Some may question the wisdom of us spending 4K on renovating our back porch. Our EF is pathetic, and our college savings is pathetic. Our retirement fund is not exactly pathetic, but anemic may better describe it.
All of this is true, yet we are going to have our back porch renovated. It's not at the level of safety concern, but it is an eyesore. And, my 82 year old arthritic/diabetic mother-in-law and 82 year old father-in-law with Parkinson's have great difficulty in entering our house to visit their grand children. That can also be read as the people responsible for the gift that will allow us to renovate the porch deserve better access to our house.
The builder starts today. There is no rain in the forecast. Hopefully he's finished by the end of the day tomorrow. We'll see.
Oh, I almost forgot to add - we had the same builder renovate our front porch last summer. He stored some materials in the old family blacksmith shop. He happened to notice that we had an anvil, drill press, and other small blacksmithing tools. He offered us $500 for the items. When he's finished with this project, he will knock $500 off the cost of the renovation, and take the items with him.
I'm going to try to add a couple of images to show the current condition of the porch and walkway.
The back porch project
August 8th, 2013 at 02:02 pm
August 8th, 2013 at 03:15 pm 1375971313
I find it best to prioritize savings in this order: emergency fund, retirement and then college. And college doesn't HAVE to be funded at all if it is not in the cards, you can borrow, work extra when the time comes, have the child pay and so forth. One cannot borrow for retirement.
August 8th, 2013 at 03:41 pm 1375972902
August 8th, 2013 at 04:31 pm 1375975898
We tend to put savings and retirement *first*, but have never lived in an ugly home. Just to say, you can do all that while beautifying/improving your home.
I feel pretty "meh" about college - we've saved exactly $0 for that. But to be fair, there are a lot of reasons why. It might not be such a rock bottom priority if we didn't have an abundant amount of good/affordable options. It might still be of low priority, regardless, but maybe not $0.
August 8th, 2013 at 04:37 pm 1375976228
August 8th, 2013 at 07:01 pm 1375984897
August 8th, 2013 at 09:37 pm 1375994276
August 9th, 2013 at 01:06 am 1376006788
The forum folks were a bit...intolerant, I thought, when it came to the porch.
August 9th, 2013 at 02:56 am 1376013417
August 9th, 2013 at 05:00 am 1376020800
I think its a fine project. You will see it, use it, enjoy it every day *first*. Your patrons will also see it, use it. The pictures, in my mind, show that the before is pretty close to a safety issue. If you sell and you didn't do this, I guarantee the buyer's home inspector will mention it, giving a buyer a reason to lower the price, and to avoid that you'd be renovating it anyway and all for someone else. That's even less fun.
The other classic advice with a windfall is to spend about 10% on fun and frivolity. If we are talking about $4K - $500 = $3.5K which is pretty close to 10%.
August 12th, 2013 at 06:21 pm 1376328085
Suzanne