Project Planning can Alleviate Long Term Stress and Debt

Hi everyone, Beth Dodson here with HomeZada. Hope you're having a fabulous day, and thank you so much for joining us and watching this video. Today we're going to talk about why it's important to plan ahead for any projects you're doing. So first of all, what we define as projects are anything from a complete remodel, so that's construction involved, to a design project, which requires either very little or no construction, and repair projects. That's the first thing. Secondly, we want to help you understand that we believe projects have 3 legs to the stool. We believe that there's a budget component, there's a scope or project details component, and there's a time component. And if any one of those things are out of balance, then the stool falls over. So we believe that preparing for projects is important to keep that stool in balance, to keep your budget on track, to keep your time on track, but most importantly, to keep the scope. As to what you want. And if you need to make adjustments accordingly, we're going to talk about that. So that's the aspect of what we define as a project. Now, HomeZada has over 50 templates in their home improvement section of the HomeZada application that can help guide you through this process. These templates have the number of items and the types of items you need to consider for these projects. They also have the actions that you need to consider for these projects as well. And those actions involve whether you're going to do it yourself or whether you're going to hire a contractor. So keep in mind that those actions are also in the system for you and to help you guide you through this. So why is planning important? One of the reasons is because most of the time when we do not plan or we fail to plan, we are faced with a situation where most of the time we're over budget on our projects. We have this beautiful plan we want to do. We start realizing that our champagne tastes and our beer budget don't align sometimes. or we just are asking for too much for too soon. So one of the things that we like to look at is when you're planning for a project, you want to start identifying the items you need in the project. Now, as I said, Home Styliz templates will help you with that, but we— what we mean is get very specific. Track all the different shopping choices that you have about those items. Start identifying your style, your design, as well as the cost of these items, and that way you can create estimated cost For all of the different items you need in the project, and the reason why that's important is because if by chance you need to change the project, you could potentially change the scope and the items that you found in this project. And what I mean by that is you can actually change the items and say, "You know what? I don't need this particular item for this project at this present moment, and I can come back to that and revisit that at a later time." Or I do not need this. Particular cost of this item. So maybe I can scale back and find an item that is a little bit less expensive in replacement of this other item. And a good example of that is stoves. So you can get a very expensive stove or range that can cost you thousands and thousands of dollars, or you can scale back and get something more affordable that will suit your budget but still be as effective. The other thing to identify in these projects is the work it will take, or the time, or the labor it will If you're doing this yourself, you have to consider time. If you're working full-time, if you've got children at home, you need to figure out ways that you can actually address this and get this project done in a timely fashion so that you can use this particular project. And for instance, a kitchen remodel— if you need your kitchen to cook for your family, then you need to make sure that you carve out time that you can get this done so that the cooking can continue. Or you need to hire out to do that. So that's the other thing, taking a look at your own personal time, but also taking a look at the time to get the project done. If you hire a contractor, will involve labor. So you're going to need to understand the quantity of labor, and sometimes you may not always understand that, but that's why it's also important to get bids from multiple contractors to understand that component. The other thing that keeps in mind when you can understand the items that you have, the labor, or the time that you need, you can also start understanding the complete and total budget of the this project. I know that I've recently done some work on some potential projects and they were significantly over budget. So the first thing that I did was I looked at my own current budgets to determine whether I could handle this over budget or whether I needed to change the scope in the project. I personally chose to change the scope in the project. So what I mean by that is changing the scope can involve several different areas. One, the scope could be you have a lot of construction, or you say to yourself, I'm going to reduce the quantity of construction I need, keep the walls the way they are, and maybe move to a different process, meaning I won't extend a room, I'll leave it the same size. The other thing to keep in mind is the types of materials that you'll use. So for instance, if you want to paint a house or a room, versus wallpaper something. Wallpaper usually involves a little bit more work and more labor, so you may want to change from wallpaper to painting, and painting will get done a little bit more efficiently. So those things are important to keep in mind. The other thing to keep in mind is the items that you choose. You may have a scope of a project that has a lot of high-end or quality items, as I described earlier with the stove, and you might want to scale those back. In terms of what you have or the quantity of items in that room. You may want to scale that back and invest only in the larger items that are the most pressing, and then come back to the project at a later date when you can schedule and budget for the rest of the items. The other thing to keep in mind is when we talk about scope, scope could be the size of a project. You may originally want an entire first floor redesign, And then you realize that you know what? Maybe that's not going to work for me, and maybe I'm going to cut back, and I'm not going to do every room in the the first floor. Maybe I'm only going to do two rooms, and I'm going to adjust those accordingly. So this gives you options to adjust the scope of your project, but you won't be able to do that during your project, which is why it's important to plan for it today. And one of the things that happens if you are in the middle of your project and you have this idea of what you want, you could end up being significantly over budget, which could put you into debt. It could also frustrate you. You could also wind up not finishing a project, which could cause some problems and also devalue your home, and that's not what you want. But also, it leads to a lot of frustration when you start realizing that your project is over budget, you are out of time, whatever the case may be. And then that could lead to other problems within the family unit. And so we want to help avoid that. So using Homes Out of Project Templates can help you start planning those projects, which we've identified is a really important part of the process. We know it will take a little bit longer to do that, but you can also do that with any other contractors that you're using, whether it's designers, whether it's contractors, whether it's other types of subcontractors. You can work together by putting that budget together inside the Homes Out of system. So keep that in mind when you're considering these projects that you're moving forward. And then if you have any questions, please let us know. We love hearing from everybody. You can reach us at info@homesada.com. You can also visit homesada.com and check out our home improvement features. By all means, let us know if you have any comments below, and please subscribe to this channel.