Paying For The Remodel

This month we finished paying off the dermatologist and the computer we bought last summer.   Our corporation paid for the computer, so technically it wasn’t our debt, but since we own the corporation, any money it spends is money we don’t get paid.   So now that the computer is paid for, our paychecks will be a little higher each month.   We didn’t pay any interest on either of those debts, and just paid a couple hundred dollars a month until they were gone.

We have added the Home Depot credit card now, so we’ll be paying a couple hundred dollars a month on that for the rest of the year.   We could have just put the remodeling expenses on our normal credit card and paid them off next month, but the $200 discount we got for opening the HD credit card made it worth our while to do so, and we can spread the payments out over 12 months with no interest.   I cut up the HD card when it arrived, and we’ve put all the additional charges for the remodeling on our regular card that we pay off every month.   So we won’t be paying any interest charges on any of the remodeling.

It feels like we’ve been to Home Depot about 50 times in the last month.   We keep running into “little” things that we need in order to continue the projects we’re working on, and the money keeps adding up ($600 so far in March – I’ve had to loosen my $1000/month budget for the time being).   It’s a good thing we waited to remodel until we were out of debt and earning more money.   We could not have afforded this project just two years ago.   We bought our house five years ago, and for a few of those years, just paying the mortgage was a stretch.   Now that we’re more financially comfortable, and especially since we’re planning to stay in our “starter” house, it makes sense to spend some money making it nicer and more useful.   We’re still following our plan to add $10 each month to the extra mortgage payment we make – this month we paid $160 in addition to our regular payment.   It feels good to know that we’re making our home nicer and speeding up the process of paying for it.

Another thing I’ve noticed is that we’ve spent more money on food since we started working on our kitchen.   There were several nights when the kitchen was such a mess that we just decided to go out to eat instead of cooking.   We never spent more than $20, but it’s been adding up.   Now that the kitchen is pretty much finished, we should be able to get back on track with cooking and eating at home.