How to Fund a Renovation?

Summary

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Jill on Money with Jill Schlesinger – Episode Summary

Episode Title: How to Fund a Renovation?
Date: June 15, 2026
Host: Jill Schlesinger, CFP®
Key Listener/Caller: Katie from Virginia

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Jill Schlesinger takes a listener call from Katie, who is seeking advice on how to fund a garage renovation. The conversation digs deep into Katie’s and her husband's finances, savings habits, and emotional blockages around spending. Jill tackles the psychological side of spending for diligent savers and provides actionable strategies for approaching large, planned expenses, such as home renovations.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Listener Scenario: Katie Wants a Garage (07:39)

• Katie’s Situation: 48, married to a 66-year-old retired husband. Considering building a ~$60,000 garage but unsure how best to fund it.
• House: Worth approx. $350,000, mortgage-free.

2. Diving into Katie and Husband’s Finances (08:08-12:23)

• Income:
  • Jill’s husband receives:
    • $1,800/month from Social Security
    • $1,700/month from an inflation-adjusted pension
  • Katie:
    • Working full-time as a paramedic; earns $62,000/year (no bonuses)
    • Contributes 24% to workplace retirement (split between traditional and Roth 403b), employer matches 3%
    • Maintains a personal Roth IRA and an old retirement account
• Savings:
  • 403(b): ~$208,000 (split between traditional and Roth)
  • Old retirement account: $30,000
  • Personal Roth IRA: $139,000
  • Emergency fund: $69,000
  • Brokerage account: $199,000
  • Money market account (car fund): $30,000
  • Checking account: $18,000
• Spending & Lifestyle:
  • Monthly bills: ~$2,500
  • No credit card debt
  • Vacations and upcoming education ($15k-$20k) are cash-flowed, not financed

3. Jill's Analysis & Advice: Giving Permission to Spend (13:44-17:46)

• Primary Insight: Katie is a diligent saver but struggles emotionally to spend her savings, fearing loss or making a mistake.
• Key Advice:
  • Directly use the brokerage account to fund part/all of the garage.
    • Consider spreading withdrawals across tax years to minimize capital gains tax in any one year.
    • No need to reduce retirement contributions or touch emergency/car funds.
  • Jill’s Permission: “There should be zero hesitation on this garage. ... I’m going to give you permission to spend it.”
• Jill’s Encouragement to Savers: Many callers like Katie have difficulty shifting from saving to spending, but it’s both reasonable and beneficial to use accumulated funds for planned improvements or pleasures.

Memorable Quotes:

• Jill to Katie:
  • “You cannot — but you seem to not want to give yourself permission to spend it. And I think you can. I’m going to give you permission to spend it.” (14:24)
  • “If you were looking at, like, I don’t know when you really want to retire ... you’ll have plenty of money. You guys don’t spend a lot of money, so go ahead and get your garage and enjoy yourself.” (15:41)

4. Other Considerations Discussed (18:08-19:00)

• Family: Two adult children between them; one still lives with them.
• Estate planning: No wills or estate documents yet; Jill strongly recommends getting this in order.

Jill’s To-Do List for Katie:

• Draft estate documents (wills, directives, etc.).
• Move forward with the garage—“You will never be wet again. 2027, there will be no rain on your parade, Katie.” (19:00)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On hospital system inefficiency (off-topic but memorable rant):
  • “It was like being held hostage by a hospital. … There’s something really wrong with the system that makes an 86 year old lady wait.” – Jill (05:36-06:57)
• On saver’s psychology:
  • “We actually have to do something with all that saving because you want to have, like, some fun or you want to build something… Mark and I are very happy to help you spend some of that money.” – Jill (17:00)

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Important Timestamps

• [07:39] Introduction of Katie’s scenario: building a garage
• [08:08–12:23] Full financial picture and retirement savings breakdown
• [13:44] Jill’s assessment of spending psychology and practical advice begins
• [14:24] Jill officially “gives permission to spend”
• [17:00] Exploration of why savers struggle with spending
• [18:08] Discussion of family and estate planning needs
• [19:00] Final encouragement and episode wrap-up

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Tone & Language

• Jill remains upbeat, supportive, reassuring, and a little playful, especially around the topic of helping savers let go and enjoy the fruits of their labor. She jokes about “giving permission to spend,” but her financial advice is diligent, systematic, and practical.

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Summary Takeaways

• If you’ve been disciplined about saving and investing, it’s okay to use some of your accumulated assets for meaningful life upgrades—especially if you’ve carefully planned, are debt-free, and still well-positioned for retirement.
• Don’t diminish retirement account contributions for one-off expenses if you have other liquid assets.
• Plan for taxes strategically when making large brokerage withdrawals.
• Don’t let psychological barriers prevent you from enjoying your wealth.
• Get your estate documents in order sooner rather than later.

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For more episodes or to submit your own question, visit jillonmoney.com.

Transcript

[A]

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[B]

welcome to the Jill On Money Show. It's Monday, June 15th and we are here answering your financial questions. We're also here to help you navigate this wild world of technological advances, of changes in the labor market, in the economy, and help you make sense of it all. So if you've got a question, all you need to do is go to our website. That's jillonmoney.com right there at that website in the upper right hand corner, there is always a Contact Us button. Click the Contact Us button. Let us know if you would be willing to come on the air live by checking the box and then Mark will do everything else. Now, while you're on the website, I would encourage you to do a few things. Number one, always you must subscribe to the free weekly newsletter that comes out on Fridays. But I also have to point out that we have a wonderful, wonderful guest for Jill on Money Live. If you don't know what Jill on Money Live is, that is our subscription service. It's 45 bucks for the next 12 months. And for $45, you can participate in four live webinars. And the next webinar, the upcoming one, is in two days. Just two days. It's Wednesday, June 17th. That is two days from now. And we are focusing on Social Security. Anybody who has a Social Security question, anybody who is nearing Social Security age, even if you are, well, like you're decades away from Social Security. Do you want a better idea of how the works? Join us for this webinar in two days. The Social Security expert, Heather Schreiber is essentially like a not. It's almost like she has an amazing amount of knowledge. She is able to kind of parse through any question you might have. So you've got to be a member of Jill on Money Live to be able to participate. If you're just interested in the topic and you want to buy the webinar once it has concluded, that'll cost you 15 bucks. Again, you don't get to join us Live, which is more fun. And of course, we always encourage everybody to just be part of the process. Send us questions in advance. It's such a. It's going to be a great one. Okay, before we go to our wonderful listener who's going to join us, I just want to tell you my mom made a little visit into the hospital. You know, whatever. She's fine. Okay, so let me just start by. My mother was in the hospital for two days. She's completely fine. However, the hospital, it was like being held hostage by a hospital. We go in, my sister goes up, goes hangs out with her, everything. And they say, you know what? We really want you to have these big, these tests done. So I go up the next morning, like, my mom has to go stay overnight in the hospital. I go up there. I get there at like 11 o' clock in the morning and she's. My mother looks fine. She's sitting up, she's fine. She's walking around. She's like hanging out with the doctors and the nurses and they say, well, you know, we had this test, we have to wait for the, the guy to read the results. So again, she's in the bed, she's in the room by 10:15. Okay, guess what time the results were read and we were released?

[C]

4ish.

[B]

Try 6pm that was close. I almost blew my brains out. And I also, by the way, and my mother and I just, I sent my sister home. I'm like. Because my sister did the, like, she always does more of the work anyway. So I'm like, go home, I'll stay here. I did a conference call, I did a zoom, I did a this, I did all this stuff. And I'm like, I cannot believe this. My sister sends me a text. She goes, isn't this something that like we can feed into Claude and Claude can tell us if she's good or not? But I mean, it's almost like you knew she was fine. Now I say to them at around 3 o', clock, I said, screw this, we're out of here. So I say to the nurse, we're going to leave against medical advice. She goes, well, if you do that, your insurance can deny the whole claim. And my mother said, how much could that be? My mother was literally about to say, two grand. I'll do it. They're like, could be $10,000 just based on everything that's just happened. My mother's like, well, I think we'll wait. Held hostage by White Plains Hospital, ladies and gentlemen.

[C]

I was about to ask, were you in the city or not?

[B]

No. Could you imagine? And my mother's like, oh, I should have gone to nyu. I'm like, oh my God, then I would have been in that. Then we would have been in the ER forever. Forget it. So there's something really wrong with the system that makes an 86 year old lady wait.

[C]

Well, it's, it's like the pit. All those people waiting in the, the waiting room. It's like the pit.

[B]

Yes, exactly. It is the pit come to life. Anyway, that is my experience. And Bridget, who was our nurse there, incredible. She was amazing. She was the one who was fantastic. Okay, enough of my rant. That's my rant. Anyone else can write in with their rants, their medical rants. It just, it, it really did feel like we were Being held hostage. And thankfully Mom's great. So don't worry, Mom's fine. I guess that if my mother were like dying in there, I would have been. Would have been a different feeling. But she was up. We were walking around. Let's go get a sandwich. You know, like it, but it was unbelievable. Okay, now today, Mark, we are joined by Ms. Katie from Virginia. Katie, I hope you've never had a bad medical experience. What's going on? How can we help you out?

[D]

Bad medical experiences, not too terrible. So I want to build a garage.

[B]

Okay.

[D]

But I'm not sure how we want to fund it.

[B]

Okay. Do you have a very fancy car that you is going into the garage?

[D]

No, I don't.

[B]

Just want to make sure I knew what I was dealing with. So tell us what's going on. Who you are? You married? You single? The age. Give us a little bit of your, your backstory.

[D]

So I'm 48 years old, married 10 years to my husband. He's retirement age. He's 66.

[B]

Oh, wait a minute. Okay, is he, is he already retired?

[D]

He is already retired.

[B]

Is he collecting Social Security yet or not? He is. What, what is that amount?

[D]

It's about 1800.

[B]

Okay, and you're still working full time?

[D]

I am still working full time. He's also got a, a retirement that he gets about, I think about 1700 from.

[B]

Oh, you mean like a pension or an actual. Okay, got it. Perfect. Perfect. Is that pension inflation adjusted every year or is it just the same amount

[D]

no matter what it is inflation adjusted.

[B]

Fantastic. Okay, now let's go to you. How much are you earning now?

[D]

So base is a, around 62, 62, 000 a year.

[B]

And you get bonuses?

[D]

No, we don't get bonuses. I'm a paramedic on an ambulance, so.

[B]

Oh.

[D]

I make a normal salary for normal people.

[B]

And as a paramedic, is there any, like, I don't know anything about, like where you are, but are you working for a system where you might be entitled to a pension or is that not available?

[D]

So I work in a hospital based system and I do contribute to a 403B. They also contribute a small amount and most years they can contribute an additional 2% of my salary.

[B]

Okay, how much is in the 403B right now?

[D]

In the 403B right now, there's approximately 208,000.

[B]

Great, that's fantastic.

[D]

And that's split up between the traditional 403 and a Roth 403B.

[B]

What's the split about?

[D]

I put 17% 18% in the 403B and the remainder into the Roth 403, for a total of 24%.

[B]

Wow, that's a big chunk of money. That's great. Good for you. So, okay, now, next question for you. Is that your main. Your. I'll get to him in a second. Your main source of savings, do you have other money, like an old retirement account or a brokerage or anything like that?

[D]

So I do have an old retirement account. It's got about. About 30,000 in it. I just never moved it over. It actually does better where it is than my current. Okay, so I didn't see any point in moving it yet. I also have a Roth that I fund personally with the max each year. It's got about 139 in it.

[B]

So you're doing 24% in the other thing and also the Roth. That's great.

[D]

Correct. And then my employer also contributes 3%.

[B]

Amazing. That's great. And what about your husband? He has this pension. Does he also have a 401k or a 403b?

[D]

He does not.

[B]

And does he have an old. Any IRA or brokerage, anything like that?

[D]

He does not.

[B]

Okay. And for you guys, safe money in the bank. Boring stuff. What do you got?

[D]

Boring stuff. About 18,000 in checking, which is our first line for emergency funds. Our actual emergency fund is about 69,000. And then I have an investment account that has about 199,000. And I have a money market account that is like my next car fund, and it's got about 30,000.

[B]

Okay. All right. But that's what we're going to need. When do you need a new car, you think?

[D]

Well, I currently drive an old truck, a 1998 truck, and my car is a 2014, so I don't know.

[B]

Could be any day. Could be any day. We don't know.

[D]

Maybe.

[B]

Right. Okay. Now let's talk about the house, because we're going to thinking about this garage. So what's the house worth?

[D]

I don't know. Maybe 350.

[B]

Is there a mortgage remaining?

[D]

No mortgage paid off.

[B]

And how much will the garage cost?

[D]

I don't know. I'm guessing around 60,000.

[B]

Okay. Is there some. So when you're. So what's the struggle here? You got the money, you have no debt. Right. We've just gone through everything. Correct. And you're going to keep working, right?

[E]

Yes.

[B]

Okay. And from, from your perspective, you're going to. You're going to build this garage, you're going to keep this house. Like things are Good, right?

[D]

Yes.

[B]

And how much do you think you guys spend on a monthly basis? Because you're saving quite a bit of money.

[D]

So we probably spend about $2,500 just on our bills. We do take vacations. We're on vacation now. And we pay for their cash flow. We don't borrow any money for those. We have no credit card debt. I am going back to school in the fall. Um, I'm figuring that's going to cost me about 15 to 20,000, which I'm also intending to cash flow.

[B]

Essentially, you can pay your bills on your. Not. Not just like your. Your husband's Social Security and pension kind of COVID the basic bills. You're saving a ton of money in your salary. So there should be zero hesitation on this garage. Here's my big question to you. So you've got all this money, you've got it saved. You got a brokerage account. Why are we stressing about this? Can't you just, like, sell some stuff, like, I don't know, 30 or 40 grand from the brokerage account? Use some of the money that's in that $69,000 emergency? Can't you just free up some money and build your garage? Why are you stressing?

[D]

I don't know. That's why I'm talking to you.

[B]

Because, I mean, there should be no stress. Well, because you're such an incredible saver. That's why. I mean, that's really why you are saving so much money. You cannot. But you seem to not want to give yourself permission to spend it. And I think you can get. I'm going to give you permission to spend it. So in that brokerage account, right, that 199 grand that's in there, I presume there's a lot of stuff that's in there that you have made money in, Right. You've got some capital gains, is that right?

[D]

Yes.

[B]

So why not just sell some of that and maybe. And when will the timing of this for the 60,000, like, when do we have to have. If you decided today? Yes, I give myself permission for the garage. When do we need the money by? Like, immediately or what?

[D]

No, I would say I haven't even started the process. My first goal, I'm a planner, so my first thought was to figure out how I'm going to pay for it before I start into the process. So we're looking for probably another four to six months.

[B]

Okay. So what I would say is this. I would look at my brokerage account and I might take some of the money out right now, Right now, and just say, let me just free up, like, half of this money so I have it that way, you know, even if you have. And you can just put it into that account where you have that $69,000, if you had 100 grand in there before the end of the year, you have that ready to go, you can pay for this. And then at the, at either. At the. Maybe the beginning of next year, you take a little bit more out of the brokerage account, you pay the tax that'll be due. You just, you're. I'm just splitting up the tax hit from, you know, from this year and then also next year. And. And then you've got a garage, and you should not sweat this because you're saving a ton of money. You make a ton of money. And even just looking ahead, honestly, Katie, if you were looking at, like, I don't know when you really want to retire, how long you can do this, because I know that that's a. You're in a tough business, if you will, and if you said, you know, I want to kind of be done sooner rather than later, you'll have plenty of money. You guys don't spend a lot of money, so go ahead and get your garage and enjoy yourself. Mark, don't you agree that Katie can build her garage and be happy?

[C]

Absolutely. I mean, as I was listening, listening to her rattle off the assets, as soon as we got to the 200,000 in the brokerage account, it was like, ding, ding, ding, There you go. I know she was thinking about basically pulling back on her retirement contributions at work.

[B]

No, no.

[C]

But no, now that you have the brokerage account, there's no need. That's what it's there for.

[B]

Oh, my gosh. Mark and I always struggle with this question, Katie, because so many of you guys out there who have been such good savers, you tend to want to really keep saving and saving and saving and saving. And then it comes to the moment where we actually have to do something with all that saving because you want to have, like, some fun or you want to build something and it's a garage or an addition, you know, Katie, I think you should do this. I mean, you can be planning for it. It's, you know, you got. If you want to do it, you know, maybe by the end of the year, at least get the game plan together. But I would. I would just not look back and just tell me what's going to happen in that garage. Are there going to be a. Is there going to be A car in that garage. It's going to be a gym. Are you going to tell to your husband, like, get your crap out of the house and go into the garage. What's happening in the garage?

[C]

Or an in law?

[B]

Oh, my God. Is there an in law?

[D]

No in laws. No.

[B]

What's happening in the garage?

[D]

I just want to be able to park my car there. So there's.

[B]

Currently you are entitled to park your car in your garage. Go build your garage.

[D]

I want a dry place that. That I can go and get in my car or a not place that I can go and get in my car.

[B]

All right, so listen, I think that you guys are in great shape now. Do you. Can I ask some other questions? So do you have like kids or grown kids or kids? You have kids from another marriage? You have kids from another marriage. What's going on on that front?

[D]

We have kids. They're both adults. Mine is still living with us. His is often got his own life.

[B]

Great. And. And so then that's fine. And do you guys have your estate documents like wills and everybody know what's going where and who's pulling the plug, etc.

[D]

Oh, we know what's going where. No, we don't have our documents. We do need to get those.

[B]

All right, let's get that done. I would say this. Let's do two things. Get the documents, get in touch with somebody. Just draft some documents, and then get yourself ready to build your garage because you will never be wet again. 2027. There will be no rain on your parade, Katie. So go forth and build it and let us know how it goes. And you can take a picture of it once it's done because I always like to see the fruits of our conversations. So, gang, if you're sitting there with the money and saving and investing and you've been so diligent and you need some help giving yourself permission to use it, please get in touch with us. I just think these are the issues that I want people to kind of get through, you know, And I know it's hard. I know that there are a lot of you out there who have been conditioned to be great accumulates. Mark and I are very happy to help you spend some of that money. And so please get in touch with us. If you're having a hard time with that, go to jillonmoney.com, click the contact us button, write us a note. And if you'd like to join us on the air live, just check the box, Mark. We'll do everything else. Don't forget, you can subscribe to us on the Odyssey app or wherever you find your favorite podcast. Please try to lift someone up. Change your work, change your wealth, change your life. Thank you for listening and we'll talk to you tomorrow.

[E]

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