Financial Realities

I priced the Building Cost for the house I want today.
$160,000 for contractors to do it from start-to-finish.
Cue pounding headache.

So I started looking at ways to cut some of those costs, and had lunch with my godfather and discussed it with him while messaging back and forth with Rush about it.
Here's the cost breakdown from Building-Cost.net, using Tumbleweed's instructions (and modifying for a basement and an air conditioner, since we live in Georgia and I'll be damned if I'm going to live without it):

Depressing, isn't it? I feel better after talking to my godfather, though. 

The reality is that it was never all that practical to have it built start-to-finish by contractors, and my godfather pointed out that as long as we can house and feed him, he can happily finish out basically everything in the house: wiring and plumbing once they're roughed in, interior trim, drywall, painting, etc. 

Basically drop over $20,000 off of that estimate, which of course also assumes we are buying everything brand-new instead of using scavenged, found, and reused materials. With my godfather's help, we could probably drop $35,000 off of this estimate- which leaves it still higher than I'm happy about but much more doable. 

This of course doesn't factor in the land price, but there are a few places I'm looking at that are bank-owned in the areas we want to be that are in the $20-$35,000 range for 5-15 acres. 

One in particular has me drooling... I just have to remember that I have to fix my credit first. 

The current plan for that (I pulled our credit reports today) is to take out a small personal loan, pay off everything negative on our credit (<$4,000), and then pay back the loan shortly. I already paid off and closed one of my credit cards, and the personal loan (which is probably a lower interest rate than my credit card's exorbitant one).

But that will get both Rush and I back onto solid credit footing, although it almost certainly means not replacing the Civic of D00M this coming year. Sigh. 

My godfather also had some suggestions about quieting it down, though, which should make it pretty bearable to drive for a while longer. 

So that's where we are for the moment.... now I just have to convince my credit union to give me that personal loan.