Old Lady Makes Her First Moves

First in my Five Year Plan was to increase my sources of income: rent a room in my house and apply for early Social Security. Once I could show fair income, then I could apply for a HELOC to finance additional repairs and improvements. I've been renting a room since August 2015, and I started Social Security mid-2016. Those together bring in a fair amount of revenues, but the actual room rental income is less than its revenues, since a portion of home repairs, maintenance and costs can be used to offset revenues. Little caveat: while it's nice to have the extra income to help pay for the repairs and all, when you have a renter, you actually find yourself making repairs you wouldn't otherwise be making if it were just you in the house (e.g., installing window AC unit, securing door locks, paying for professional stupid bug spraying, etc.), plus the renter himself might cause extra work (e.g., crack in the bathroom sink, grrr).

After my retirement income started, I applied for the HELOC. I got less than I wanted because, to my surprise, the bank did not count my rental income or revenues at all! They only count rental income when you rent out a whole house, not when you rent out a room. Because, reasons.

So, since I used the last of Jeanette's gift to overpay the roofing contractor, I have used about $6,000 from the HELOC, plus more from my small income, to replace an aging hot water tank (I went tankless, and I love it) and to finally repair the central AC. I was also rolled by an AC repair company back when the AC first broke down maybe five years ago -- $1,000 for nothing. John's AC repair friend also thought he had repaired the unit, for another $250, but it never gave much air, and even that didn't last more than a few weeks. I decided to give it one last try with this new person who was highly recommended on Nextdoor and Yelp.

Dave was very knowledgeable and experienced, and he did fix the system for $1050. It has since weathered four months of San Fernando Valley summer heat, including our most recent more-than-a-week-long, triple-digit heat wave, hooray! I still have the window AC units I installed after the first AC guy burned me, but that's because I like to turn off the central AC at night, so I don't have to AC the whole house to keep my bedroom cool at night, and so renter guy can control his own thermal destiny. The two projects together cost about $3,000, but I got around $500 back from the tankless, due to energy efficiency tax credits and rebates.