Begin with the End in Mind
Steven Covey in his “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” calls this one of the seven habits, I love the expression and I spend my days working from the goals of the day backwards to the tasks I need to accomplish to achieve them. The same is true for building your new home. Everyone has an image of the house they want but that is not the end. The end is a house they want at a budget that they can pay for. Typically these two items do not line up, and since the budget most likely cannot change a lot, the house dream needs to adjust to the budget. Or, you can build your dream, live in it for a couple years and then give it to the bank, again this is probably not the END your were thinking of. So define the budget first and lets work backwards from there. Attached is a really fun math worksheet (how often do you hear that? fun Math?) that will help you fill in the blanks from where your budget is to the house you want. TRUST ME (never trust anyone who says that and has something to gain from it, in this case I do not) this is a much better path to your dream.