Home Repair Blues

In the South Florida summer, the relaxing sounds you fall asleep to in the summer are not the chirping of crickets and the hooting of owls, but rather the whir of your air conditioning window unit that is just loud enough to reduce the honking of the car horns of impatient drivers, the barking of neighborhood dogs, and the ranting of your belligerent neighbors to background noise. If your AC has been getting progressively louder as the summer has gone on, all the better. The world has gotten louder, too, from the rage bait videos that your family members play all night, apparently unaware that earbuds exist or unable to afford them, to the financial worries that keep you awake, no matter how tired you are from working all day to pay them down. Suddenly, your AC goes silent, and the room fills with stifling heat. This is the worst time for your AC to break. Waiting until next summer to fix it is out of the question; there are no times of year in South Florida when you do not need AC. Your financial situation was also dire even before your AC went kaput, so what do you do? If your finances are in disarray because of an emergency home repair expense, contact a Boca Raton debt lawyer.

Think Before You HELOC

The news that most of us cannot afford home repairs without borrowing is not new; journalists have been lamenting about it since before the earliest days of the pandemic lockdown. In fact, if you made home repairs in 2020, the debt is probably still following you around. Home repair expenses are the hidden downside of home ownership.

When homeowners make major repairs, they often take out a home equity line of credit (HELOC) to do this. The trouble is that a HELOC is a revolving line of credit, so you can keep charging purchases on it, as funds become available after you make payments on your home repair bills. In other words, HELOCs carry the same risks as credit cards, namely, they give you access to thousands of dollars in credit. Like the proverbial frog in the pot of boiling water, you might not realize until it is too late that you have used up all your credit, and the minimum payments are more than you can afford. The bigger risk of HELOCs is that, unlike credit cards, they are tied to your home equity, so while they will not single-handedly cause you to lose your house, they can be one domino that falls in that direction.

How to Pay for Home Repairs When You Are Flat Broke

If you cannot charge a home repair on your credit card, you should set up an installment plan with the contracting company. Likewise, if you qualify for a debt consolidation loan, you can use some of it for the home repairs and the rest to pay off other debts.

Work With a Debt Lawyer About Coping With the Financial Fallout of Home Repairs

A South Florida debt lawyer can help you if the debt you incurred to make emergency home repairs is still following you around.  Contact Nowack & Olson, PLLC in Boca Raton, Florida to discuss your case.

Source:

cnbc.com/2024/09/20/400-to-change-a-lightbulb-appliance-repair-costs-are-no-joke.html