Talk about a gut punch!

I believe I mentioned a while ago that my wife are starting to look at doing some repairs to our house. I know several people here on HIVE have recently done something similar, and as you can probably imagine, what seems to be a little project always blossoms into a much bigger one. There is a term they use (or at least they used to) in business called "scope creep". It basically means what seems to be a simple project typically grows into a much larger one. I feel that this is definitely the case for home improvement projects 100% of the time.

As I have mentioned before, my buddy @a4xjeeper runs his own handyman company, though they do much more than that and in the past few years his business has grown quite significantly. In fact, last I checked, he had something like four or five crews and close to 30 employees working for him now. It's safe to say his gamble on starting his own business was a good one.

So we had one of his guys come out a few weeks ago to get us a quote on a new roof, some new windows, a new front door, and new flooring on the main level of our house.

My hope was that I could get some financing to get at least two of these projects done, if not all of them. Unfortunately, I got the quote today just for the roofing and to say I am sticker shocked would be an understatement. Now, I know the price of petroleum based products like shingles have gone through the roof (pun intended) due to the recent shenanigans in the middle east.

I also have little doubt that the quality of work I get from my buddies crew would be far superior to one of those fly by night companies that you see advertising on TV. I've read far too many horror stories about bad jobs done by those national companies that over promise and under deliver.

Maybe it's my own fault for trusting what I was reading on Google after doing a few searches, but I wasn't expecting the cost of a new roof to be twice what I had planned. We are talking about the house in the second picture above, not the ones in the first picture after all.

To be fair, they did quote me the higher end shingles, and I am checking with my insurance company to see if there is some kind of rebate or discount available if I move forward with this. Additionally, I asked the company for a different quote that uses a little bit lesser quality materials. I haven't heard back yet.

You see, the problem is, my wife and I have already talked about the fact that we don't plan on being in this house forever. Yes, we might be here longer than we had hoped, but I'm not sure how important a 30 to 50 year shingle is going to be when I possibly to likely won't still be alive then.

On top of that, interest rates suck right now, so the idea of financing $25,000 is not very appealing to me.

I haven't ruled out getting a second quote, I know that's probably the smart thing to do, but as I mentioned before, there is a level of trust knowing the quality of work I should get for that higher price is top notch.

Honestly, the part I dread the most (besides spending money), is having to tell @mrsbozz that we can only do one thing right now. She was really hoping for new flooring, but unfortunately, that isn't the priority right now.

This sucks

I mean crypto was supposed to fix all of this right? Crypto was supposed to be our ticket to life changing wealth, and yet here we are close to a decade later and the majority of us are still struggling. Yes, there are some people who expertly played their hand and are doing much better than they were. To some degree, I am also in a much better position than I used to be because of crypto, but in other respects, crypto failed me.

Crypto was supposed to be the fix for being one big disaster away from having our savings wiped out. It was supposed to be that insurance blanket, that path to financial freedom, and yet here we are scrambling to find the funds to do basic maintenance on our homes. If you are even lucky enough (or unlucky depending on your perspective) to own a home.

I mentioned in my interview earlier this week that hope is a dangerous thing. This is the perfect example of why, because when that hope is dashed, it takes something from you. Something that can't necessarily be replaced.