Tuesday, August 18, 2009

One reason why I'm cash poor...

Over the past month, I've repainted part of my basement and "installed" a kick-ass home theater screen from Carada. Installed is in quotes because I couldn't find any studs in the wall so I just put the screen on top of some wooden boxes I made with the help of a friend.

Here is what the basement looked like before:
The ivy wallpaper is pretty funky and took a long ass time to take down.
Here is what that part of the basement looks like now:
I got a Panasonic PT-A3000U 1080p projector and it's frickin' bad ass with a Blu-ray movie up. It's pretty much like being in the theater except there are wires running everywhere. I got some 12 gauge speaker wire from Monoprice, but my receiver can't accept 12 gauge for some of the speaker inputs. If I ever save up some money, I'll get a new receiver and put the current one upstairs. I'd like to eventually get some theater seats and then build a riser for a second row so that lots of people can pimp a movie.

Today I ran some calculations to see how to maximize my cash. I need to put money in my 401k to reduce my AGI to get more of the $8k housing credit, but it turns out that I'll get more cash overall by putting less in. I'll have less money overall because I would get both the 401k money (eventually) and the housing credit, but I need cash since I'll have to start making mortgage payments. I'd also like to save up some emergency money as well.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

that is one sweet home theatre system. Your basement seems to be bigger than my entire apartment :p

Jeremy said...

Some components are hidden around the corner so you can't see everything.

The finished portion of the basement is probably 400-500 sq feet. The rest of the basement - the workshop and storage area - is probably another 1500-2000 sq feet. The basement is as big as the rest of the house.

It's bone dry and cold down there so it's a great place to go on a hot day, but I'm not sure what to do when winter comes. I might need to get a space heater or two.