Think. Budget. Price Things.

Recently I was watching this TLC show called Moving Up where three homes are looked at as new people move into each one. On a recent episode a couple won over $600k and was using it on a new home, both buying it and renovating it.

Let's forget for a moment that I live in San Francisco, where nobody could ever buy a house for less than one million dollars, okay? Okay. This specific episode was filmed in PA, so you can get a fancy house for a decent price. This lottery couple sold their old (smaller) house, and then not only bought a bigger one, but made huge changes. Like ripping up part of their backyard to put in a ginormous pool. Like completely redoing the kitchen.

Of course more than halfway through the show the couple starts freaking out, saying they didn't realize that spending $25,000 on a pool would cut into their winnings, and that the changes to the kitchen would cost so much...

How do these things happen? I've never bought nor renovated a home, so I have no idea how people actually do it. But I'm thinking my first question about each change I wanted to make would be, "How much would it cost?" No? Wouldn't you want to price everything out, make sure you can afford it before starting?

Write out each thing you want to do, rank them in order of what's most important to you, write out how much each would cost.

Lastly, I get why people think investing in real estate is a good idea, but how do you win over half a million dollars and not think any of it should be banked? Please educate me since I've never bought real estate nor won the lottery.