Saturday, June 13, 2009

finances

now this gets personal. not too personal though. I just think it's important for me to make y'all aware of my financial state during all this and how it relates to the building process.

a month or so a go Mary-Beth and I got back from a 2 week trip in London. (it's all written about over at VaguelyVagabonds.) for those of you who haven't made it there yet, London is expensive. we did it as cheap as we could, but still. it's expensive. so we came back with no money. before we we left we had worked on a lot of possibilities, like bank loans, personal loans, etc. we were actually talking seriously to a few people about a personal loan, and that's when we left. I left fairly confident that when we got back we'd start building, and even set a goal of moving in on our anniversary, July 12th. however, when we got back we learned that no personal loan was coming. it didn't bother me much. this still seemed like a good time to build a house. even so, there wasn't anyone to loan me money, the banks wouldn't give it because I have no collateral. no land, no car, (just cheap mopeds,) and even the house is unconventional, and banks don't like that. so no money. and no capital to start the house. since we'd taken the trips, our bank account was mostly empty besides rent money, and our credit cards mostly full. I still wanted to build, even with no real capital. so I went to Lowe's and applied for a Lowe's Project Credit Card, which I received with a credit limit of $4500. (just so you know, I asked for $9000.) I also went to Home Depot, though they didn't have a card that compared to the Lowe's card. the Lowe's one was much better in terms and such. even so, I procured a card from Home Depot for $1200. with this, and the money Mary-Beth and I had saved in the 2 weeks since getting back, we started building on the 5th. or rather, we leveled the ground and placed the concrete blocks on the 5th, and had an old fashion barn raising on the 6th. more on that later. anyway, most of our supplies we bought from Lowe's, unless they didn't have it, then we went to Home Depot. however, sometimes neither place would have it, (ie: lumber over 12ft.) or the price difference would be such that I'd have to go somewhere else. for instance the tin roofing was $500+ at Lowe's and approx $250 at a local metal shop. so we paid cash there. all in all, we probably spent around $1500-$2000 in the first two days. I'll get around to counting up the receipts soon, so as to compare estimates to actual costs.

2 comments:

  1. Have you checked out used building supplies from a source like the Habitat for Humanity Re-Store? Would have to be cash, but would be super-cheap.

    For some reason I can't paste the link in here but you can google it. There are some locations near you (Tyler, Longview, Nac).

    ReplyDelete
  2. I actually hadn't heard of that. I see the closest one is Nac. I've already got almost everything, but I'm still going to try and call or stop by and see what if they have what I haven't bought yet.

    ReplyDelete