7 Creative Ways To Fund Your Home Remodeling

As someone with a keen aesthetic sense, you love beautiful things. This appreciation for form and color, for style and nuance, extends to your home. For years, you’ve done your best to keep it in wonderful condition, from the immaculately cut lawn to the décor in your living room, and from the festive bathroom tiles to the polished wooden floors.

Unfortunately, some things just get old over time—the roof begins to leak, the windows don’t shut properly, and the plumbing routinely requires maintenance. While a nifty handyman and some good housekeeping will go a long way in keeping your home looking attractive, a time comes when it’s not enough to fix, patch, and make do. That’s when you need to consider some serious renovation.

This is not an easy issue to handle. While it’s clear why you want to restore the beauty and functionality of your home, how you are going to pay for renovation that could cost tens of thousands of dollars is not at all clear. Home renovations can be expensive.

While you can get away with painting the rooms for a few hundred dollars, it will cost you a pretty penny to replace all your floors or remodel your bathrooms.

Here are 7 ideas on how you can fund a renovation:

1. Find out about a reverse mortgage. 

If you are 62 years or older, this might be a good option. Research information online to learn more about a reverse mortgage for you. The technical term for a reverse mortgage is a home equity conversion mortgage. This mortgage does not require you to make monthly payments, but you still have to take care of your property taxes and continue to pay your homeowner’s insurance.

2. Increase your income to pay for the renovation. 

If you have your own business, you might be able to scale it up to begin to earn more. If you’re an active investor, you might be able to make more money from the financial markets by increasing the volume of your trades.

3. Sell a few high-value assets.

You may be able to raise the money by selling off valuable assets. Do you have cars, boats, land, jewelry, collectibles, stocks, and so on that you could liquidate?

4. Bankroll the renovation from your salary. 

If you have a high salary, you can lower your expenses and put that money toward renovating your house. You can either put aside a lump sum over time or just break your renovation into small weekend projects. If you can learn how to do many of the things you need done and adopt a DIY approach, then your costs could be limited to buying building materials.

5. Use your savings. 

If you have set aside some money, you might consider funding your own renovation. However, if you do, you have to remember that you may be giving up on the opportunity of having your money work for you. You may also be reducing the amount you have available for an emergency.

6. Borrow the money.

Here are some ideas on how to borrow the money:

1. Ask a friend or relative for a no-interest or low-interest loan. You should only do this if you will have no trouble paying them back on time.
2. Get a personal loan from your bank or credit union. This may be a secured or unsecured loan. How long you have before you have to pay the loan back and how much interest you have to pay will depend on your credit score and the financial institutions lending policy. If you have excellent credit, you could have a comfortable period of time to repay the loan at a low-interest rate.
3. Apply for cash out financing if you have already paid down your home loan. And you will be in a good position to apply if you have been able to own your own home for a number of years and the value of the property has increased.
4. Credit cards. This is an option you should take only if you have exhausted everything else on this list of suggestions. If you decide to use credit cards, you are increasing the cost of your renovations because of the high interest that you have to pay, which can range from 15% to 17%. The only way to get around this high-interest rate is to pay off the balance within one or two months. Another idea is to get a new card with a 0% introductory rate and get the balance paid off before the trial period rolls to an end.

It’s possible to find the money to pay for renovations if you think things through. Ideally, you should make a plan on where to get the money from and exactly what you’re going to do with it. This plan should include getting a clear idea on the cost of a home renovation, a clear idea on how to cut down on costs by shopping around for the best prices, and a clear idea as to how you will pay off any money you borrow as quickly as possible.