TAKE ACTION: Grab your receipts. Add your payments into your excel spreadsheet and watch it calculate.

To complete your Mid-Project Money Review, answer the following 5 questions.

Questions

1. How much money have you spent? How much do you have left? 
 Knowing what you have spent to find out what you have left is key. You will feel so much better when you find out that number instead of avoiding it. Do these numbers align with your contractor’s budget?

2. Based on the previous question, are you over or under budget?
If you are under-budget, how are you going to make sure you remain at budget? If you are over-budget, where are you going to take that overage from?

Example: You are $5,000 over budget. You are going to reduce / postpone the landscaping scope to cover the overage. Or you’re going to find cheaper finishing products (flooring, specialty lighting, etc.) to cover the costs. 

Or maybe you’re okay with the overage and can dip into your contingency. The point is to expand your thinking and remind yourself, “This is doable. I have abundant options.”

3. What specific products or services are you really happy you purchased? What are you not thrilled you purchased?
Maybe it’s the additional help you got from your electricians by going over the lighting plan on-site? Or the sticker price shock of every fireplace sold in that store was over your budget.

4. What can you take from those decisions and make better decisions moving forward?
Example: If I just took a little more time researching for the exact same product at another store I could have saved a lot of money. Or if I asked if they have a sale coming up, if they sell the floor model at a discount, etc.

5. What is the money attitude that you want to adopt for the rest of the project?
It can be mentally exhausting spending that much money in such a short amount of time. But keep in mind, you are spending on an investment. It will end.

What else can you tell yourself to get you through these moments? It will happen. It happens to all my clients, including those who have an abundance of money. What can you say that you can revisit to get yourself through these moments of financial exhaustion?

Wow, you've done it again. You have completed your Mid-Project Money Review. 

Take some time with your family, when all the trades have gone, to sit in your newly drywalled home and tell stories of what you’re most looking forward to. You are half-way there. Be proud of what you’ve been through and accomplished. 

Keep counting.