Financing

The biggest question of this entire project was how were we going to pay for it all?

Clearly we are running out of space faster than we have been able to save money, three kids in three years will do that to you. If we were to wait until we could save enough to pay cash it would take us more years than we wanted to wait for more children. 

It came down to the two options: Do we get financing? Or do we look for a new house? Trevor and I have been very particular about staying out of debt so it wasn't a decision we were taking lightly. After careful consideration and much fasting and prayer we decided that it would be very difficult to find a home with more space and a nice yard in our price range... all what we have in our current home. 

We decided to apply for a Home Equity Line of Credit. This would allow us to borrow in smaller chunks and only pay interest on what we borrowed instead of paying interest on entire loan every month until we paid it back. The Home Equity Line of Credit was also helpful in another way. In order to get the line of credit we needed an appraisal on our home, when we got the appraisal back we fond out we had over 20% equity in the home so we were able to remove that pesky mortgage insurance from our monthly payment thus lowering our monthly mortgage.  Cha' Ching! Thanks US Bank!

We began stashing money before we started the renovation and continue now saving everything we can in an account, separate from our regular bills and expenses, to cover our monthly payments on the HELOC.  Once the basement remodel is finished and the last penny spent then we will know the final total and as our friend Dave Ramsey would say with "gazelle intensity" pay off the balance. We have projected that it will take us a little over two years to pay it off completely.

We love are home and we love where we live, the people and community are fantastic. We are grateful to have been able to get financing to get this remodel underway, to make our home more of the home we can stay in for years to come.