How We Manage Home Projects and Costs

Planning

Towards the beginning of the year, we plan out the projects that we want to complete around the house. During that time, we research the average cost of these projects and try to set aside just a little more just in case. This allows us to ensure we plan out the cash to be spent, and if there is left over, then we can roll it over into another project.

Let us take the year 2022. This year we did not plan as many projects for several reasons. One, the cost of the projects we were planning, and two, the uncertainty in the market right now, we were not sure how much materials would cost. Nevertheless, these were the projects that were planned and budgeted for:

• Wooden fence
• Front door stair replacement
• Vinyl flooring
• Kitchen seating replacement
• Shelves replacement
• Carpet replacement
• New garden bed

Project Management Tool

When we plan out our projects, we use ClickUp. It is a free-to-use project management tool. It has a website and mobile app that allows us to easily access and manage each of our projects. In fact, you do not really need to pay anything to use the app if you can get away with 100MB of storage, and for us, this is fine. This post is not sponsored by ClickUp; however, we wanted to share this app because it has made managing our projects so much easier, and has a lot of features (more than Monday gave us). If you are interested, please use the affiliation link: https://clickup.com/?fp_ref=martino76.

Research

Now that we have a list of projects, we need to figure out the cost estimates and timelines. Each project will vary, and we cannot guarantee things will stay consistent, especially around pricing. This is when we do our research. Is this a project we can do ourselves, or do we need a professional to come in.

To determine if a project can be done by us, it is a mixture of looking at our skillset and researching the steps involved. Typically, this would consist of searching the Internet and YouTube videos. Once we understand the steps involved, we can determine if we need professional help. We determine that by:

1. Do we have the tools?
2. Can we do it within a timeline we are okay with?
3. Are there any legal restrictions on us doing it (do we need to be certified to do it)?

If a professional is needed, it is best to plan that closer to the project so you can get a quote. This is because their quote will only be good for 1–3 months. For example, when doing the carpet replacement, we determined that we would not do it ourselves, so we needed to wait for a quote from Lowe’s.

Luckily, we had an estimate from Lowe’s the previous year where we determined not to move forward. So, for budgeting the project we had a price to go off. If we did not have that, we would have measured the square footage and calculated a rough estimate ourselves. Lowe’s would still require the measurements and quotes because they are doing the work, but we had an initial estimate for the project.

For the stair replacement, we could do this work ourselves. However, we needed to research the process, where to get materials, and what the city ordinances were. During that, we determined we needed a permit and to factor that into the project.

Budget

Once we have identified each project, we then need to identify the budget for each project based on a rough estimate. Sometimes this involves having a professional come out and provide a quote. We include the cost of the quote in the budget.

We also need to note the length of time the quote is good for; for example, the quote for the carpet installation was only good for 30 days from Lowe’s.

Using Truebill, we then create virtual accounts to separate cash into. Each project would have its own account and we would set up a recurring transfer. You would of course need to time these transfers to end before the project start date.

If a project missed the finance goal, then it would need to be rescheduled. No project is put on credit unless it was an emergency and the emergency fund does not cover it.

Recession

As we noticed the number of companies concerned about a recession and several companies freezing hiring and upcoming products, we have also decided to prepare ourselves too. Part of this was pausing a couple of projects we had planned. Not because we did not have the finances, but because we wanted to increase the amount of cash on hand. We looked at projects we did not really need and decided to move them to next year, which will also allow us to increase any savings for it. The projects we decided to pause were:

• Vinyl floorings
• Kitchen seating replacement
• New garden bed

This is a process each year. If we need to move a project we just keep the cash in the Truebill account and save it for next year. For example, the vinyl flooring was estimated at $2,300, but we decided to not move forward in case we needed more cash on hand for any economic downturn — the flooring was not a necessity.