economic climate.
- Homeowners should regularly review their insurance coverage to ensure they have adequate protection.
- Beware of HELOCs and their potential risks; plan carefully before using them for renovations.
- Consider cash payments or no-interest financing options to minimize debt when remodeling.
- Keep a close eye on your financial position before embarking on major home improvement projects.
Companies mentioned in this episode:
- Monument Grill
- Tony Russell Insurance
To get your questions answered by Eric G give us a call in the studio at 833-239-4144 24/7 and Eric G will get back to you and answer your question and you might end up in a future episode of Around the House.
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Information given on the Around the House Show should not be considered construction or design advice for your specific project, nor is it intended to replace consulting at your home or jobsite by a building professional. The views and opinions expressed by those interviewed on the podcast are those of the guests and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the Around the House Show.
Mentioned in this episode:
Monument Grills
Check out Monument Grills.com for more information
SiteHype Designs.com
To get your website back on track or create a brand new one vist my friend of nearly 20 years at https://sitehypedesigns.com/ tell him Eric G sent you for a special friends and family discount.
Transcript
It's around the house.
Eric Chi:When it comes to remodeling and renovating your home, there is a lot to know, but we've got you covered.
Eric Chi:This is around the house.
Eric Chi:Welcome to the around the house show, the next generation of home improvement.
Eric Chi:Thanks for joining me today.
Eric Chi:I'm Eric Chi.
Eric Chi:This is our midweek update.
Eric Chi:This is what comes out here in the middle of the week that doesn't cover the stuff that happened in last week's show and of course, what's happening in this week's show coming up.
Eric Chi:And we've got a great one this weekend.
Eric Chi:I squeaked one out.
Eric Chi:I tell you what, I apologize, guys.
Eric Chi:I have been down with one of the worst colds I've had in probably five or six years because I tell you what, I never get them.
Eric Chi:I'll get a little stuffing sometimes, but every three or four years, I get hit with something hard that knocks me down on a few days.
Eric Chi:And this one took me down about four and a half, and, boy, it was rough.
Eric Chi:So stay safe out there.
Eric Chi:Keep, you know, those fluids in, wash your hands, all that stuff.
Eric Chi:Try to see if you can keep from getting this one going around.
Eric Chi:Wasn't Covid.
Eric Chi:I did a couple Covid tests.
Eric Chi:We were fine.
Eric Chi:So it wasn't that.
Eric Chi:It's just a really rough cold going around out there and feels good to be here on Wednesday at about 80%, which is much better where I was last week.
Eric Chi:So feeling good about that.
Eric Chi:Today's episode is brought to you by a friend at Monument Grill.
Eric Chi:Check them out if you're looking for a barbecue to replace that old propane barbecue out back and ready for tailgate season.
Eric Chi:Might be time to get a new one.
Eric Chi:Check them out@montymcrills.com well, today I wanted to talk about a frequent question that I get.
Eric Chi:How should I come up with money for my DIY projects?
Eric Chi:What is the best way to do that?
Eric Chi:And, you know, there's people out there going, hey, how do I pay for that?
Eric Chi:Do I pay it with cash?
Eric Chi:Do I get a heloc?
Eric Chi:Do I go out and get a home improvement loan?
Eric Chi:Do I put it on credit cards?
Eric Chi:Do I finance it?
Eric Chi: here in the fourth quarter of: Eric Chi:Now, you know, here's the thing, and let's talk about this.
Eric Chi:This right now is probably one of the worst weeks of turmoil that we're gonna have in the last three or four years.
Eric Chi:It just is.
Eric Chi:It's election time.
Eric Chi:I hate being negative about it.
Eric Chi:The world is so negative right now.
Eric Chi:And I'm not going to go down that rabbit hole here because it's way too easy to follow everybody else.
Eric Chi:And then we're just not going to do that here and around the house, but we're just going to call the spade the spade for the day and all of that.
Eric Chi:Well, here's the thing right now with the turmoil that we have, the way interest rates are, they're getting a little better.
Eric Chi:I would be hard pressed to make an argument for you to do a renovation and to extend yourself out by financing it.
Eric Chi:You know, there's.
Eric Chi:There's so many things that happen with financing home improvement projects.
Eric Chi:And let me give you my thoughts on this and I'll get on my soapbox a little bit.
Eric Chi:You know, we have natural disasters, we have, you know, high winds, we have things that happen in our areas that can damage our homes.
Eric Chi:And what I want you to do, and this is where I always go, we need to be very careful because we have a lot of things going on right now with insurance rates going up and insurance coverage is going on.
Eric Chi:I mean, I am right now sitting here in the middle of negotiating with my insurance guy, Tony Russell, Insurance here in the Pacific Northwest.
Eric Chi:I love Tony.
Eric Chi:He's a radio friend.
Eric Chi:He is my insurance guy that I can have an honest conversation with.
Eric Chi:And I reached out to him, went, Tony, why is my Brand X insurance going up?
Eric Chi:I mean, car insurance has nearly doubled in two years.
Eric Chi:Not Tony's fault.
Eric Chi:Company I'm with has nothing to do with him, you know, and no accidents, nothing like that.
Eric Chi:I think we have one windshield replacement.
Eric Chi:Other than that it's clean.
Eric Chi:So there's nothing there.
Eric Chi:No tickets, no, nothing like that.
Eric Chi:Not even any really new cars other than my Chevy.
Eric Chi:So that's clean.
Eric Chi:So I was like, what's going on there?
Eric Chi:Why is my homeowners going up?
Eric Chi:And he says, man, they just keep doing 30%, 40% hikes, you know, and that's what's happening out there.
Eric Chi:So one thing is, is I'm worried, especially with roofing and things like that out there where insurance companies on a whole get something that.
Eric Chi:But I worry about them not covering roof losses, coming up with ways to get out of that, you know, and all that.
Eric Chi:And by the way, shout out to Tony because he went out and re quoted a different company within his umbrella of coverages because he's.
Eric Chi:I like that.
Eric Chi:He's an independent insurance guy.
Eric Chi:He's got different people.
Eric Chi:I'm going to switch insurance teams within his organization and he's saving me thousands of bucks.
Eric Chi:A year, which I like.
Eric Chi:When I get into, you know, starting to get it where I can start counting that on my hand and start working towards the next hand.
Eric Chi:Pretty soon that's where I'm starting to talk about, hey, he's saving me money and getting equal coverage.
Eric Chi:So I like that.
Eric Chi:And that's why I like doing business with an insurance guy that's local that I can get on the phone.
Eric Chi:I don't have to call into a customer service to do stuff online because we can have this conversation of what things really cost.
Eric Chi:You know, for me as a homeowner, I'm a little different than most people.
Eric Chi:I'm not going to do a fifteen hundred dollar claim.
Eric Chi:I'm not.
Eric Chi:If I had something damaged in my house, I'm just going to fix it.
Eric Chi:Not going to call in and deal with it.
Eric Chi:It's not more worth my time.
Eric Chi:If I had a broken pipe, guess what, I'm going to fix it.
Eric Chi: It's not worth paying the: Eric Chi:If it's going to be big, it's going to be big and then I'll deal with it then.
Eric Chi:But I don't need to have a 500 deductible on my house or thousand dollar deductible in my house because I'm just going to take care of it myself.
Eric Chi:So have those conversations with your agent that could save you some money.
Eric Chi:But really, when it comes down to working on projects, and especially if you're a modeler or a, or a person doing a lot of DIY projects, you should be having that conversation with them as well to make sure you're covered.
Eric Chi:Because sometimes you put more into that house and what you know, I know people that I'm like, oh, you've got a $250,000 replacement value on the house.
Eric Chi:If the house burned down, awesome.
Eric Chi:But didn't you just spend $80,000 in a brand new kitchen?
Eric Chi:Does that make sense?
Eric Chi:So you start to think about some of that stuff and go, wait a minute, maybe I can't replace the structure for what I think.
Eric Chi:So be careful with that.
Eric Chi:But back to financing.
Eric Chi:I want you to have some money or the ability to go get money if you have a disaster at your house.
Eric Chi:I don't know right now.
Eric Chi:And I love my kitchen and bath people out there, they're doing remodels, but I'm not sure right now.
Eric Chi: In: Eric Chi:In the way the economy is and other stuff, it might not be a great idea to go out and get a 9% loan to do a kitchen model.
Eric Chi:Unless you've got some savings backed up to take care of those things.
Eric Chi:So, you know, I would play it a little safe here until we get through the election, maybe through the end of the year and take a peek at it.
Eric Chi:But HELOCs?
Eric Chi:I've seen people lose their house over HELOCs.
Eric Chi:You know, if you don't plan ahead for that, you know, I'll defer that out.
Eric Chi:A year or two can be a big problem.
Eric Chi:What happens a year from tune down?
Eric Chi:You can't make a big payment on that, suggest or five years or whatever it is.
Eric Chi:So be really careful not to paint yourself in a corner with a remodeling situation.
Eric Chi:The best way is cash.
Eric Chi:You know, if you.
Eric Chi:If you can go into your home improvement store and get 90 days, 120 days, six months, same as cash a year.
Eric Chi:No, fine.
Eric Chi:It, you know, no interest financing or whatever, maybe that makes sense for you.
Eric Chi:You can save the money, put it away, pay it off.
Eric Chi:And the worst case is maybe you just have to sit there and pay the interest rate at the end.
Eric Chi:But that might not be a bad way to go with some of these, you know, store cards and things like that.
Eric Chi:But you got to be careful because it's a big trap, too.
Eric Chi:They want to charge you that interest at the end.
Eric Chi:I've made that mistake.
Eric Chi:You go, oh, man, I should have paid that off.
Eric Chi:I missed it by a few days.
Eric Chi:Whoop, there goes hundreds of dollars on that thing.
Eric Chi:Because you missed the one year seamless cash, a best buy or whatever on there.
Eric Chi:And they did a good job of warning me.
Eric Chi:I burned myself on that one, though, Just getting busy and not paying attention to it.
Eric Chi:That can cost you some significant money.
Eric Chi:But be really careful out there, guys.
Eric Chi:I would be financing cash out of pocket.
Eric Chi:Unless you know your situation, you have a great control of your situation, you know, make sure that you're good.
Eric Chi:I just don't know where things are going to go here in the next.
Eric Chi:You know, it's been a wild ride this week for politics out there, and we don't do politics on this show.
Eric Chi:And I really try to keep that out of here as best I can because I know every single person that's listening right now is so sick and tired of it like I am.
Eric Chi:But we just got to see where things go out there, guys, and I think we'll be able to make some better decisions of what's going to happen here in the next few months.
Eric Chi:So keep your head up, stay positive out there.
Eric Chi:No matter what.
Eric Chi:This election season, as homeowners, half of us are going to feel really upset about what's going on, depending on which half it is.
Eric Chi:And so be kind to ourselves.
Eric Chi:Let's see if we can learn one thing from this election season is that we've got to really keep ourselves positive.
Eric Chi:Shake your neighbor's hand that's got the opposing party's political sign on it.
Eric Chi:See if we can mend some fences here.
Eric Chi:Because, tell you what, we need to have better neighborhoods, better friends, better people.
Eric Chi:And some of us, all of us, if we can take two steps to mending fences and stopping the hate and divisiveness out there, I think we can get ourselves turned around, out of this death spiral we're in of negativity.
Eric Chi:And if we could do something like that, I think we're all gonna.
Eric Chi:We can make something positive out of this for all of us.
Eric Chi:And so that's my little, Little, you know, soapbox speech right there, guys.
Eric Chi:Of, man, I tell you what, like you, like many of you, you kind of have two choices.
Eric Chi:Either get fired up or what's going on, or you turn it off and walk away.
Eric Chi:And, you know, just do what you can do to maintain that you're in a good position.
Eric Chi:Watch your family and friends, make sure everybody's safe.
Eric Chi:And let's keep our heads up on this, because I think we've got one more week of a bumpy ride, and hopefully this.
Eric Chi:This is over for everybody for a bit and we can get back to building beautiful houses, remodeling our homes, making things look beautiful, and getting ready for the holidays.
Eric Chi:I'd love to get this behind us so we can all have our friends and family together for Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, whatever we celebrate out there, into the holiday season.
Eric Chi:It's going to be a great year, I think, and I think we all have a lot to be thankful for.
Eric Chi:But let's see if we can get through this, guys.
Eric Chi:And I don't want to sound negative here.
Eric Chi:Let's just keep it going and keep that positivity out there going and enjoy ourselves.
Eric Chi:Coming into these holidays and just think about your money situation out there.
Eric Chi:Don't put yourself in a position where you're taking risks at this point.
Eric Chi:You know, we're just seeing too many.
Eric Chi:Too many volatile situations where I say, you know, hey, if you need to do something like, hey, I gotta put a roof on this house, go put a roof on the house.
Eric Chi:If you're like, I got windows that are failing that, I Gotta fix.
Eric Chi:I'm gonna cause more damage.
Eric Chi:Right now, you should be working on those projects that are foundational to your home to make sure that you're in a good position moving forward.
Eric Chi:If you've got an H VAC system that's not working 100%, get that service tech out, get it taken care of.
Eric Chi:You know, if you need a new system, guess what?
Eric Chi:I'd probably be doing it now because they're not going to get cheaper anytime soon.
Eric Chi:And a lot of those rebates out there that are coming might not be something that's going to help you.
Eric Chi:So take a peek at what you want to do.
Eric Chi:Put the system in.
Eric Chi:You want before they can tell you what system you can put in and what system you can something to save money on.
Eric Chi:Because those systems, as they change out and make.
Eric Chi:Make them more efficient, they never get cheaper.
Eric Chi:So it might be a good time to do something like that to make your home a little bit healthier.
Eric Chi:All right, everybody, I'm going to let you go.
Eric Chi:I'm going to rest my voice here a little bit.
Eric Chi:Get this up.
Eric Chi:Happy middle of the week out there.
Eric Chi:We got six days till election season is over.
Eric Chi:I know we'll probably be hanging around for a couple of days with breaking news, because I got a feeling this one might drag out a couple extra days, especially in local elections and stuff out there.
Eric Chi: last week of election season: Eric Chi:All right, everybody, thanks for tuning in around the house.
Eric Chi:I really appreciate your support and you tuning into the show today.
Eric Chi:We got a great show coming up this weekend.
Eric Chi:We got some new tools and we got some great stuff talking about things you can do to your house to make it a little bit healthier, especially when we're coming into fall and winter and we're closing things up for, you know, that bad weather that typically comes in for many places here in the US I'm Eric G.
Eric Chi:You've been listening to around the House.
Eric Chi:Somewhere unseen and undiscovered Anywhere beyond the me Love is a love song let's be lovers we're all over the radio Take my radio with.
