How do I evaluate reasonability of home improvement projects?
If you're looking for some formula, I don't think one exists. People talk about this all the time and give conflicting advice. If there was a proven-accurate formula, they wouldn't be debating it. There are basically 3 reasons to do a home improvement project: (a) Correct a problem so that you prevent on-going damage to your home. For example, have a leaking roof patched or replaced, or exterminate termites. Such a job is worthwhile if the cost of fixing the problem is less than the cost of future damage. In the case of my termite and leaking roof examples, this is almost always worth doing. Lesser maintenance problems might be more debatable. Similarly, some improvements may reduce expenses. Like replacing an old furnace with a newer model may cut your heating bills. Here the question is: how long does it take to repay the investment, compared to other things you might invest your money in. Just to make up numbers: Suppose you find that a new furnace will save you $500 per year. If the new furnace costs $2000, then it will take 4 years to pay for itself. I'd consider that a good investment. If that same $2000 furnace will only cut your heating bills by $100 per year, then it will take 20 years to pay for itself. You'd probably be better off putting the $2000 into the stock market and using the gains to help pay your heating bill. (b) Increase the resale value of your home. If you are paying someone else to do the work, the harsh reality here is: Almost no job will increase the resale value by more than the cost of getting the job done. I've seen many articles over the years citing studies on this. I think most conclude that kitchen remodeling comes closet to paying for itself, and bathrooms come next. New windows are also up there. I don't have studies to prove this, but my guesses would be: Replacing something that is basically nice with a different style will rarely pay for itself. Like, replacing oak cabinets with cherry cabinets. Replacing something that is in terrible shape with something decent is more likely to pay back than replacing something decent with something beautiful. Like if you have an old iron bathtub that's rusting and falling apart, replacing it may pay off. If you have a 5-year-old bathtub that's in good shape but is not premium, top of the line, replacing it with a premium bathtub will probably do very little for resale value. If you can do a lot of the work yourself, the story changes. Many home improvement jobs don't require a lot of materials, but do require a lot of work. If you do the labor, you can often get the job done very cheaply, and it's likely that the increase in resale value will be more than what you spend. For example, most of my house has hardwood floors. Lots of people like pretty hardwood floors. I just restained the floors in two rooms. It cost me, I don't know, maybe $20 or $30 for stain and some brushes. I'm sure if I tried to sell the house tomorrow I'd get my twenty bucks back in higher sale value. Realtors often advise sellers to paint. Again, if you do it yourself, the cost of paint may be a hundred dollars, and it can increase the sale price of the house by thousands. Of course if you do the work yourself, you have to consider the value of your time. (c) To make your home more pleasant to live in. This is totally subjective. You have to make the decision on the same basis that you decide whether anything that is not essential to survival is worth buying. To some people, a bottle of fancy imported wine is worth thousands, even millions, of dollars. Others can't tell the difference between a $10,000 wine and a $15 wine.  The thing to ask yourself is, How important is this home improvement to me, compared to other things I could do with the money? Like, suppose you're considering spending $20,000 remodeling your kitchen. What else could you do with $20,000? You could buy a car, go on an elaborate vacation, eat out several times a week for years, retire a little earlier, etc. No one can tell you how much something is worth to you. Any given home improvement may involve a combination of these factors. Like say you're considering that $20,000 kitchen remodeling. Say you somehow find out that this will increase the resale value by $15,000. If the only reason you were considering it was to increase resale value, then it's not worth it -- you'd lose $5,000. But if you also want the nicer kitchen, then it is fair to say, Okay, it will cost me $20,000, but ultimately I'll get $15,000 of that back. So in the long run it will only cost me $5,000. Is having a nicer kitchen worth $5,000 to me? Note, by the way, that resale value only matters if and when you sell the house. If you expect to stay in this house for 20 years, any improvements done are VERY long-term investments. If you live in it until you die, the resale value may matter to your heirs. The exact answers depend on what you're going to do and what you started with and what your local market is like ... But a bit of websearching (and/or asking a good general contractor) will yield a table of typical improvement in sale price from various renovations. One thing you'll discover is that unless you are staring with something almost unsellable, few if any if thgem return more than you paid for them; getting back 85% is exceptionally good. A possible exception is energy-saving measures; basic air-seaking and attic insulation improvements pay back their cost relatively quickly, and solar can do so if you have a decent site for that -- and these are often subsidized in one way or another by government or utilities. For most things, thoiugh, the real answer is to ask yourself what would make the house better for you and your family, and what that would be worth to you. If you can get it done for less than that, go for it. It's a good idea to put together as complete a list vas possible before starting, since some will be considerably less expensive if done in the right order or at the same time. (Redo your roofing before installing rooftop solar panels, if possible; as one example.) Then prioritize thiose by what will improve your enjoyment of the house most. You'll probably get better specific advice over in the Home Improvement area of Stack Exchange.
I'll write this up as a more formal answer, here. I'd suggest looking into a Home Equity Line of Credit, or HELOC. You didn't mention in your question how much equity you have in the home, but assuming at least 20%, you might be able to open a HELOC with a line of $40,000. My experience is that you can do 50% of your equity, but depends on the bank. Here are a few notes that are generally in play with HELOC's (YMMV, so be sure to know the specifics before signing on the line) Doing this, at least when we did 8 years ago, did not subject us to PMI. There are certainly plenty of things to research, but it sounds like you're pretty astute based on how you're evaluating the financial side of this endeavor. There are no guarantees in real estate. Houses could be selling like crazy now, but in 6 months they might not. It certainly sounds like that's a lower risk in your area, but you never know what might happen. If you're taking on this extra line of credit, make sure that it's something you could afford should the worst case scenario happen.  Equity loans are also available. This is a more traditional fixed-rate loan rather than line of credit, so you'd be looking at set monthly payments rather than the flexibility of paying interest only when you need to. There's a brief write-up on the differences here. I have also heard of a construction loan, which falls into the same category as the aforementioned options, but I can't speak to today's market on those. Why would I want to approve an increase in the number of authorized shares? Because you trust management to use those shares wisely. What it comes down to is, management is asking for money. While it may not be cash they're asking for, it has the same effect. Before you approve this, you have to evaluate the request (similarly to how a bank would evaluate a loan request), and ask if you approve of their reasons for needing the money, and if you think that it will be used to increase the value of the company (making your shares more valuable in the process). "&gt;There is no fact that shows taxing the rich is good or bad.  Sure there is.  What is the outcome you are trying to achieve?  What are the consequences of your solution (i.e. how does your solution turn into a problem)?  If you are using evaluative concepts like ""fair"" as guiding design principles for a system, we are still able to articulate our intuitions of fairness when presented with specific facts.  Is there going to be clear consensus?  No.  I agree with you in that sense it is ""opinion.""  When you dig down and move beyond magic words like ""fair"" and get at the reasoning why a thing is fair or not, that is how you build common truth and consensus.  That's how you have a meaningful discussion beyond ""Yeah, huh"" and ""Nah, uh.""    Bringing facts allows you to ground out your argument and explore how principles are actually being applied, situate decisions historically, and connect choices with how they fit in our larger system.  Are there definitive answers?  You are, again, right there are not but ambiguity tolerance is a sign of intelligence, not a failing.  &gt;And my point isn't that Republicans are bad, but that they are covering their harmful economic policies with helpful ones. The obvious implication isn't that they are bad people, but that we should be critical of their bad policies and applaud their good ones.  Let me just concede that you are policy focused.  It is fairy uncontroversial also to say that stimulus causes the general public not to feel the effects of tax cuts until years later and so, there is less resistance to them.  That can be true, however, while still seeing their choices made in relation to those made by democrats.    Further, when you explain the situation, you can just as easily switch which side labeled ""harmful"" and ""helpful.""   Are solutions to social problems which entail tax burdens placed consistently on one portion of the population again and again the ""harm""?  Is it the tax cut which now underfunds an existing outlay?  Or, is it an unhealthy relationship where one group expands and the other tries to reign in which leads to systemic instability?  Moving away from evaluative language like ""harmful/helpful"", ""good/bad"", ""fair/unfair"" challenges us to articulate the history, the desired outcome, and move away from *us* vs. *them* thinking.  You don't get an ideal correct solution with that approach but you do get closer to practical good enough ones that way." "&gt;  and that is what's uncalled for.  I think folks aren't reading this right. It's not ""you voted for Trump, which I disagree with.""  Look at how a large swath of America views President Trump, and of more importance here - how a large number of folks view his supporters.   Over 2/3 of Americans polled don't trust President Trump and think poorly of people that support him.   If you follow the line of reasoning, you can get to ""anyone who supported Donald Trump is not acting rationally."" In that light, it would mean believing that someone who supports Donald Trump is doing so based on naked, unthinking politics instead of a rational evaluation of his policies and past history.   In other words, Reed Hastings looks at ""voting for Trump"" as a sanity test, and this person (who not only voted for him, but advertised his doing so, loudly and proudly) does not have the kind of judgement he wants in a board member." I did a brief analysis during my undergrad on the sustainability of Subprime Auto-Loans ...there was definitely a lot more information that I could have included in my research. IMO it'd be a decent topic that would be perfect for a quantitative argument. "Hi all, just doing some homework which is evaluating a soccer clubs accounts using ratios. We have to include a paragraph on suggesting ""non financial appraisal"" for the soccer club. Anyone any idea what this could mean? Thanks" Who wrote this?  Just because some people -- and aparantly the author -- don't know the meaning of some of these doesn't mean they are useless phrases.  But to close the loop on this… = Always the more theoretical Business Development/Strategy guys who say this, so they can sound thorough?  Not.  Try: put a process in place to make certain that the things we just decided to do actually get done, either by assigning a third party to or using an automated system to regularly check for failure to progress, and deliver that information to someone that can do something about it.  This is low-hanging fruit = Get this done quickly?  How about, this can be done quickly and brings disproportionate and important immediate benefits, so we should do it first. I use it for work to automatically fill in building features which are spelled differently and are classified differently by architects (for some reason). It's mainly vlookups, I'm not sure if it'll solve your problem but that's how I solved my problem. The only problem this creates is that the master list is pretty long and that you'll need to update your sheets when you open 'em.