Do you have a plan for renovating your home? Do you have a budget or have you ever priced out how much it would cost to replace flooring or paint a room or the whole house; what about replacing the roof, appliances or building a fence? Your house is like your body – it does need constant care and upgrading.
In this day of credit cards, it certainly makes life a lot easier if your hot water tank gives out – just go to the store, finance it for the next year and make the minimum payment for as long as you can get away with it.
It is important that you look after your home, especially these days when people are depending on selling their property for their retirement. They plan on using the equity in their home to live on when the time comes that they can no longer look after themselves and have not put enough aside over the years to have a little nest egg for retirement.
Statistics have shown that at least 24% of all Canadians rely on their homes for their retirement. It appears many people are eyeing their homes' market value as a store of potential income after they stop working. There are also those people who do not own a home, have not been wise enough to have personal savings, and will be relying upon the government as their main source of income.
Personally, we are working very hard to try to have our full mortgage paid off by the time we retire and there are many different ways in which to do this. We have our payment plan on a weekly term and we have increased the amount of the weekly payment. You also always have the option to make a lump sum payment once a year (the percentages change from bank to bank). All these are great ideas and not only do you save yourself a pile of interest, you can have your home paid off years earlier.
This brings me back to the beginning of this article and the importance of maintaining your home, especially if you are one of those Canadians who plans on using their home equity as the main source of income in your retirement years.
Author: Kathryn Hartwell
