Should You Follow These 4 Dave Ramsey Tips for Saving on Home Renovations?

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While some Ramsey tips make sense, others could potentially get you in trouble. 

After you buy a home, chances are good that you’ll be faced with the desire (or the need) to renovate some part of your property at some point during your time living in it. The problem is, paying for repairs and upgrades to your property can be a big expense on top of your mortgage loan.

Finance expert Dave Ramsey has four tips on how you can save money if you are renovating. But, while some of these tips could be smart, others could actually end up causing you big problems.

Here are Ramsey’s recommendations, along with some advice on whether you should listen to them all.

1. Do one project at a time

Ramey’s first suggestion is not to try to do too many things at once.

“When you look around at the outdated countertops, stained carpets or mismatched fixtures in your home, it might feel like you can never invite anyone over until it all gets done,” Ramsey said. “But instead of maxing out credit cards on a huge reno or sitting around feeling discontent, budget for any big purchases a little each month, or knock out smaller changes one at a time.”

Ramsey suggested this approach can give you time to identify sales and bargains that can reduce your overall renovating costs. It can also mean you have more time to come up with cash to cover each project.

While this advice can make sense, sometimes it isn’t practical — or could end up costing you more. For example, if you’re hoping to get new countertops installed throughout the entire house, it may be cheaper to have the granite company come out once to do them in the kitchens and bathrooms rather than having them out multiple times. So, that may mean renovating both the kitchen and powder room at the same time.

2. Save and pay cash for big projects

Ramsey also said it’s a good idea to save up for a big remodel rather than financing it — even if this takes a little more time.

Again, this is great advice in most situations. If you can save up to pay cash for upgrades, you avoid the hassle of applying for a loan and the interest charges that go along with it. But, it’s also not always practical.

If you have urgent upgrades you need, or if you can qualify for a low interest personal loan that you can pay over time that will enable you to make a change that makes your home significantly more livable, it may be worth borrowing to get the job done.

3. Try to DIY repairs when possible

Ramsey said that leveraging sweat equity can be a great way to cut your home repair costs.

“It’s pretty fantastic what you can learn to do on YouTube these days,” Ramsey said. “Contour your makeup until you look like a completely different person. Learn self-defense moves that rival Chuck Norris. And watch step-by-step guides to basic home repairs. That last one can come in quite handy when you need to fix a simple toilet leak but don’t want to pay an hourly rate for what might be a five-minute job.”

While Ramsey acknowledged that you should leave certain jobs to the pros, including those related to structural issues and electrical issues, the reality is that following this advice can backfire even outside of these specific situations, where a faulty repair could put your life at risk.

If you are not a handy person, trying to make changes to your home based on watching a YouTube video showing you how to do it could end up costing you a fortune. You could easily make a mistake that turns a minor five minute repair job into a major disaster. So, unless you are truly confident you can’t mess anything up, do not try to DIY.

4. Barter to get the job done

Finally, Ramsey suggested trying to barter to get some repairs taken care of when possible.

“For those assignments that need an expert, do you know someone who’d be interested in trading skills? You could offer to design their website, photograph their family, or help them file their taxes. Go old school and barter your expertise for theirs.”

This is also not necessarily advice worth following. Your time also has value, and if you’re a professional photographer or web designer, why not just find a client to offer these services to and then collect the money to pay your plumber or home repair professional? There’s very little reason to limit yourself to finding someone to barter with instead of just using your skills to make money you can use to pay for repairs.

Ultimately, as you can see, some of these tips make more sense than others — so consider carefully whether Ramsey’s advice on cutting home upgrade costs is worth listening to.

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