Often times people begin to build their house using a notepad, at best, as the budget monitoring tool. There are so many different bits and pieces that impact on the budgets and its really easy to loose track of a few smaller things, all which end up adding up to €000’s come the end of the build.
It isn’t the big stuff either, as many discover when they embark on their home building project. Generally, the price advertised as the starting point will not vary dramatically from what you will pay if you select base options for everything. The problem is, that will never happen. It is extremely unlikely that you will be happy to go with the default options for your cabinets, flooring, counter-tops, doors, electrical outlets and attic storage, amongst others.
Nobody really wants to spend €110,000 on a building project only to end up with a house that looks like it came out of a bargain catalogue. Everyone who goes through the trouble of building a house definitely wants to express their tastes and personality in its aesthetics, and if the price of doing so is a few extra Euros, well so what?
The trouble is that builders know this too, and so they make sure to offer only the most basic, often bordering on unattractive design options with the basic price package. If you want a fancy screen door instead of a slab of wood separating two rooms, or you want tiles laid in a pattern instead of a thin brown carpet, you have to pay extra. As the house takes shape, such decisions have to be made several times, and before you know it, you have a few €000 of unplanned expenses burning a hole in your finances.
To help you avoid this, we have developed a detail spread sheet that will help you to become a budget tracking ninja over the next few months of your build. This spread sheet not only helps you keep track of your spending, but also ensures that at every point during your build, you know exactly where your money is going and you can keep your builder accountable.
Don’t say we never did anything nice for you.
