5 Home Renovation Tips to Stay Within Budget

A lot of people doing home renovations, and a lot of people want to get into investing. So we thought we would do a topic on the top five things to do to keep you from going over budget, because it can be really easy to do.

#1: Reconsider DIY

So the first one I'll jump right into is reconsider DIY. A lot of times it can seem like it's going to save you money, but in the long grand scheme of things, it ends up costing you more money. Not only that, but taking more time to do it.

You don't know what you don't know. A General contractor job is to know what pitfalls you might incur. They knows the permitting process if you need those, and how to line up contractors and subcontractors to save you time.

I'd say on the smaller jobs, you might be better off. You can go DIY if you want to play around with something and try yourself, save some money. But bigger jobs, I would hire out for the pros.

#2: Hire The Right Expert

So number two is hire the right expert. So if you do decide to DIY the project, make sure you contact a few of the experts in each of the trades that you're looking at, whether that be electrician, plumber, carpenter, etc. And the suggestion is to get THREE quotes from each of those three different quotes from three different contractors and not necessarily go with the cheapest one. Usually it's a communication place into it timeliness on how fast they can get to the project and get it done experience level, et cetera. So just get three, get a vibe, decide which one is best for you.

#3: Have A Game Plan

Number three like everything when you take on big projects or even small projects, is have a game plan. So you want to map this out. You want to know when you're doing things with the timeline for those things are so that you can move it along as seamlessly as possible. There's nothing more frustrating than having things stretch out longer than needed to because you didn't have a game plan in progress.

#4: Cutting Corners or Saving Money

Number four is know where you're willing to cut corners and where you're going to spend extra money. So a perfect example of this on a renovation of mine, I had the grand scheme of everything I wanted, and I had things start as could be, maybes if we needed to cut some corners, and we had to take a couple of those into play on that renovation. So just know where you're willing to cut corners to save costs.

And try not to cut corners everywhere. I mean, saving money is a good thing, but cutting corners to save money everywhere is going to show up somewhere. Maybe not immediate, too. I mean, if you cut corners where you can't see things, sometimes that's going to show itself, rear its ugly head months and maybe years down the line or an inspection.

#5: Pad Your Budget

And number five, and the last one is, and we both learned this the hard way is pad your budget. So recommendations are 10% to 20%. I have been doing 10% and almost always am I over that budget. Greg does 20%. He's usually pretty safe there. Find out what's comfortable for you. But, for example, if it's a $50,000 expected budget, you might want to bump that to 55 or 60,000 just for incidental. So something, if you guys have renovated before, you know, something always comes up. So pad your budget so you're prepared.

If we can ever help with anything or you want to see a specific video, reach out. And thanks always for your support.