Madison MoneySports - Personal Finance Thread

[Sijray21]

Any advice on financing home improvements? I have equity in my home and need to do around 20k in projects. HELOC seems like the most obvious choice since rates are low but putting up my home as collateral doesn't sit well with me. I should probably just do cash but I wanted to do the projects quicker than what it would take me to save up for.

I've never financed them, but have slightly dipped into my savings (replenishing the savings asap). Save up and do as much as you comfortably can do yourself. If you need to hire try to hire off personal reference rather than reviews.
Also take whatever you actually think a home improvement costs and then add 20%, because it's probably going to cost more.

Look for holiday/seasonal discounts and buy bigger things then and also scan for discounted flash sales, etc. They make a huge impact. Saved us a few thousand $ vs retail in our kitchen reno. Also I bought RTA cabinets and assembled them myself instead of pre-assembled. As also bought from a company in NY to avoid sales tax.