How to Prepare for Your Bathroom Renovation – Part 3 of 4: How to Save for a Renovation
I’ve heard so many horror stories about general contractors, and so few good experiences. I’m here to tell you that I am the unicorn: we renovated our tiny bathroom, we are happy with the timeline and the result, and we stayed on budget.
Like that one episode of Platonic says: “Don’t ask, don’t get.” But sometimes we don’t ask for things because we don’t know what we want.
Platonic
We spent several months (years?) saving and preparing ourselves for this renovation. We planned this remodel the way we planned our wedding and our tattoos… in four steps:
We collected the experiences of our friends and learned from their mistakes
We determined the result of what we wanted and ballpark cost—plus how much we were willing to spend and saved for it intentionally
We hired a contractor and got the ball rolling
If you want to read Part 1: Learn from Your Friends’ Mistakes and Part 2: Visualizing Your Dream Bathroom, please follow these links!
This is Part 3 of 4: How to Save for a Home Renovation.
And the first thing to figure out is…
What is a new bathroom worth to you?
We talked in Part Three about visualizing the new room—that’s where the real worth is. But to get that value, you have to trade money for it.
So now, the ultimate question:
You know it’s serious business if we turn the Big Light on.
How much are you willing to spend to get what you need?
After weeks of dreaming and scheming, I determined that I was willing to spend up to 10K.
Don’t misunderstand: I didn’t have 10K for it, not right away. That’s just how much a new bathroom that met at least 75% of my asks was worth to me.
To get to that number, I weighed it all out using this Rich Life method, developed by Ramit Sethi. I loved working through his book with my spouse, by the way. I definitely recommend it if you want to talk about money with your partner but don’t know how. Or, if you (like me) have anxiety around spending money because you were/are so used to not having any. It also really helped us save for things that mattered to us (like this bathroom), and not save for things that don’t matter to us (a new car).
That said, 10K was my number.
Some people reading this will be like, “Okay, so you basically don’t want it. That’s like, nothing.”
Whereas others, will be like, “Oh shit… that’s ten thousand real dollars. Do I really even want this?”
And both of those are valid takes. It really depends on what you find important for you. This is just my story.
To be clear, again, that’s how much I was willing to spend all in. Which means I needed a quote for about 8.5K because one must have a contingency.
Because: if home and garden renovations shows have taught us anything, you will spend all the contingency. At least.
Contingency can be used for things like cute rugs from World Market or replacement floor vent covers (vents are not standard-sized, which infuriates me).
So, we saved.
We actually used this high-yield savings account to hold our money while we saved. We still do use it, for other intentional savings goals that are too short-term to invest (like paying my taxes as an entrepreneur, for example).
This account has a fairly high return for money that’s just sitting there, and if your money is just sitting there, which it probably should for cash you want to spend within five years, then you might as well make a little money off of it. For this account, here’s no minimum balance, and you can get to it in 24 hours.
Also, in the spirit of transparency, if you open this account with this link, you will also help me. They’re not paying me to refer them, I just believe in their product enough to refer you to it.
Speaking of savings hacks…
I tried to pay for the renovation on a credit card, but my contractor did not accept that form of payment. Some of them do, though! And if you’re lucky enough to land one of those folks, it’s a great way to earn a card’s minimum-spend welcome bonus that lots of new cards offer. (I’m just saying, when I had to buy a new engine for my 2014 Kia Soul, I also bought us round trip tickets to Europe… because I hit this minimum-spend welcome bonus.)
There are lots of tactics to save for this kind of renovation. Rather than pretend I developed any of them, let me direct you to an expert.
While you’re saving, you get to go back to that Pinterest board! Now that you have a number, you can get really specific about your design and even start shopping. That’s what I did. All of my materials—my tile, my faucet, my vanity, my light fixture, and my hardware—were all in my cart by the time we were ready to hire our contractor.
Up next I’ll talk about the fourth and final way to prepare for your renovation, how to hire your contractor.
To make sure you don’t miss the next installment of the Bathroom Reno, make sure you subscribe to the Wayward Curator’s mailing list.
If this story stuck with you, then you might like…
—How to Prepare for Your Bathroom Renovation Part 1: Learn from Your Friends’ Mistakes
—How to Prepare for your Bathroom Renovation Part 2: Visualizing Your Dream Bathroom
—DIY Tutorial: How to Create a Decorative TV Cover in a Small Space
—Estate Sales 101: Where to Find Them, How to Shop Them, and Other Expert Tips
