Former super saver is now a super spender. Help!

[MrsPete]

I am very fortunate to have kids that like to budget and save.

I don't think you're being truthful.

I suspect you have kids who like to budget and save because you taught them and set an example. I doubt good fortune had much to do with it.

 

[boop0524]

There is so much great advice here, but I’ll share a couple things that have worked well for us. We switched to Sling years ago and haven’t looked back. We used to have both bundles but found that we’re just fine with the $30/month option. We also share logins to streaming services with family so we can all benefit w/o having to pay for everything. Bonus —my parents have YouTube TV with all the sweet channels so we get to share that login, too. Score!

For retirement and extra savings, we hooked up with a financial services agency that I know and trust and it’s been wonderful for us. Outside of our traditional retirement savings, we have stocks through them and detailed, expert retirement planning. That can be pretty eye opening when a professional runs the numbers and possible scenarios. Definitely keeps us grounded in reality and helps us make smart decisions

 

[DLgal]

I don't think you're being truthful.

I suspect you have kids who like to budget and save because you taught them and set an example. I doubt good fortune had much to do with it.

No, some kids are just like that by nature. My older son hangs onto every dollar he gets and he NEVER (I literally mean never) wants to spend, money on anything. He is very much a minimalist. My younger son is the complete opposite. He spends his money in his mind before he even gets it. He is a Toy collector and there is always something he wants to buy. I have modeled the same financial behavior to them both. You can't train a personality out of a person.

 

[Sun_soakin]

No, some kids are just like that by nature. My older son hangs onto every dollar he gets and he NEVER (I literally mean never) wants to spend, money on anything. He is very much a minimalist. My younger son is the complete opposite. He spends his money in his mind before he even gets it. He is a Toy collector and there is always something he wants to buy. I have modeled the same financial behavior to them both. You can't train a personality out of a person.

so true! We have 4 kids and they are all so different with their spending. In our case, it’s the boys that save/invest their money and the girls that don’t want to

 

[Sun_soakin]

I’d make a list of the home repairs and associated costs. You might start knocking off some low-hanging fruit and then plan for the larger projects.
I’d cut some of those expenses, like the cable. We are in an extra HCOLA and pay $45/mo for the fastest fiber option w/ ATT ( works fine even w/ 6 of us on video calls all day). We don’t watch much TV but have Disney+/Hulu/ESPN for $13/mo, I know you can upgrade the ESPN and/or Hulu.
We haven’t eaten out much at all for the last year. I’ve actually gotten into making way more food from scratch; it’s delicious and definitely saved $. We’re consistently spending less than $1500/mo now and that includes decent wine and covers a house full of tween/teens. I mostly shop at Costco still (and Whole Foods) but I’m not buying things that are prepared (I do buy almost all organic tho).
I think you could save/invest that extra $ and eventually be comfortable dropping that life insurance even if you still had the mortgage. That’s a lot of $. We only carry the limit of group life insurance available through my employer (on both of us). It costs us less than $50/mo for about $2M in total limits. If that’s offered through either of your employers, do it. If you’re not already maxing your 401ks or other retirement vehicles, I’d do that with the extra. You should both max an IRA annually too (if you don’t think you’re eligible, research backdoor IRA). After you’ve exhausted tax advantaged options, switch to regular savings (you can easily open an etrade account for investing). Do you have a high deductible health insurance plan and HSA? If so, make sure you’re maxing that too (and investing).

 

[barkley]

if you belong to a credit union check and see if they offer free financial education seminars. mine offers 9 different topics-

become debt free
budgeting 101
home buying 101
keys to car buying
organize your finances
prevent fraud and identity theft
protect your credit score
story time
financial planning.

they used to be face to face but now you reserve a spot in a zoom session. they also offer financial education on-line resources and have multiple financial topic blogs.


when my kids were younger their high school had the credit union come in and do the teen focused seminars-they learned allot. i have to imagine the adult based seminars provide a wealth of information.

 

[MrsPete]

No, some kids are just like that by nature ...

so true! We have 4 kids and they are all so different with their spending. In our case, it’s the boys that save/invest their money and the girls that don’t want to

Ah, well. I do take credit for teaching my kids to be frugal.
And while you personally may have saver-boys and spender-girls, I'm sure that's not a hard-and-fast rule. I'm more thrifty than any of my brothers or my husband.

 

[ruadisneyfan2]

OP, you're getting a lot of great advice. I'd just like to chime in on a few aspects that I disagree with.

First, I would not even slightly encourage my kids (20 & 24) to tap into their retirement funds for future large expenses such as down payment for a home. I started with my employer's 403b when I was probably 24 and vowed to myself that I would never touch it unless I was homeless and living in a cardboard box. Seriously, if I felt I could lean on that every time dh got laid off or we needed a new roof, concrete driveway, etc it would be a pitiful amount now, 30 years later. Meanwhile I know people who've tapped into theirs to take a Mediterranean cruise, pay off credit cards, or have a pool installed. It's none of my business so I zip my lips with them, but I cringe at the thought. I do point these things out to our kids over dinner about it being a certain mindset that retirement funds are for retirement.

Second, for everyone feeling comfortable with life insurance through their employer, ask your benefits office what happens if you're too sick to work? Over the 30 years I've been with my employer, I've have 2 coworkers who died of cancer before the age of 55, plus a cousin. None of them worked right up to the time of their death. Dying of cancer is often a slow, painful process which is sad enough but adding the pressure to try to keep working as long as possible is not something I want. In my own situation, once I am officially no longer employed at the hospital where I now work, I no longer qualify for benefits, therefore my life insurance would be cut off potentially in the midst of a terminal illness. This hit me like a brick a few years ago after my second coworker died of cancer more than a year after she could no longer work. My employer does offer Accidental Death & Dismemberment insurance so let's say I die in a car accident, my family would get a large payout. This is a LOT cheaper than standard life insurance so I choose the highest amount I can with that and keep a separate life insurance policy that is not tied to employment.

If you want to lower the costs of life insurance, see if your husband would be willing to quit smoking. Seriously. Dh and I have done it and it wasn't as hard as we expected. This was our wedding gift to each other 25 years ago. We don't miss it and would never go back. This would lower your monthly cost for life insurance and add a huge chunk back to your budget. When my parents both quit smoking in 2006, they calculated that they could take 2 cruises per year for what they were spending on cigarettes. This amount is probably much higher now, 15 years later.

JMHO, take it all with a grain of salt.

 

[barkley]

Second, for everyone feeling comfortable with life insurance through their employer, ask your benefits office what happens if you're too sick to work? Over the 30 years I've been with my employer, I've have 2 coworkers who died of cancer before the age of 55, plus a cousin. None of them worked right up to the time of their death.

as well-in the case of becoming disabled (non life threatening) and unable to continue working- EVEN if you are fortunate enough to work for an employer that not only offers a traditional pension but one based on disability you will likely find that once you hit retiree status any employer offered life insurance benefit is eliminated or greatly reduced (my former employer defaults to a 10K death benefit vs. a much more generous dollar amount when an individual goes from 'active employee' to 'retiree' status).



i know what i'm about to say is not a popular opinion w/many but it's mine and i'll share it-

paying for your kid's college should not be a priority over planning for/funding your retirement.

i get that none of us want our kids to be saddled with horrific student debt, i get that we want our kids to have an opportunity to start out their adult lives and have the option/ability to not have financial roadblocks to getting their first home BUT i also think of the times in my/dh's life when we had financial struggles and how we could within our own power address them. we struggled with dh's student debt (no parental help) when we first married but at that point we had no kids so we could take on extra work, cut back on expenses, do with less. the times that have been the hardest were when expenses/debt happened while our kids were young. childcare for extra work wasn't always available and if it was we were left w/ paying so much that the extra work just resulted in covering childcare and the increased taxes not to mention the horrific parental guilt of having your kids in pre-care, school, after school care, night/weekend care when they aged up the cost of their childcare got replaced by them...aging up (constantly outgrowing clothes, eating more, needing more costly school supplies, simple lower cost activities...) and we felt even more compelled to want to spend as much time as possible with them b/c those tween/teen years can be scary tough.

i say this b/c i've had friends whose parents never planned appropriately for retirement and had to come to their adult children for financial support. imagine being already stressed on how you will pay for your house repairs, mortgage, kid's college and retirement only to now have 2 ADDITIONAL people with MOUNTING EXPENSES (senior needs can get crazy expensive) almost entirely reliant on your income as well. it's horrific, it breaks up marriages, it shatters families.

what really brought this home to me-we were executors for a family member's estate. their adult children assumed that b/c their parents worked decent paying/pensioned jobs, lived what appeared to be a very frugal lifestyle and sold off the long held family home during a strong seller's market a few years before the person passed that there would be at least a mid 5 figure per person inheritance. imagine their shock to find that had the person lived another year they would have been unable to cover their basic expenses (and the person died at a younger age than most seniors-at least by a decade). 'how/why/this can't be right/where is all the money????' we repeatedly heard. ummmmm-it went to to keeping their head above water during retirement b/c they couldn't afford to both save for retirement and pay for their kid's educations-so they paid for their kid's college educations. kids that had the person lived on to normal life expectancy would have been left with having to choose-do we support our parent/fund our own retirement/pay for OUR kids to go to college. not a situation i would ever want to be in our put my children through.


just my opinion.

 

[4luv2cdisney]

as well-in the case of becoming disabled (non life threatening) and unable to continue working- EVEN if you are fortunate enough to work for an employer that not only offers a traditional pension but one based on disability you will likely find that once you hit retiree status any employer offered life insurance benefit is eliminated or greatly reduced (my former employer defaults to a 10K death benefit vs. a much more generous dollar amount when an individual goes from 'active employee' to 'retiree' status).



i know what i'm about to say is not a popular opinion w/many but it's mine and i'll share it-

paying for your kid's college should not be a priority over planning for/funding your retirement.

i get that none of us want our kids to be saddled with horrific student debt, i get that we want our kids to have an opportunity to start out their adult lives and have the option/ability to not have financial roadblocks to getting their first home BUT i also think of the times in my/dh's life when we had financial struggles and how we could within our own power address them. we struggled with dh's student debt (no parental help) when we first married but at that point we had no kids so we could take on extra work, cut back on expenses, do with less. the times that have been the hardest were when expenses/debt happened while our kids were young. childcare for extra work wasn't always available and if it was we were left w/ paying so much that the extra work just resulted in covering childcare and the increased taxes not to mention the horrific parental guilt of having your kids in pre-care, school, after school care, night/weekend care when they aged up the cost of their childcare got replaced by them...aging up (constantly outgrowing clothes, eating more, needing more costly school supplies, simple lower cost activities...) and we felt even more compelled to want to spend as much time as possible with them b/c those tween/teen years can be scary tough.

i say this b/c i've had friends whose parents never planned appropriately for retirement and had to come to their adult children for financial support. imagine being already stressed on how you will pay for your house repairs, mortgage, kid's college and retirement only to now have 2 ADDITIONAL people with MOUNTING EXPENSES (senior needs can get crazy expensive) almost entirely reliant on your income as well. it's horrific, it breaks up marriages, it shatters families.

what really brought this home to me-we were executors for a family member's estate. their adult children assumed that b/c their parents worked decent paying/pensioned jobs, lived what appeared to be a very frugal lifestyle and sold off the long held family home during a strong seller's market a few years before the person passed that there would be at least a mid 5 figure per person inheritance. imagine their shock to find that had the person lived another year they would have been unable to cover their basic expenses (and the person died at a younger age than most seniors-at least by a decade). 'how/why/this can't be right/where is all the money????' we repeatedly heard. ummmmm-it went to to keeping their head above water during retirement b/c they couldn't afford to both save for retirement and pay for their kid's educations-so they paid for their kid's college educations. kids that had the person lived on to normal life expectancy would have been left with having to choose-do we support our parent/fund our own retirement/pay for OUR kids to go to college. not a situation i would ever want to be in our put my children through.


just my opinion.

I am truly torn on the life insurance. It is a real struggle for me to make a decision on it.

Somebody else mentioned my DH giving up smoking. I'll simply say, I don't even try to fight that battle anymore.

We upped our income to pay for college by me working. I'm not sure if you read the part about me intending to take from a work retirement plan (that was only funded to pay tuition) and thought we were taking actual retirement funds or if you're just giving a general opinion. But, I absolutely agree. I think I would make any other sacrifice I could to help my kids pay for college, but I would rather them have student loan debt vs paying for my expenses when I'm old and dying. Admittedly, at the time we were socking away the college $, we were just going on the assumption that what we had for retirement was going to be enough. We hadn't truly analyzed it. I'll still say retirement planning is making a lot of assumptions and you won't really know until you get there. But, yes, make sure your retirement dollars are where you want them to be before paying the kids tuition bill!

All that being said, I think I do focus on trying to make my kids lives easier than ours were quite a bit more than the average person. I can totally admit to that!

 

[ruadisneyfan2]

I am truly torn on the life insurance. It is a real struggle for me to make a decision on it.

Somebody else mentioned my DH giving up smoking. I'll simply say, I don't even try to fight that battle anymore.

Not to sound morbid, but then it's all the more reason to keep life insurance on him as long as you can. At the end of your current contract it will be astronomical.

 

[Sun_soakin]

Second, for everyone feeling comfortable with life insurance through their employer, ask your benefits office what happens if you're too sick to work? Over the 30 years I've been with my employer, I've have 2 coworkers who died of cancer before the age of 55, plus a cousin. None of them worked right up to the time of their death. Dying of cancer is often a slow, painful process which is sad enough but adding the pressure to try to keep working as long as possible is not something I want. In my own situation, once I am officially no longer employed at the hospital where I now work, I no longer qualify for benefits, therefore my life insurance would be cut off potentially in the midst of a terminal illness. This hit me like a brick a few years ago after my second coworker died of cancer more than a year after she could no longer work. My employer does offer Accidental Death & Dismemberment insurance so let's say I die in a car accident, my family would get a large payout. This is a LOT cheaper than standard life insurance so I choose the highest amount I can with that and keep a separate life insurance policy that is not tied to employment.

ERISA rules prevent the life insurance carrier from dropping your plan. They can leave you on the group plan or offer an individual plan; of course you’d be responsible for the premium. Most employer benefit programs also provide short and long term disability insurance.

 

[piccolopat]

I'd want to be sure that all of the future pensions have survivor benefits before canceling the life insurance. I would also recommend working towards 2 years of expenses in cash or equivalent going into retirement. This will allow you to avoid withdrawing from investments in the event of a down market. Home repairs should be planned out so that things are done before it becomes critical and in a logical order since one improvement often impacts or leads to others. With your mortgage so low, I wouldn't worry about paying it off but you could always add an extra hundred or two to the principal each month to pay it off a little earlier.

 

[4luv2cdisney]

Thank you for all the good suggestions here. I have come up with the following 1 year plan:

Little extra info: I have just recovered from Covid and missed a lot of work. I will be able to cover most of the time lost by using up my vacation time but I only work 2-3 days per week anyway. So I can usually still manage a week-long vacation by working an extra day in the weeks before and after. So, whatever!

I have been so motivated by a couple of days on the budget board and since I'm currently extremely behind at work, I realized I should probably be working a little extra. They always ask me to work more anyway, but I usually don't want to. So by working just a little longer each day, I can pick up an extra handful of hours per month. So, I think I can add another $200 / mo (after taxes) to our income for at least the next 6-12 months (or however long I can last - lol).

In looking thru all my accounts this weekend, I realized that I had set up an extra $200/mo to go to my mortgage a few months ago. Obviously, that's already going ok, because I forgot all about it. So, I've got that $200 + $200 (my extra hours) so I've decided to take only another $200 from the $1K originally in question to put toward mortgage for now. But, I'm still at $600 / mo additional mtg payment.

The remaining $800/mo is going to go toward the house and we should be where we want to be on house repairs in 1 year. (hopefully) Costs are really crazy right now, so I'm taking my best guess at this #.

I have a goal of picking 1 bill or expense per month and trying to lower it somehow. (Up for May is Comcast.) For every expense I can reduce, that $X/mo will be thrown towards the mortgage. I would love to see an eventual gain of about $300 / month from expense reductions. But we shall see.

The life insurance is staying for 1 more year and then I will re-evaluate. I just feel like I really need the security especially since we are in a pandemic. DH has been vaccinated and didn't get Covid from me, but who knows. In 1 year, hopefully this pandemic is over, we will have a better picture of how much more education my daughter intends to pursue and what that will cost. Also, with our kids getting older, they are slowly starting to take over their own expenses which should free up even more money. So, maybe then I will be able to let the policies go. Or not. Again, we shall see.

I've decided our retirement contributions are currently sufficient. More is always nice, but it's down on the priority list for now.

So, with the above plan, it is possible that in 1 year we will have all (immediate need) home repairs done and be contributing $600 (slowly increasing to potentially $900/mo) extra to mortgage. Even if nothing else changes, we could stay the path and keep working on the house and paying off the mortgage faster.

I'm also going to try to get DH as motivated as I am. For this, I will need to dangle the possibility of more DVC points. lol He is much more of the YOLO mindset. DH has an ability to work side jobs that pay very well. We already count on him doing some as part of our normal income, but if I set an actual $$ goal and he reaches it, another small DVC contract could be the "bonus" at the end of this year.

 

[QueenIsabella]

Thank you for all the good suggestions here. I have come up with the following 1 year plan:

Little extra info: I have just recovered from Covid and missed a lot of work. I will be able to cover most of the time lost by using up my vacation time but I only work 2-3 days per week anyway. So I can usually still manage a week-long vacation by working an extra day in the weeks before and after. So, whatever!

I have been so motivated by a couple of days on the budget board and since I'm currently extremely behind at work, I realized I should probably be working a little extra. They always ask me to work more anyway, but I usually don't want to. So by working just a little longer each day, I can pick up an extra handful of hours per month. So, I think I can add another $200 / mo (after taxes) to our income for at least the next 6-12 months (or however long I can last - lol).

In looking thru all my accounts this weekend, I realized that I had set up an extra $200/mo to go to my mortgage a few months ago. Obviously, that's already going ok, because I forgot all about it. So, I've got that $200 + $200 (my extra hours) so I've decided to take only another $200 from the $1K originally in question to put toward mortgage for now. But, I'm still at $600 / mo additional mtg payment.

The remaining $800/mo is going to go toward the house and we should be where we want to be on house repairs in 1 year. (hopefully) Costs are really crazy right now, so I'm taking my best guess at this #.

I have a goal of picking 1 bill or expense per month and trying to lower it somehow. (Up for May is Comcast.) For every expense I can reduce, that $X/mo will be thrown towards the mortgage. I would love to see an eventual gain of about $300 / month from expense reductions. But we shall see.

The life insurance is staying for 1 more year and then I will re-evaluate. I just feel like I really need the security especially since we are in a pandemic. DH has been vaccinated and didn't get Covid from me, but who knows. In 1 year, hopefully this pandemic is over, we will have a better picture of how much more education my daughter intends to pursue and what that will cost. Also, with our kids getting older, they are slowly starting to take over their own expenses which should free up even more money. So, maybe then I will be able to let the policies go. Or not. Again, we shall see.

I've decided our retirement contributions are currently sufficient. More is always nice, but it's down on the priority list for now.

So, with the above plan, it is possible that in 1 year we will have all (immediate need) home repairs done and be contributing $600 (slowly increasing to potentially $900/mo) extra to mortgage. Even if nothing else changes, we could stay the path and keep working on the house and paying off the mortgage faster.

I'm also going to try to get DH as motivated as I am. For this, I will need to dangle the possibility of more DVC points. lol He is much more of the YOLO mindset. DH has an ability to work side jobs that pay very well. We already count on him doing some as part of our normal income, but if I set an actual $$ goal and he reaches it, another small DVC contract could be the "bonus" at the end of this year.

It sounds like a good, reasonable plan--you're doing more saving, but not making yourself crazy.

We were going to replace our backyard fence this year, but a contractor friend talked us out of it. He said that material costs are crazy high, wait a year. So instead, we're getting a whole-house generator (we live in a hurricane zone). So, it's prudent for you to pass on home improvements this year, saving your money and see how things are next year.

Just so you know, we currently have more life insurance on ourselves than we need. In our case, we have 4 children, over a span of 11 years. Oldest DD25 is adamant that, if DH and I were to die, she will move into our house and finish raising her younger siblings (youngest is a freshman in HS). So, our insurance is basically to allow her to quit her current teaching job, settle down here, maybe be able to not work for a time while she settles our affairs, that kind of thing. It's not a likely scenario, but we figure, it would be enough of a life-changing event that we would want her to have one less worry while she handles it. One advantage to insurance is, it pays out pretty quickly. Settling an estate can take a year or two, and generally pays out over time. If DD25 was having to handle tuition bills (2 in college this fall), mortgage payments, and so on, it could be a decent chunk of money that she might need.

 

[afan]

were going to replace our backyard fence this year, but a contractor friend talked us out of it. He said that material costs are crazy high, wait a year. So instead, we're getting a whole-house generator (we live in a hurricane zone). So, it's prudent for you to pass on home improvements this year, saving your money and see how things are next year.

My mom put up the last section of fence last fall along with replacing a part that fell in a wind storm. Thankfully it was still normal pricing then but it took a lot longer for the materials to come in than the past sections did. She talked to the guy at lowes a couple weeks ago about replacing the last section that needs to get done and it was going to be way more, it was nuts.

Also, while still a normal price, she got a water heater and install from lowes as ours is getting old and she wants to replace it before it dies. It was supposed to come in weeks ago and we are still waiting for the water heater to come in. So even when prices are normal things make take longer than anticipated.

 

[4luv2cdisney]

It sounds like a good, reasonable plan--you're doing more saving, but not making yourself crazy.

We were going to replace our backyard fence this year, but a contractor friend talked us out of it. He said that material costs are crazy high, wait a year. So instead, we're getting a whole-house generator (we live in a hurricane zone). So, it's prudent for you to pass on home improvements this year, saving your money and see how things are next year.

Just so you know, we currently have more life insurance on ourselves than we need. In our case, we have 4 children, over a span of 11 years. Oldest DD25 is adamant that, if DH and I were to die, she will move into our house and finish raising her younger siblings (youngest is a freshman in HS). So, our insurance is basically to allow her to quit her current teaching job, settle down here, maybe be able to not work for a time while she settles our affairs, that kind of thing. It's not a likely scenario, but we figure, it would be enough of a life-changing event that we would want her to have one less worry while she handles it. One advantage to insurance is, it pays out pretty quickly. Settling an estate can take a year or two, and generally pays out over time. If DD25 was having to handle tuition bills (2 in college this fall), mortgage payments, and so on, it could be a decent chunk of money that she might need.

The story on the house:

We started finishing the basement 5 years ago. It wasn't meant to be a "rush" project, more of a do a little as you have the $ kind of thing. It came to a halt when we had a rather large (but temporary) financial setback at the same time kid#1 was just 1 year into college and it just sort of got forgotten.

Fast forward 3 years of no progress and one day I was down in the storage area and noticed mold growing on some insulation. Turns out, it was a lot of places. I'll spare you the details, but basically because our basement is a walkout and the way the builder has to insulate to code, we really should have drywalled and painted certain areas immediately. At minimum, we should have been watching our humidity levels really carefully and keeping them lower than normal (that's on us). But nobody told us any of this. And it makes me really mad.

So, last year we remediated the mold and left the walls open to make sure no mold came back. Honestly, it wasn't as expensive as I'd imagined, but it was a lot of stress and hassle - especially during Covid. Now, we really need to reinsulate, drywall and paint as we should have years ago. Since I'm now super paranoid, I'm really going overboard on the mold prevention. I'm running the cost of this project up way more than it should be.

Thankfully, it is already fully framed and about 80-85% of the electrical, piping for plumbing and HVAC is already done. We will not finish the bathroom or little bar / kitchenette area for now and flooring will be optional depending on budget / costs. I first want back up sump pumps and we are paying to have some non-structural / minor concrete cracks repaired just to avoid potential future water issues. Code here is to have a passive radon mitigation system but I'm having the fan installed just in case so I will feel good about spending more time down there when it is done. I know a lot of people that radon test when they buy a house and then when they go to sell, their radon has risen above limits. Again, being pro-active here.

We would have normally paid someone to drywall, but we got a quote and it was 2x what is should be. So, DH is going to give it a whirl. I'm not super excited about that as I don't know how skilled he is at drywall and it may mean the mudding / taping / sanding will cost us more if he does a crappy job. I am definitely hiring that out to a pro that can do a better job and do it with a dustless sander, but we are going to try as much DIY as possible.

So, that is the bare minimum and I am completely guessing the costs. We have to do most of it and are only going a little further (finishing the rest of the walls and the ceiling) because it just makes sense. We also have a few minor / misc things around the rest of the house that we will need to squeeze in. In the end though, a 1400 SF finished walkout basement will add a lot of value to our house should we sell / downsize in 5-10 years. In the meantime, it will be really nice space to have with young adults still at home. Honestly, wish we could have finished it 5 years ago, but we probably would have been drywalling over mold that we weren't even aware of, so maybe it was all a good thing. The mold remediation company said it is pretty common and that he'd bet a lot of our neighbors are in the same boat - whether they realize it or not.

 

[QueenIsabella]

The story on the house:

We started finishing the basement 5 years ago. It wasn't meant to be a "rush" project, more of a do a little as you have the $ kind of thing. It came to a halt when we had a rather large (but temporary) financial setback at the same time kid#1 was just 1 year into college and it just sort of got forgotten.

Fast forward 3 years of no progress and one day I was down in the storage area and noticed mold growing on some insulation. Turns out, it was a lot of places. I'll spare you the details, but basically because our basement is a walkout and the way the builder has to insulate to code, we really should have drywalled and painted certain areas immediately. At minimum, we should have been watching our humidity levels really carefully and keeping them lower than normal (that's on us). But nobody told us any of this. And it makes me really mad.

So, last year we remediated the mold and left the walls open to make sure no mold came back. Honestly, it wasn't as expensive as I'd imagined, but it was a lot of stress and hassle - especially during Covid. Now, we really need to reinsulate, drywall and paint as we should have years ago. Since I'm now super paranoid, I'm really going overboard on the mold prevention. I'm running the cost of this project up way more than it should be.

Thankfully, it is already fully framed and about 80-85% of the electrical, piping for plumbing and HVAC is already done. We will not finish the bathroom or little bar / kitchenette area for now and flooring will be optional depending on budget / costs. I first want back up sump pumps and we are paying to have some non-structural / minor concrete cracks repaired just to avoid potential future water issues. Code here is to have a passive radon mitigation system but I'm having the fan installed just in case so I will feel good about spending more time down there when it is done. I know a lot of people that radon test when they buy a house and then when they go to sell, their radon has risen above limits. Again, being pro-active here.

We would have normally paid someone to drywall, but we got a quote and it was 2x what is should be. So, DH is going to give it a whirl. I'm not super excited about that as I don't know how skilled he is at drywall and it may mean the mudding / taping / sanding will cost us more if he does a crappy job. I am definitely hiring that out to a pro that can do a better job and do it with a dustless sander, but we are going to try as much DIY as possible.

So, that is the bare minimum and I am completely guessing the costs. We have to do most of it and are only going a little further (finishing the rest of the walls and the ceiling) because it just makes sense. We also have a few minor / misc things around the rest of the house that we will need to squeeze in. In the end though, a 1400 SF finished walkout basement will add a lot of value to our house should we sell / downsize in 5-10 years. In the meantime, it will be really nice space to have with young adults still at home. Honestly, wish we could have finished it 5 years ago, but we probably would have been drywalling over mold that we weren't even aware of, so maybe it was all a good thing. The mold remediation company said it is pretty common and that he'd bet a lot of our neighbors are in the same boat - whether they realize it or not.

Sounds like fun...NOT! No basements here--we live coastal--but was did have to get our crawlspace sealed up and there's a dehumidifier down there. Some poor schlub has to inspect it twice a year, but it's been working fine.

Our house just needs a lot of TLC. It's not horrid, just aged/dated. But, we were able to get a huge house, and with 4 kids, we figured we were only going to put more wear and tear on it, anyway. There's no shortage of projects on the list.

 

[ruadisneyfan2]

Sounds like fun...NOT! No basements here--we live coastal--but was did have to get our crawlspace sealed up and there's a dehumidifier down there. Some poor schlub has to inspect it twice a year, but it's been working fine.

Our house just needs a lot of TLC. It's not horrid, just aged/dated. But, we were able to get a huge house, and with 4 kids, we figured we were only going to put more wear and tear on it, anyway. There's no shortage of projects on the list.

I was going to suggest this. I have mold allergies and can't stand high humidy. So when the humidity is high we turn on our portable dehumidifier. I run this even with central AC on. It's amazing the buckets of water that little thing can pull out of the air in one day.

How do you drain the dehumidifier in your crawlspace? Our unit has a hose hookup vs. manually emptying it but we have no drains in our crawlspace.

 

[crisi]

I could pay off the mortgage tomorrow, but interest rates are low, my mortgage payment is UNDER $300, and that money is in dividend paying stocks. Our comcast bill is $80 because its internet only. We get Netflix/Amazon Prime through a Roku. We are not sports people, but I believe you may be able to pick and choose a little better outside of Comcast.