>>the contribution from a stay at home spouse>> This is OT, but my post deserves a bit more explanation: Ah, but you see, in my example, it isn't so clear-cut. He has TURNED DOWN lucrative job offers even as two of the three daughters are now out of the house. He holds twelve high-tech patents that are extremely valuable, but only if one is willing to sue some big companies. And he refuses to do that, because (of course) it would drain their current finances severely. His stated reason is "I'm going to leave them to the kids." He was formerly an extremely successful sales rep for a large medical equipment firm, making six figures. His wife, in contrast, has struggled with a killer commute - two hours each way - and only in the last two years has made it to the six-figure mark as an administrator. Her job prospects were never as good as his. He originally left his job to start a new company which failed, and he spent years and $$$ trying to get his original three patents back. That effort didn't succeed, but he did retain the rights to any future patents, which he's taken advantage of.

Well, that is a lot of money to put into a house (200-250k into a house worth 340k is a huge percentage on a remodel). If you sold the house for $300k and added $250k, you'd be at $550k. Have you looked at what is on the market for $550-$600k? I say this as someone who put $110k of renovation into a house worth $350k. We paid cash for the work, and before we did that we spent about a year looking for something else to buy (even looked at tear downs to just start over). In our market we could have gotten a bigger house or a better town, but couldn't find what we wanted (and wound up creating). We wanted a ~2000 sq ft house that was updated and on a good sized lot in our current town (low property taxes). In our case, low housing inventory worked against us. So we stayed here (great lot, easy commuting location) and updated this house. But by the numbers, it was a bad choice. We refinanced afterwards because the rates dropped so much and our $110k renovation only added $75k in value (so now the house is worth $425k). Honestly, I was surprised it added that much. I knew it was a money losing game from the get-go. So my advice is, unless you are also in a market where land is scarce and most of the housing stock is dated and in need of repair ... You will probably wind up ahead if you sell the inherited house and buy something else. The only other exception is if you are a meddler by nature and would have a hard time NOT changing a house. I am a meddler, and I admit it. It sounds sick (and probably is in some psychiatric diagnosis manual somewhere) but I actually enjoy home improvement, I lived in a new house once and hated it. I think of it as helping my house "reach its potential" (God, how I hated hearing that phrase used on me in school). So, if you have a similar sickness then either get cured or start saving money to do the renovations in cash. If you live in the house rent-free, you can save a ton of money each month and accumulate enough to tackle a big project each year. Best of luck to you!

We just start and try to pay as we go. We're 90% DIY'ers too. Our bathroom remodel is at 6 months and counting. We've purchased the windows, electrical and rough plumbing... We've got the toilet, sink, tub, faucets and lighting. We've done the structural repairs. We're saving money for the shower completion and flooring. If you can't do that, I'd consider a refinance for 30 years within the net couple months. Sounds like you've got the equity. There is money out there for homes with value. The problem right now is many homes have lost so much in value that banks won't loan on them. We may be the lucky ones and timing might be right to jump on something. We just saw the other "twin" house like ours in town listed this month for $775,000. That made us very happy campers, indeed. We bought it for $154,000 almost 20 years ago and have dumped almost every spare cent we get back into it. This places us in a good situation for this horrific economy. We're thinking about refinancing. We're getting calls almost every day because we have good credit and equity. They want to loan us money. Here is a link that might be useful: Our House Photo Album

100% HELOC for us - I got a great rate 3.2% and paid off our 2nd with it. It would have taken me too long to save up for it, and especially with prices always rising, it would have cost me more in the future too. We bought our house in 1993, so even with the HELOC and current values, our LTV ratio is 40% (and that's not taking into account that the recent comps are 75k over my current value). If something were to happen to us financially and we had to sell our house, we would have had to do something with the kitchen - floors, cabinets, appliances, and counter tops at a minimum. We probably could have done it - leaving the old layout - for ~$20k with DIY. Which means we still would have needed to finance it. Even though our remodel was more of a moderate, I believe we will get closer to the 90% of the cost back in value due to the fact that we opened up our layout, which is very desirable now. We could always borrow against our 401k if we had to pay off the loan, but I plan to retire at 55 - I'll have some debt, but not much and that way maybe we'll be low-income and my kids can get financial aid for college :-) I'm not a "always pay cash" person, but I also do not like having a lot of debt - pay off my cc every month (unless I get 0%), but - doesn't it kill you to see all the people who when way beyond their credit limits, and they are having all their debt written off?