Here's a way to make your kitchen feel new without spending too much money:

• Update floor tile
• Update cabinet doors & drawer faces
• Paint Cabinets
• Add guides to drawers & replace cabinet door hinges
• Do not replace cabinet boxes
• Replace countertops
• New, midrange appliances

Granted, you're going to have to be the one to find each of these guys so you don't have to pay a premium for a GC.

Do your own demo on the floors. You can rent a floor scraper from Home Depot/Lowe's/Sunbelt.

Get a Bagster from Lowe's & fill it up with everything you don't want, including flooring, old cabinet doors (keep drawers to be re-faced), etc.

A countertop company will probably remove & replace your countertops in one trip if you're not re-arranging anything.

Honestly OP your big mistake was not refinancing them a year and a half ago when rates were nothing. You could be paying 2.5% on them instead of 6.4% in which case this is an entirely different conversation. But you gambled on getting free **** and lost.

AustinCountyAg said:

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Deputy Travis Junior said:

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Honestly OP your big mistake was not refinancing them a year and a half ago when rates were nothing. You could be paying 2.5% on them instead of 6.4% in which case this is an entirely different conversation. But you gambled on getting free **** and lost.

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interest rate have been frozen at zero percent since 2020

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Yet you paid $0....so now your interest rate is 6.4%....

A couple last comments before I duck out of this thread: first, you said your wife got bad financial advice and that's why she has so much student loan debt. Well now she wants to blow all the free cash that your set aside to pay off her high interest loans on a lavish kitchen remodel ($50k means zero compromise, top notch everywhere). This suggests she didn't learn anything from her loan decisions and is still very bad with money.

Second, i can't say what surprise financial hit its in store for you, but something always happens. An unexpected pregnancy, a car dies, the idiot in-laws who gave her bad advice run out of money and need you to pay for their groceries for the foreseeable future, a kid develops an auto immune disease that requires $200 of uncovered medicine a month, whatever. So that's why a compromise ie spend half the money on loans and half the money on a less fancy upgrade is a good idea. You get to live and do something nice for yourselves but it also improves your ability to handle the curve balls that life will undoubtedly throw at you.

This right here. This kind of kitchen can be modernized and look great for so much less. 100% change in look and functionality

You can really really update on a budget. You can find matching appliances on Facebook marketplace if you try hard enough. You can probably put shaker doors on those cabinets and drawers for less than a grand, plus paint. You can DIY butcher block counters for less than a grand as well, and they are pretty awesome. Honestly, you should be able to update your whole home for 50 grand if you so some yourself. If you redo your kitchen to the 9s, I promise it won't stop there because then the rest of the house won't be up to those same standards.

My biggest concern in his response, and this really shows how both he and she think about personal responsibility, is that he's ok with letting the government - meaning my tax dollars - pay for his wife's debts for her education. I assumed as much earlier in the thread, but did not want to voice those assumptions, and wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt and uncertainty. But, with him admitting that they didn't pay ANYTHING on the debt when it was not mandatory, and now they want to spend it on something else for their own benefit, yet uncaring about the rest of us paying for their poor choices, that says a lot about where they are coming from.
Again, as I said previously, this is what is wrong with America today.

I do understand what you're saying but if the govt is stupid enough to pay them then he would be an absolute moron for not taking advantage of the "free" government idiocy. Its not like this dudes decision to pay or not to pay had any bearing whatsoever on what happens in Washington or not.

AustinAg,

Here's the long and short of it. Paying off a debt early helps your finances in two ways. You lock in the interest rate of the note as a gain. Can you beat 6ish percent in the stock market? And if you can, it only matters if you actually invest it instead of just blowing it on something else.

Also, you're going to free up $300 a month for the foreseeable future. That is going to really help you once you start getting real expenses with kids.

Your best option is to invest the 50k and thats only really marginally the best. Your second best option (really your best) is to pay off the loans. Your third best option is to pay down the loans by half and DIY the remodel. Your worst option is to drop 50k to have some general contractor do everything for you.

What really hurts you is just not paying your loans down when they were 0%. If this pot of money you saved it up is partially due to student loan relief- you owe it to yourself to at least put that amount of cash back into the loans.

harrierdoc said:

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My biggest concern in his response, and this really shows how both he and she think about personal responsibility, is that he's ok with letting the government - meaning my tax dollars - pay for his wife's debts for her education. I assumed as much earlier in the thread, but did not want to voice those assumptions, and wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt and uncertainty. But, with him admitting that they didn't pay ANYTHING on the debt when it was not mandatory, and now they want to spend it on something else for their own benefit, yet uncaring about the rest of us paying for their poor choices, that says a lot about where they are coming from.
Again, as I said previously, this is what is wrong with America today.

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we stopped paying but moved the same payment amount to savings since the payment pause. Yes it's interest free. Our thought was to wait in case Biden decided to do some type of forgiveness, and if not just paying off the loans completely before the interest kicked back in. Now with the large sum we've saved we are thinking doing the kitchen remodel instead of paying off the loans.



I don't see how you jump to the personal responsibility comment. It is not unreasonable to stop payments when no interest was accruing. They even chose not to spend the "payment" money. This is a reasonable and responsible approach. Would you hurry to pay off a student loan knowing there was a chance some would be forgiven? I didn't like the Biden plan, but would do the same thing to maintain options. Seems no different than waiting to make a decision until a pending tax change is decided.

I have no doubt, but you know that wasn't the question.

Sure, it's wildly popular by the people that aren't going to pay for it now. Unfortunately, the young don't have the benefit of experience and don't see what problems lie in their future.

Boortz had a great idea. If you accept $$$ from the government directly, you can't vote. Those that take will always vote for leaders that will keep giving and never vote for those that will take away for the betterment of the country.

harrierdoc said:

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Then, what was the question? Seems to me they are still hoping for some possible loan forgiveness in the future. Otherwise, why wouldn't you pay off the debt now, so as not to increase payback amt? Each $ saved in interest could be used to purchase an upgraded kitchen in the not too distant future. It seems that it didn't take them long to save the $50,000, so another 2 years in the current kitchen doesn't seem too unreasonable.

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We are not "hoping" for anything. The govt paused payments and froze the rates so we aren't accruing any extra fees. We've been taking our monthly payments and stashing them in savings in case Biden was stupid enough to forgive them. We can always lump sum a payment at 0% before they kick the rates back in.

Harrierdoc, frankly speaking, your opinion is irrelevant and annoyingly political.

The government, especially during Covid, gave material handouts to corporates, small business owners, the unemployed, and people with children. I come from a small town and online can see Republican after Republican taking all those PPP loans and getting every single one of them forgiven. Take that personally responsibility argument to every single one of those parties if you are going to crap all over OP and this thread.

This is such a ridiculous and tired argument.

You bet people took PPP loans when the government shut down their businesses and they had bills to pay. And before you say there was a ton of fraud, well guess who ran it and allowed the fraud?

The government.

It's such a ridiculous apples to oranges comparison that it is quite frankly embarrassing that anyone would make it.

And people with student loans didn't have their jobs impacted at all?

That has zero to do with why they took the loan out initially.

But you already knew that.

You're conflating personal responsibility in taking out PPP loans and their repayment with taking out student loans and their subsequent repayments.

It's two completely different things. Don't try to act like the student loan forgiveness movement is at all grounded in Covid.

ETA: But you did get a dig in at those mean old Republican neighbors you have, so good job!

I am not conflating a single thing. Stimulus is stimulus.

PPP loans = stimulus
Student loans pause = stimulus
Child tax credits = stimulus
Unemployment = stimulus
Sub-3% rates = stimulus

There is one that gets people all fired up right now, and it's no coincidence why a certain few are botching about it and making this thread political.

Why wait for payments to restart? Pay now before interest starts. I've been hammering for 3 years saving that interest money.

He mentioned he could pay lump sum if the interest is going to start again. As far as course of action goes, he probably took the smartest route. Save your payments in a separate account while there no interest and no payments due in the event the are forgiven. Can throw all that at the loan if payments and interest are announced to start up again.