Kithani
Blackwing Lair Raider
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The difference in outcomes prob not worth the time you’ve spent thinking on it
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Home buying thread
- Thread starter Pasteton
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Burns
Avatar of War Slayer
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A bit late to the party, but the first design looks good. Could try some modifications by taking queues from the third. They centered a larger door setup just fine on the third one. You also have a double door option and I love me some metal double doors.
Not a fan of flower boxes unless you seriously think the wife (or you) is going to keep them going. Plus, if you put furniture in front of the window, it makes it that much harder to keep them looking good/growing, due to access, or it limits what you are willing to place in front of the windows, inside. So nix them and take the design queues from the third render. Move the design inside the yellow boxes (other than the windows) up onto the first render and drop (or maybe even keep) the middle awning.
Just picked the first few metal doors on GiS, there are a ton that look awesome, but hard to say how they would matchup on that particular house:
Not a fan of flower boxes unless you seriously think the wife (or you) is going to keep them going. Plus, if you put furniture in front of the window, it makes it that much harder to keep them looking good/growing, due to access, or it limits what you are willing to place in front of the windows, inside. So nix them and take the design queues from the third render. Move the design inside the yellow boxes (other than the windows) up onto the first render and drop (or maybe even keep) the middle awning.
Just picked the first few metal doors on GiS, there are a ton that look awesome, but hard to say how they would matchup on that particular house:
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Kobayashi
Bronze Baronet of the Realm
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.3% of 100k is 300 dollars, nice car is 50ish k. I'm guessing remaining life of loan you're probably less than net 500 in gains from interest. The absolutely pure right thing to do is net the cash, but I'm in the same boat as you - there's a psychological joy in not having an ounce of debt owed. My mortgage is 2.5% and I'm still putting in extra every month and even occasionally pondering just erasing it completely. I guess the other aspect is if you are itemizing your deductions - I'm firmly in standard deduction land, so, that's not a factor for me. Lastly is just other opportunity cost of that money - do you have enough savings to cover emergency expenses, toys you might want, etc.
Haus
I am Big Balls!
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When I had around a nice car left, I meant in the principal, and if $50k is what it takes to get a nice car now, then it's less than a nice car left.... Around $36k
Kobayashi
Bronze Baronet of the Realm
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I knew what you meant, I was just using it to ballpark what you stood to gain. So you've probably got less than 2 years of payments left I'm guessing? Any big purchases you were thinking of saving up for once the house was paid off? I'd think with the way things are going, I'd rather make the purchase in today's dollars if it's my own money. You also wouldn't be able to secure a line of credit that cheap for quite a while. Still is nice to just be debt free, in your shoes, I'd probably do the "irrational" thing and pay it off, I'm probably going do do that when my mortgage gets down to that level.
Furry
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The smart play was always to dump into spy, but since you've had it in a bank account earning interest, you're obviously not aiming for the smart play. The arbitrage in difference between paying off early or not in this situation is so small I'd just pay it off if it makes you feel good.
The real gigachad move is to refinance the whole value of your house and invest it in spy, then start your loan all over again.
The real gigachad move is to refinance the whole value of your house and invest it in spy, then start your loan all over again.
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Haus
I am Big Balls!
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Only big purchase would be the potential of "buying land away from town to build the forever house on" and that's a far larger scale than what's left. It's also probably something I'd cash out my outsized bucket of stock in my current company to do. But I am also in my mid 50's so looking at tightening and controlling my monthly burn rate (something I do every January it seems) leading into eventual retirement.
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Haus
I am Big Balls!
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The fact of it being in a bank account is part of my "speed to money" habit which came from my post depression era grandfather. It starts with that adage about "Always have 6 months of your expenses readily available in case of emergency", which for me I've always seen as something like "Unexpectedly got RIF'd from your company". That's what I think of as "Quickly accessible assets", and I would just tuck money away almost subconsciously into that as a security blanket.
- First Tier - Cash on hand, or in a checking/savings account.
- Second tier of "distance" would be something in a brokerage account (I would have to sell it, let the sell settle, then xfer the cash out to use it).
- Third tier is 401k style accounts where I would pay a penalty to withdraws.
- Last tier is real estate (i.e. my house)
The thing keeping me from being more "Chad" to "GigaChad" is mostly the conservative post depression era grandfather who put most of my thinking about money into my head... But it does definitely make logical sense to have the equity in the house working in the market.
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Furry
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Pretty much nobody can play the perfectly optimal path when it comes to finances, everything has its give and take. Doing sub-optimal things can often feel great. The more important thing is not to be retarded with your money. Paying your house off is objectively not retarded in your current situation, so I'd say go for it.
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Intrinsic
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We went through a similar thing before getting into this build and it was basically a question of would paying off a couple of debts at 2.9% help free up some DTI or keeping more cash on hand for contingency and things that come up during the build process. A lot of spreadsheets later and we just held on to the cash but we were about to start the whole process and new we'd need higher liquid reserves, paying it off didn't really impact our DTI, and the interest rates on the loans were small enough that the opportunity cost, the hard cost, was like a wash. We're still thinking about it as soon as we have a better idea of what our total costs are going to be and cash needs over the next year.
Our “quick access” is all in SNSXX because the yields comparable with local HYSA; a little lower base but competitive when Arkansas tax exemption is factored in, and we just keep everything in Schwab to move directly between accounts.
Thanks for the feedback. Just to clarify, all those are from Gemini and nothing designer / builder provided. Some of the things like the planters were just stuff it threw in and I removed in later renders. Pretty sure it fixed the door and nothing at that stage was actually changed floorplan. It just did that, maybe I prompted it to, can't remember.
On this one you posted we liked the roofline where you have the XXXX for a couple of reasons. It breaks up the vertical-ness of that section, provides some protection for those windows beneath it, and also gives us a covered porch across the entire lower level. I agree that we wouldn't want it across the entire lower level and create a "stripe" across the front. We also thought it anchored the entryway and balanced that out. I see your point though, just think our preference is for #1 in that instance.
View attachment 615902
Having said all that I don't believe we posted any follow ups after he made some changes. Will spoiler some of these so it doesn't push the page crazy long:
So anyways, I just felt like we were trying to design around these windows and thought maybe it would be better to fix the floorplan instead. My suggestion back was instead of having that bathroom located against the front of the house, can we move the playroom into that space and put the bathroom behind it, between there and the garage. See my mock-up sketched out below. That way the whole left face is just the Playroom/Guest Bedroom and that wall can be arranged with windows to match the rest of the front. It requires the same change upstairs and may create a somewhat oddly shaped room that is longer... So he's going to try and work that out.
I didn't want to offset the bath and Playroom to create more jogs in the foundation and further complicate the roofline, so kept it one 90-degree intersection as it was before. I also wanted to make sure there was enough front of the house on the left wing to cover the garage. Otherwise, I think the large garage just looks tacked on and hanging off the side, which is something else I really don't like about modern houses.
He'll try to work that idea in and then this week is hoping to do his 3D render and walk through so we can see everything and all the ideas, we'll sit down and go over it all and try to make the final tweaks so we can get a builder plan and cost together.
Starting to get anxiety about a lot of the little stuff. Moving walls 6" here and worrying if it is right or worth it and feeling bad about stepping in and trying to "design it for him." Not feedback he's given us, I just feel unqualified to even give suggestions other than "we just don't quite like that." For me the floorplan was the easiest and all these tweaks are because I'm anal about the exterior.
Our “quick access” is all in SNSXX because the yields comparable with local HYSA; a little lower base but competitive when Arkansas tax exemption is factored in, and we just keep everything in Schwab to move directly between accounts.
Thanks for the feedback. Just to clarify, all those are from Gemini and nothing designer / builder provided. Some of the things like the planters were just stuff it threw in and I removed in later renders. Pretty sure it fixed the door and nothing at that stage was actually changed floorplan. It just did that, maybe I prompted it to, can't remember.
On this one you posted we liked the roofline where you have the XXXX for a couple of reasons. It breaks up the vertical-ness of that section, provides some protection for those windows beneath it, and also gives us a covered porch across the entire lower level. I agree that we wouldn't want it across the entire lower level and create a "stripe" across the front. We also thought it anchored the entryway and balanced that out. I see your point though, just think our preference is for #1 in that instance.
View attachment 615902
Having said all that I don't believe we posted any follow ups after he made some changes. Will spoiler some of these so it doesn't push the page crazy long:
To address the small bathroom windows floating on the side of the left face he created a small 1-4" / 3'-4" bump out which changed the front elevation and sort of separate that area with those windows to be more distinct or part of a big vertical feature.
Threw it in Gemini and this was the first idea it spit out. I get the idea of what he was going for and maybe even like it, but the more we looked at it the more it looked like just a tacked on extra "feature" that competes with the main entry, the stone looks kind of tacked on, little too heavy on the left... just ended up not liking it. Even playing with some of the materials and making it not 100% stone, extending the siding, or changing colors / extending the siding.
You can also see in the plan above (purple) where to solve the door issue he flipped the staircase to the other side which pushed the door more to the middle. It did require widening the stone entry a bit and changing the columns up some. And then the way he drew it was with an upper balcony which he admitted was just for fun, we aren't going to do that. We'd never use it, the front of the house is road facing and we don't have anything but nature across the street, it still isn't worth it for the extra cost. It also feels like a "McFeature."
Threw it in Gemini and this was the first idea it spit out. I get the idea of what he was going for and maybe even like it, but the more we looked at it the more it looked like just a tacked on extra "feature" that competes with the main entry, the stone looks kind of tacked on, little too heavy on the left... just ended up not liking it. Even playing with some of the materials and making it not 100% stone, extending the siding, or changing colors / extending the siding.
You can also see in the plan above (purple) where to solve the door issue he flipped the staircase to the other side which pushed the door more to the middle. It did require widening the stone entry a bit and changing the columns up some. And then the way he drew it was with an upper balcony which he admitted was just for fun, we aren't going to do that. We'd never use it, the front of the house is road facing and we don't have anything but nature across the street, it still isn't worth it for the extra cost. It also feels like a "McFeature."
So anyways, I just felt like we were trying to design around these windows and thought maybe it would be better to fix the floorplan instead. My suggestion back was instead of having that bathroom located against the front of the house, can we move the playroom into that space and put the bathroom behind it, between there and the garage. See my mock-up sketched out below. That way the whole left face is just the Playroom/Guest Bedroom and that wall can be arranged with windows to match the rest of the front. It requires the same change upstairs and may create a somewhat oddly shaped room that is longer... So he's going to try and work that out.
I didn't want to offset the bath and Playroom to create more jogs in the foundation and further complicate the roofline, so kept it one 90-degree intersection as it was before. I also wanted to make sure there was enough front of the house on the left wing to cover the garage. Otherwise, I think the large garage just looks tacked on and hanging off the side, which is something else I really don't like about modern houses.
He'll try to work that idea in and then this week is hoping to do his 3D render and walk through so we can see everything and all the ideas, we'll sit down and go over it all and try to make the final tweaks so we can get a builder plan and cost together.
Starting to get anxiety about a lot of the little stuff. Moving walls 6" here and worrying if it is right or worth it and feeling bad about stepping in and trying to "design it for him." Not feedback he's given us, I just feel unqualified to even give suggestions other than "we just don't quite like that." For me the floorplan was the easiest and all these tweaks are because I'm anal about the exterior.