Home Addition: How We Paid Cash for Our Dream Renovation
Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
Contribution Post: Cynthia Guptill for Canadian Budget Binder
Discover how Cynthia Guptill and her husband paid cash for their dream home addition. Follow their journey from Calgary to finding an affordable home for their growing family.
Paying Cash For Our New Home Addition
Hi, My name is Cynthia Guptill, and our story starts back in 2007.
Join me on our life’s journey to find out how we Paid Cash for our Dream Renovation Addition.
My husband Randy and I met in Calgary, AB, while working alongside everyone else during the economic job boom.
After we married, I got pregnant, and we both decided that the cost of living was far too much to raise a family in the city.
We had to make some decisions for our little soon-to-be family.
At the time, we were paying a whopping $1100 monthly rent for a basement apartment that met our needs but was far too expensive.
Soon after we found out about the pregnancy, my husband’s great-aunt passed away.
We later discovered that she had left her lovely home in New Brunswick, in her will, to my husband.
The petite home is lovely and boasts one bedroom, which was fine for us.
The problem was we had one baby on the way (Connor, now 5) and another soon after (Sadie, now 3).
So, four of us lived in this one-bedroom house, but we made it work!
With four mouths to feed, we had to stretch our money to keep out of debt.
We learned how to budget every dollar and never used our bank cards.
Once a week, we went to the bank and withdrew our weekly budget in cash.
Gift Cards For Home Addition Supplies
Each time our Money Master Bank Account was $5000, we would withdraw the money to buy gift cards for our local hardware and supply store.
We bought the gift cards because we felt that if we just put the money in a drawer, we might be tempted to spend it.
Since we were lucky not to have a rent or mortgage payment, we kept budgeting our money.
We decided to stash away just as much as we would if we had a monthly mortgage.
It’s one of those sight-out-of-mind-type emergency savings plans, but you know it’s there.
As time passed, our account accumulated enough cash to make our dream renovation come true finally.
Building Our Home Addition Without Debt
We have recently built a 14 by 24 addition onto our tiny house, and we PAID CASH for it.
The addition to the house is still in the construction stages, but we have just finished the new wiring and electrical upgrade.
We have spent a little over $11,000 cash in addition to this.
We will spend around another $5000 to finish the project and couldn’t be happier.
Yes, we are sometimes tempted to go to the bank to get a loan as it’s easy to do, but we turn away.
We only have to look back at how far we’ve come since we moved into our family home.
My husband and I are now 40 years old, and we have one credit card that is almost paid off.
It doesn’t get any better, and we love our lives!!
Connor is looking forward to his first sleepover in his new bedroom!
Debt And Paying Cash
Would we do it over again?
Of course, but we would never buy anything that we couldn’t save up the money and pay cash for ourselves.
I urge everyone to consider paying down debt and building their life from cash every step of the way as best they can.
The feeling of satisfaction knowing that what you have, no one can take it from you if you miss a payment, is worth a million bucks to us!!!
Thanks for reading.
Cynthia!
