Home Repair Budget: How to Save for Needed Expenses

Maintaining a home is often expensive. From repairing the roof to trimming the trees, there are all sorts of jobs that require professional assistance. In order to keep up with all this necessary work, you need to account for home maintenance in your budget. Here’s how you can save up for essential home repairs.

Create a Separate Account

It’s often easier to save money for a specific purpose when you set it aside in its own account. That way, you’re not as tempted to dip into your savings for other purposes. 

Try making a “home improvement” account, and put a certain portion of every paycheck into it. This physical separation of your savings will help you maintain a sense of discipline.

Eliminate Wasteful Spending

If you’re going to save up for home repairs, then you’ll need to eliminate all those needless expenses that chip away at your monthly earnings. To really bring your budgeting game to the next level, write down all your typical expenses. 

This will give you a chance to understand where your money is actually going. You’ll probably be shocked by how much of your weekly paycheck goes toward frivolous purchases. 

If you really want to pay for necessary home repairs, you’ll need to change your lifestyle and cut out these wasteful expenses.

Separate Necessary Repairs From Optional Upgrades

When you’re working on a tight budget, then you need to differentiate between home improvement projects you’d like to do and home repairs that are absolutely necessary. 

After your shingles have been damaged by a storm, an appointment with an interior designer isn’t nearly as important as a visit from residential roofers. Responsible homeownership calls for getting your priorities in order.

Plan Your Projects in Advance

It’s tough to maintain a healthy budget when you’re constantly flying by the seat of your pants. Home repairs are often expensive, so it’s easier for your budget to absorb them when you prepare for them in advance. 

Plot out potential projects for the coming year, and plan your monthly budget around these foreseen expenses. This foresight will also save you money in the long term since it’s almost always cheaper to prevent an issue than to solve it after it occurs.

No matter how nice your home is, it’s going to require repairs. Take the steps above to make sure you can afford to maintain your home.

7 Home Improvement Projects to Leave to the Pros

When we’re trying to live on a fixed income, and cut back on expenses, most of us opt to handle things around the house ourselves. After all, what’s so hard about fixing a cupboard door? However, some of the time it really doesn’t pay to do it yourself. 

If we’re out of our depth, it could create more damage that will be more expensive to fix down the road. In fact, sometimes it can be downright dangerous. Here are a few projects that are usually best when left to the pros!

Electrical problems

Unless you’re an electrician, electrical problems are something that should be left to a licensed electrician! This is because of a few different reasons. Not only is messing with electricity dangerous if you don’t know what you’re doing, but it also means that all of your electrical work won’t be covered by insurance if something goes wrong. 

If you accidentally burn your entire house down because of an electrical project you did yourself, insurance won’t cover any of it.

Some more major plumbing

Can you unclog a toilet by yourself? Yeah, probably. But what if you need to replace a bunch of complicated piping or your toddler flushed a bath toy down the toilet drain and it’s far enough back that you’ll need a snake or other plumbing tool to get it out? 

In these situations, and similar situations, you may want to call a plumber! Your consequences if something goes wrong isn’t quite as dire as an electrical situation, so it really depends on how confident you feel about the situation. 

If you feel out of your depth and hopeless, then a professional may be valuable to you, even if just for the relief and sense of peace of mind.

Asbestos

Didn’t know that asbestos still existed? It does, and it can be horrific. If there is asbestos in your ceiling, call a professional to clean it up. When it becomes airborne, it can get stuck in your lungs, and lead to both lung cancer and major scarring in your lungs. Not worth the risk, honestly.

Waterproofing the foundation of your home

If you’re hoping to waterproof the foundation of your house, it’s going to be a much more difficult job than just digging around your house and installing a membrane. It’s a relatively big undertaking. 

There will need to be weeping tile at the bottom, and a sump pump is usually necessary for proper drainage. This project won’t be cheap, but it should come with at least a 15 year warranty. 

Often, this is a project that you should try to get accomplished before you move in, and you can coordinate it simultaneously while coordinating the move with your movers, since you won’t want to have to deal with it once you’ve already moved in.

Roofing

Way too many people fall from their roof while trying to make repairs up there. It’s easy to lose your balance, or make a simple misstep, and then cause such serious injuries that it can result in death. And that’s just not worth the risk. Call a professional, who will not only be experienced and get the job done quickly, but will be insured. 

Digging out a basement

If you think digging yourself a basement will be an easy job done over the course of a few days with a few handy friends and some shovels, you are sorely mistaken. Digging a basement requires a lot of foundational work, to make sure that your existing home stays safe and structurally sound, as well as taking a lot longer than a few days. 

Calling a professional to dig out your basement will cost you over $30,000 probably, but it’s worth it to not do yourself and risk the foundational integrity of your home.

Installing a skylight

Maybe you’re confident with installing windows or doors. But that doesn’t mean that you’re qualified to install a skylight. In fact, skylights are the most common cause of leaks in homes. This is because of poor installation and improper sealing. Hiring a professional will eliminate the risk for these issues, as well as often come with some sort of warranty.