There are a lot of great things about being a business owner. Unfortunately, one of the difficulties that you will face is living on a variable income. This can be especially difficult if you need to make home improvements.
The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Making Home Improvements on a Tight Budget
Your friends may think that you have an infinite amount of money as a business owner. Unfortunately, that is not the case. You need to know how to budget carefully, especially if you face costly home improvements.
How is your home holding up? Are you proud of the four walls standing around you while you sleep at night? You paid a lot of money to build and maintain your home. All your pride and soul went into decorating them. One of the best things about owning a business is being able to own your own home one day.
So, when a sudden breakage in the walls, or subsidence in the floor occurs, you might just tear your hair out at the ensuing damage.
Why is that? Because even if you’re running on a budget, homes are expensive and you’ll always have to be prepared for unexpected problems. An unexpected repair cost can be the most hard hitting thing to your bank account. This can be a big deal if you are a business owner on a variable income, especially during a bad economic cycle.
So, repairing your home is pricey in the first place, but there are some repairs that will cost you a lot more than others. Entrepreneurs on tight budgets need to prioritize. Think of repairs like investments in your business. Some will pay off a lot more than others.
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Let’s run through a few of the costliest repairs below, so you’ll be able to prepare to fork out an arm and a leg if they ever crop up!
Dealing with the Foundation
The foundation of your house is crucial to your structural integrity – every other part of your home rests on this surface, so it needs to be flat and level to ensure a good home can be built up from there.
But sometimes, the foundation of a house can take a real hit. Water, snow and ice could soak into it, or there could be something burrowing down to live in or underneath it. And when the foundation starts to slide or topple, you might have some long months ahead of you.
Of course, it’s quite normal for buildings to move over time, so make sure you’ve had the problem diagnosed properly by someone who knows what they’re talking about. But once you have, it could cost you upwards of $1000 just to have the place underpinned and the walls straightened out. And that could be a huge dent in your budget, especially when just in time for Christmas.
Anything to Do with Your Wiring
The wiring in your walls does a lot for your home – all of your electricals run off of it, and if there’s ever a broken wire or a dropped connection, you’re going to notice. The TV won’t turn on, the oven won’t get hot, and generally, you’re going to be tripping switches and experiencing power surges all over the place.
And even when you call someone out to take a look at how your wiring is doing, even just paying for the price of the colored electrical tape to keep things together is just the start of the costs you’ll have to go through. Of course, if you’ve only got a couple of wires to patch up, this is preferable. But more often than not, when it’s a house-wide problem, you’ll have a lot more damages to deal with.
Your house will undergo quite a few repair needs in its time. But before you fork out anything for them, make sure you know about the most troublesome and costly ones.
Making Sure That You Can Afford Home Repairs as a Business Owner
You may have trouble paying for expensive home repairs as an entrepreneur. You never know what direction the economy will take your business, which means that you might be unable to afford certain improvements. You will need to prioritize and budget accordingly.