Are you considering financing your next remodeling project or worried about rising homeowners insurance costs? This midweek update dives into these crucial topics, offering insights and advice on how to navigate the current financial landscape. Eric Chi discusses the challenges of financing home improvements in a turbulent economic environment, emphasizing the importance of being cautious and prioritizing cash payments when possible. He also shares personal experiences with insurance hikes, urging listeners to evaluate their coverage and explore options that could save them significant amounts of money. Tune in to gain practical tips that can help you make informed decisions for your home amidst the uncertainties of the upcoming election season.

Navigating the complexities of financing your home remodeling projects and understanding homeowners insurance can be challenging, especially in today’s unpredictable economic climate. This midweek update delves into practical advice for listeners contemplating home renovations, particularly as the fourth quarter of 2024 unfolds amidst political and economic turmoil. Eric Chi candidly shares his recent struggles with a severe cold, emphasizing the importance of health during these busy times, before pivoting to the pressing financial questions many homeowners face: Should you finance your remodeling? What are the risks involved with different financing options like home equity lines of credit (HELOCs) and home improvement loans? Eric cautions listeners against overextending themselves financially, highlighting the current interest rates and how they may impact long-term financial stability. He also shares personal anecdotes about negotiating insurance rates and the importance of having a trustworthy insurance agent, which underscores the necessity of being proactive about home and financial safety in these uncertain times.

Takeaways:

• Eric discusses the importance of having savings for unexpected home repairs and renovations.
• Financing home improvement projects could be risky, especially in the current economic climate.
• Homeowners should regularly review their insurance coverage to ensure they have adequate protection.
• Beware of HELOCs and their potential risks; plan carefully before using them for renovations.
• Consider cash payments or no-interest financing options to minimize debt when remodeling.
• Keep a close eye on your financial position before embarking on major home improvement projects.

Companies mentioned in this episode:

• Monument Grill
• Tony Russell Insurance

To get your questions answered by Eric G give us a call in the studio at 833-239-4144 24/7 and Eric G will get back to you and answer your question and you might end up in a future episode of Around the House.

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Information given on the Around the House Show should not be considered construction or design advice for your specific project, nor is it intended to replace consulting at your home or jobsite by a building professional. The views and opinions expressed by those interviewed on the podcast are those of the guests and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the Around the House Show.

Mentioned in this episode:

Monument Grills

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Monument Grills

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It's around the house.

When it comes to remodeling and renovating your home, there is a lot to know, but we've got you covered.

This is around the house.

Welcome to the around the house show, the next generation of home improvement.

Thanks for joining me today.

I'm Eric Chi.

This is our midweek update.

This is what comes out here in the middle of the week that doesn't cover the stuff that happened in last week's show and of course, what's happening in this week's show coming up.

And we've got a great one this weekend.

I squeaked one out.

I tell you what, I apologize, guys.

I have been down with one of the worst colds I've had in probably five or six years because I tell you what, I never get them.

I'll get a little stuffing sometimes, but every three or four years, I get hit with something hard that knocks me down on a few days.

And this one took me down about four and a half, and, boy, it was rough.

So stay safe out there.

Keep, you know, those fluids in, wash your hands, all that stuff.

Try to see if you can keep from getting this one going around.

Wasn't Covid.

I did a couple Covid tests.

We were fine.

So it wasn't that.

It's just a really rough cold going around out there and feels good to be here on Wednesday at about 80%, which is much better where I was last week.

So feeling good about that.

Today's episode is brought to you by a friend at Monument Grill.

Check them out if you're looking for a barbecue to replace that old propane barbecue out back and ready for tailgate season.

Might be time to get a new one.

Check them out@montymcrills.com well, today I wanted to talk about a frequent question that I get.

How should I come up with money for my DIY projects?

What is the best way to do that?

And, you know, there's people out there going, hey, how do I pay for that?

Do I pay it with cash?

Do I get a heloc?

Do I go out and get a home improvement loan?

Do I put it on credit cards?

Do I finance it?

Now, you know, here's the thing, and let's talk about this.

This right now is probably one of the worst weeks of turmoil that we're gonna have in the last three or four years.

It just is.

It's election time.

I hate being negative about it.

The world is so negative right now.

And I'm not going to go down that rabbit hole here because it's way too easy to follow everybody else.

And then we're just not going to do that here and around the house, but we're just going to call the spade the spade for the day and all of that.

Well, here's the thing right now with the turmoil that we have, the way interest rates are, they're getting a little better.

I would be hard pressed to make an argument for you to do a renovation and to extend yourself out by financing it.

You know, there's.

There's so many things that happen with financing home improvement projects.

And let me give you my thoughts on this and I'll get on my soapbox a little bit.

You know, we have natural disasters, we have, you know, high winds, we have things that happen in our areas that can damage our homes.

And what I want you to do, and this is where I always go, we need to be very careful because we have a lot of things going on right now with insurance rates going up and insurance coverage is going on.

I mean, I am right now sitting here in the middle of negotiating with my insurance guy, Tony Russell, Insurance here in the Pacific Northwest.

I love Tony.

He's a radio friend.

He is my insurance guy that I can have an honest conversation with.

And I reached out to him, went, Tony, why is my Brand X insurance going up?

I mean, car insurance has nearly doubled in two years.

Not Tony's fault.

Company I'm with has nothing to do with him, you know, and no accidents, nothing like that.

I think we have one windshield replacement.

Other than that it's clean.

So there's nothing there.

No tickets, no, nothing like that.

Not even any really new cars other than my Chevy.

So that's clean.

So I was like, what's going on there?

Why is my homeowners going up?

And he says, man, they just keep doing 30%, 40% hikes, you know, and that's what's happening out there.

So one thing is, is I'm worried, especially with roofing and things like that out there where insurance companies on a whole get something that.

But I worry about them not covering roof losses, coming up with ways to get out of that, you know, and all that.

And by the way, shout out to Tony because he went out and re quoted a different company within his umbrella of coverages because he's.

I like that.

He's an independent insurance guy.

He's got different people.

I'm going to switch insurance teams within his organization and he's saving me thousands of bucks.

A year, which I like.

When I get into, you know, starting to get it where I can start counting that on my hand and start working towards the next hand.

Pretty soon that's where I'm starting to talk about, hey, he's saving me money and getting equal coverage.

So I like that.

And that's why I like doing business with an insurance guy that's local that I can get on the phone.

I don't have to call into a customer service to do stuff online because we can have this conversation of what things really cost.

You know, for me as a homeowner, I'm a little different than most people.

I'm not going to do a fifteen hundred dollar claim.

I'm not.

If I had something damaged in my house, I'm just going to fix it.

Not going to call in and deal with it.

It's not more worth my time.

If I had a broken pipe, guess what, I'm going to fix it.

If it's going to be big, it's going to be big and then I'll deal with it then.

But I don't need to have a 500 deductible on my house or thousand dollar deductible in my house because I'm just going to take care of it myself.

So have those conversations with your agent that could save you some money.

But really, when it comes down to working on projects, and especially if you're a modeler or a, or a person doing a lot of DIY projects, you should be having that conversation with them as well to make sure you're covered.

Because sometimes you put more into that house and what you know, I know people that I'm like, oh, you've got a $250,000 replacement value on the house.

If the house burned down, awesome.

But didn't you just spend $80,000 in a brand new kitchen?

Does that make sense?

So you start to think about some of that stuff and go, wait a minute, maybe I can't replace the structure for what I think.

So be careful with that.

But back to financing.

I want you to have some money or the ability to go get money if you have a disaster at your house.

I don't know right now.

And I love my kitchen and bath people out there, they're doing remodels, but I'm not sure right now.

In the way the economy is and other stuff, it might not be a great idea to go out and get a 9% loan to do a kitchen model.

Unless you've got some savings backed up to take care of those things.

So, you know, I would play it a little safe here until we get through the election, maybe through the end of the year and take a peek at it.

But HELOCs?

I've seen people lose their house over HELOCs.

You know, if you don't plan ahead for that, you know, I'll defer that out.

A year or two can be a big problem.

What happens a year from tune down?

You can't make a big payment on that, suggest or five years or whatever it is.

So be really careful not to paint yourself in a corner with a remodeling situation.

The best way is cash.

You know, if you.

If you can go into your home improvement store and get 90 days, 120 days, six months, same as cash a year.

No, fine.

It, you know, no interest financing or whatever, maybe that makes sense for you.

You can save the money, put it away, pay it off.

And the worst case is maybe you just have to sit there and pay the interest rate at the end.

But that might not be a bad way to go with some of these, you know, store cards and things like that.

But you got to be careful because it's a big trap, too.

They want to charge you that interest at the end.

I've made that mistake.

You go, oh, man, I should have paid that off.

I missed it by a few days.

Whoop, there goes hundreds of dollars on that thing.

Because you missed the one year seamless cash, a best buy or whatever on there.

And they did a good job of warning me.

I burned myself on that one, though, Just getting busy and not paying attention to it.

That can cost you some significant money.

But be really careful out there, guys.

I would be financing cash out of pocket.

Unless you know your situation, you have a great control of your situation, you know, make sure that you're good.

I just don't know where things are going to go here in the next.

You know, it's been a wild ride this week for politics out there, and we don't do politics on this show.

And I really try to keep that out of here as best I can because I know every single person that's listening right now is so sick and tired of it like I am.

But we just got to see where things go out there, guys, and I think we'll be able to make some better decisions of what's going to happen here in the next few months.

So keep your head up, stay positive out there.

No matter what.

This election season, as homeowners, half of us are going to feel really upset about what's going on, depending on which half it is.

And so be kind to ourselves.

Let's see if we can learn one thing from this election season is that we've got to really keep ourselves positive.

Shake your neighbor's hand that's got the opposing party's political sign on it.

See if we can mend some fences here.

Because, tell you what, we need to have better neighborhoods, better friends, better people.

And some of us, all of us, if we can take two steps to mending fences and stopping the hate and divisiveness out there, I think we can get ourselves turned around, out of this death spiral we're in of negativity.

And if we could do something like that, I think we're all gonna.

We can make something positive out of this for all of us.

And so that's my little, Little, you know, soapbox speech right there, guys.

Of, man, I tell you what, like you, like many of you, you kind of have two choices.

Either get fired up or what's going on, or you turn it off and walk away.

And, you know, just do what you can do to maintain that you're in a good position.

Watch your family and friends, make sure everybody's safe.

And let's keep our heads up on this, because I think we've got one more week of a bumpy ride, and hopefully this.

This is over for everybody for a bit and we can get back to building beautiful houses, remodeling our homes, making things look beautiful, and getting ready for the holidays.

I'd love to get this behind us so we can all have our friends and family together for Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, whatever we celebrate out there, into the holiday season.

It's going to be a great year, I think, and I think we all have a lot to be thankful for.

But let's see if we can get through this, guys.

And I don't want to sound negative here.

Let's just keep it going and keep that positivity out there going and enjoy ourselves.

Coming into these holidays and just think about your money situation out there.

Don't put yourself in a position where you're taking risks at this point.

You know, we're just seeing too many.

Too many volatile situations where I say, you know, hey, if you need to do something like, hey, I gotta put a roof on this house, go put a roof on the house.

If you're like, I got windows that are failing that, I Gotta fix.

I'm gonna cause more damage.

Right now, you should be working on those projects that are foundational to your home to make sure that you're in a good position moving forward.

If you've got an H VAC system that's not working 100%, get that service tech out, get it taken care of.

You know, if you need a new system, guess what?

I'd probably be doing it now because they're not going to get cheaper anytime soon.

And a lot of those rebates out there that are coming might not be something that's going to help you.

So take a peek at what you want to do.

Put the system in.

You want before they can tell you what system you can put in and what system you can something to save money on.

Because those systems, as they change out and make.

Make them more efficient, they never get cheaper.

So it might be a good time to do something like that to make your home a little bit healthier.

All right, everybody, I'm going to let you go.

I'm going to rest my voice here a little bit.

Get this up.

Happy middle of the week out there.

We got six days till election season is over.

I know we'll probably be hanging around for a couple of days with breaking news, because I got a feeling this one might drag out a couple extra days, especially in local elections and stuff out there.

All right, everybody, thanks for tuning in around the house.

I really appreciate your support and you tuning into the show today.

We got a great show coming up this weekend.

We got some new tools and we got some great stuff talking about things you can do to your house to make it a little bit healthier, especially when we're coming into fall and winter and we're closing things up for, you know, that bad weather that typically comes in for many places here in the US I'm Eric G.

You've been listening to around the House.

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