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We Screwed Ourselves Building a Garage — 4 Lessons It Taught Us
Maybe a carport next time…
A 2-car garage with a loft was one thing our current home lacked and we were keen on building one. We had cashed in on the real estate craze that swept the United States in 2021, so we had the cash on hand in 2023 to do the project.
My wife had just retired with a small pension and I had a part-time project management consulting gig that paid the bills. We had no debt, so financially, we were in a good place.
After consulting with multiple builders we finally hired one to construct the garage for $185,000.
We were a few months into the project and I began to feel uneasy — this was a lot of money. Our financial planner earlier in the year showed us he had built the garage into our financial plan, so we didn’t need to worry.
After reminiscing about the completed project we realized that building the garage was an opportunity cost for us that would impact several areas in our lives.
“We need the ability to regret our poor decisions — to feel bad about them — precisely so we can improve those decisions in the future.” — Dan Pink
It eliminated some of the choices that we could have had open to us before we decided to build.
