Everybody Loves Your Money

It’s been about 8 months since we acquired a partially completed house.  A friend of mine bought the property and went through all the hoops to get a permit, clear the lot, pour a foundation and frame up the structure but then decided that he’d had enough.  Since the house is directly across the street from our family lake house that we built a few years ago, I decided to buy it and finish it.

So, that was 8 months ago.  Where are we at now?  Well, we are tired for starters.  It’s probably been more work than I originally anticipated, but that’s okay.  I’ve learned a TON and am getting to spend a lot of good times with my best friend, as he helps me finish it.  (He’s a contractor in Portland, Oregon and comes up to help every few weekends).  We’ve come a long way in 8 months.  It’s easy for me to forget what we started with now.  I’ve added some pictures below so that you can see “before” and “after” shots.  As you can see, we obviously have a ways to go, but we are making pretty steady progress.  Here’s what we’ve complete so far:

-Installed stairs and framed up wall around stairs

-Framed up deck and roof over deck

-Roofed the house

-Installed sliding door

-Installed siding on the house

-Completed plumbing (and passed inspection)

-Have nearly completed electrical

-Moved a window and enlarged bathroom  (just a bit, but it was needed)

-Installed footing drains and gutter drains

-Removed a tree and ground out the stump for driveway

-Installed a furnace (heat pump to be completed once dirt work is complete)

-Installed garage doors and front door

-Ran CAT5 and coax

-Caulked about half the house

Overall, I’m happy with the progress.  Originally I was hoping we’d have it completed by this summer, but we aren’t going to meet that goal.  As you can see by the pictures, we’ve got a ways to go.  The main reason it’s taking so long is that it has just been my friend and I working on it every few weekends.  I’ve also paced the work so that we can pay cash for everything as we go.  So far that’s been pretty manageable.  The furnace installation (the one thing we didn’t do ourselves) is setting me back a total of $5K, but that includes the heat pump and installation.  The nice thing about this is that it will give us A/C in the summer and much lower heating bills in the winter. 

Our new goal is to have the house insulated and sheetrocked by the end of summer.  This seems pretty reasonable.  We should have an electrical inspection in the next few weeks and then we’ll have the framing and mechanical inspections soon after that.  Once that is complete, we can start insulating.

This isn’t quite the style of house that I would have built if I had been able to choose but we are making the most of it.  We’ve added a few touches like the shake siding in the peaks and the eave supports.  We’ll also put tongue and groove cedar planking on the deck ceiling along with a couple can lights that can be dimmed in the evenings.  It should turn out fairly decent.

Pictures from when we purchased:

Upstairs was mostly just wide open.  There were a couple walls up there that created the 2 bedrooms but we have since added the kitchen/stairway walls.  In the fourth picture above, you can see our family cabin that we built about 3 years ago on the right. 

Pictures during the work and up to today:

As you can see, it’s coming along.  I sure wish that it happened as fast as I was able to add these pictures to the site.  We’ve still got a long way to go, but it is a good feeling knowing that we are building something ourselves and that we’ll be able to enjoy it for awhile.  My sister would like to keep the other cabin long term (my parents have planned to leave the cabin to all of us kids but I think she will end up with it since we are building our own).  We anticipate a lot of fun family times together both at the cabins and out on the lake.  The 5th picture is the view of the lake from the deck.

I couldn’t resist just adding one picture of my daughter helping out down in the garage. 

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted “Links to Love”.  Here are some of the better links floating around out there:

Fight the urge to splurge @ Get Rich Slowly

JD does a great job at pointing out how so many of us fall victim to useless spending.  I especially like the idea he mentions to force yourself to put 10% of your purchases in a savings account.  Great idea!!

Which is better? Stocks or Real Estate @ CNN Money

Suprisingly stocks return a much better value over the long haul.  This reinforces my belief that you shouldn’t chase one particular method of investing.  I’m putting money both in to real estate and in to the market.

Look out! Cel phone companies are targeting your kids

As if you didn’t have enough to worry about.  Let the marketing onslaught begin.  Cel phone companies are looking to increase their revenues by targeting younger and younger kids.  Reminds me of the pharmaceutical industry targeting adults with their newly created “Adult ADD“.  All in the name of revenue, my friend.

Mortgage firms to offer loan aid

Who would have guessed that mortgage firms would begin offering aid to distressed homeowners.  If you took a crazy loan out and aren’t sure how you are going to pay it back, you may want to check this out.

One more reason to love Credit Unions

Credit unions are out educating young people about money.  They have already educated more than 45,000 Michigan students.  If you have a credit union in your area, chances are you can use it.  Check out their rates and fees.  I bet they beat the big banks because they don’t make a profit~

As I mentioned in a previous post, I finally pulled the trigger and set up a 529 college savings plan for our daughter.  How did I choose the plan?  Well, it all started with a visit to:

http://www.savingforcollege.com

This site is THE authoritative source for 529 plan information.  I began by reading up on the basics here.  Once I felt like I had a decent understanding of the rules and guidelines, I checked out my state sponsored plan.  Frankly, I don’t like Washington state’s “GET” program.  GET stands for Guaranteed Education Tuition.  Basically, you buy credits at a price set today and then can use those credits to pay for college when your child enrolls.  I think one of the turn offs for me was that the price just goes up every year.  Credits get more and more expensive. (understandably)  I think I’d rather invest in some index style mutual funds and take my chances there.

So, I decided I wanted to go down a more traditional path of investing for college.  Since my state doesn’t have any income taxes, I was pretty free to choose from any of the other state’s programs.  If I did have an income tax in my state, I would have wanted to be sure that by choosing another state’s program, I wasn’t missing out on any state level tax benefits.  That wasn’t an issue for me so I was free to wander through the other state’s plans.

After much analysis and comparisons here, I decided to go with the Ohio state plan.  I liked it for it’s online capabilities, it’s direct sold option (no broker), it’s choice of Vanguard funds (and index funds that I was interested in) and saw that it was rated near the top.

Signing up was a BREEZE.  I simply filled out an online set of forms and then set up the automatic transfer from my checking account.  I now have an automatic investment coming out on the 15th of the month each and every month.  I don’t even have to think about it.

Another great part of this plan is that I’ve started to tell my family all about it.  I received a packet in the mail that has deposit slips that I can hand out to family members.  A couple family members have shown some pretty strong interest in putting a little away for our daughter.  This will be just the ticket for them to do it!