The Benefits of Planning Ahead—Why Being Organised Saves You $$$ with Sarah Schaeffer

Jaimi: Welcome to Home Building Like a Boss, the podcast dedicated to helping first home buyers in Perth build their dream home with ease and excitement. I’m Jamie, your host and go to building broker. Are you ready to feel empowered, in control and excited about your building journey? I’ll help guide you with expert advice, insider tips and tricks and real life stories to help you navigate the confusing world of home building.

Let’s get started. Tune in as I take you on the journey to building your home like a boss.

Hello, and welcome back to another episode of the podcast this week. I am super excited to have Sarah with me from Compass Home and Lifestyle. Sarah and I have been working together for a little while now. I think I. Purchase the Sarah’s planners and offer them to my clients as a part of the service. So they’re all organized and prepared for their build and they absolutely love the plan.

And so I think it’s just such a beautiful collaboration that we have together. And I’m so lucky that we found each other because it, yeah, it’s just so great to be able to. Offer that to my clients and I really love it to help them keep organized. So I’ll give you a little info about Sarah. She is the creator of the co home and planner.

Like I mentioned, Australia’s favorite build folder, her business compass, home and lifestyle exists to help people find confidence and clarity, ensuring they build a home that will change their future lives. Thank you so much for joining me, Sarah. 

Sarah Schaeffer: Yeah, I’m excited to be here and connect with you, Jamie.

Like you said, we connected early on and excited to connect on this level too. Yeah, 

Jaimi: thank you. Would you be able to, yeah, do a little intro yourself and give people the rundown on what you do and how you help them and a bit about your planner and business? 

Sarah Schaeffer: Yeah, for sure. I guess my business has sort of been a collaboration of my professional and personal experience to date.

I’ve built three times and renovated twice. Um, my husband works in the construction industry has for 25 years. Um, and I used to work in small business consulting. So helping people think about their business and where they’re going and how to make it grow. So yeah, this business was birthed out of sort of my experience with building and seeing so many people build homes and then they move into them and it hasn’t actually improved their life, hasn’t actually improved their lives, but it’s created more challenges for them or they’ve been frustrated or it’s affected their relationships within that house.

So I really want to help people build homes that change their lives for the better. So I’m sort of bringing in a bit of that business coaching experience I have and then building and I’m studying interior design. It’s sort of all meshing in together and, um, yeah, something I’m really passionate about.

Yeah. Awesome. Cool. 

Jaimi: And yeah, I love how you kind of using everything all in together to help people build their homes. And yeah, it’s so important to build a house that is actually for your lifestyle and what you need and longterm as well, depending whatever that is. Would you be able to tell us a little bit about your building planner and how the planner helps people keep organized and prepared for their build?

Yes. 

Sarah Schaeffer: So the building planner came out of, I am a planner in my life, like just generally, I truly believe I’ve got three children and a home and my husband works long hours and I run a business. We do lots of things. Is so important on so many levels. So when it comes to building a home, I think sometimes people don’t realize you’re throwing like a whole nother massive project on top of an usually an already normal life, right?

So you’ve got your life, but then you’ve got this build and it’s so important to be organized because it’s a whole new. sort of thing that you’re discovering. There’s no like, okay, we’re going to like train for this for a year and then we’re going to do this thing. You’re just grown in, right? You’re not taught at 

Jaimi: school.

It’s just like kind of wing it and see how you go. 

Sarah Schaeffer: Yeah. And it’s so important because the result of this project is going to affect you and your family for years and years to come. So I created the planner based on my build experience and my passion for organization, just to help people have a place where they can really organize their thoughts and their paperwork and their samples.

And as they progress through their build journey, they can cull that and keep it sort of really up to date with their, you know, decisions and, and how they’re moving forward. So it gives them a bit of confidence, a place to keep everything. I find that when I’m organized and everything’s in one place, You just feel a bit more like you’re on top of it.

Um, so it’s a, um, a lot of it is digital today. You know, everyone’s on Pinterest and they’re saving things in emails, but to have something physical, keep your samples, their samples there, you know, if you’re a very tactile person, it’s just a really handy thing. It’s cool because I created it to help people find confidence and joy and all the feedback I keep getting is that I feel so much more confident.

I’m really enjoying my build. It’s my new best friend. I take it everywhere. So I’m just so, so good that it really is achieving the purpose. Yeah. 

Jaimi: Oh, good. Yeah. And it really does that. Even my clients, like the feedback that I get about the planner and how it helps them and put their paperwork and their documents and their samples.

And it just like really helps them collate it all together and feel confident and organized. So with the planner, I know you also have downloads and stuff that you can buy and purchase as well with that. How do your downloads and your planner go hand in hand to help people as well? 

Sarah Schaeffer: Yeah. So first we started by releasing the planner just for people building.

And since then we’ve sort of expanded the range. We now have a planner, we have the per home planner, and then we have bundles. And there’s a bundle for people specifically that are building. There’s one for people that are renovating and there’s also an interior designer planner. We had a lot of interior designers buying our original planner and sort of taking out the things that weren’t relevant to them just because they thought it was a beautiful planner.

Yeah. So we’ve created these bundles and included in some of the bundles, these printables. Or you can buy them on your own. If you’ve got your own folder, obviously we recommend getting the current planner because it’s so beautiful. It’s got everything else that you need, but these printables are sort of their checklist, there’s a range of different things in the printables.

And it’s a range that we’re constantly expanding. There’s a spend tracker, a supplies list, a build timeline, monthly planner, weekly planner, a checklist for when you move into your home. Lots of fun things. They’ve all been designed aesthetically to match the planner as well, which people seem to really love because you can download some of these checklists or create your own spreadsheets, but you’re building this beautiful home with, you know, with all these beautiful finishes and it’s just nice to have a folder that matches the aesthetic of your build.

Yeah, absolutely. 

Jaimi: And then when it looks nice, you also want to use it more. I find rather than being like, Oh, look at this ugly 

Sarah Schaeffer: spreadsheet. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. How did your 

Jaimi: own building experience? play into this and what things have you learned along the way from your 

Sarah Schaeffer: building experience? Um, some of the things that I have learned, it’s been different every time we’ve built and we built our first home in Newcastle and we split the land and built it out the back of a property that we had renovated for a dual income and later on we sold that property.

The second home we built, we moved to Sydney and we built on the edge of the urban sprawl so it was a brand new estate. Everyone was building around us. We maxed out our budget. I think it was the cheapest house in the suburb. So we really had to choose carefully on what we put into our build. And more recently we built up in Northern New South Wales.

We moved to Kingscliff a few years ago and completely different experience. Again, we had a bigger budget. It was a different location. We moved for Different, you know, for lifestyle reasons. So each time it’s been a completely different experience. And this is why, you know, the co home planner is a part of my business, but the heart of my business is to really help people think about where are we headed in life and how, where do we want to be in the next five to 10 years, not just goals for the sake of like.

Being successful, but what kind of people do we want to be and how do we want to be spending our time? And that the answer to those questions are different for everybody. Yeah. And so everybody’s builds should be different. And so each of our builds were completely different for the season we were in and the goals that we were trying to achieve.

Absolutely. And it is 

Jaimi: why I like

these cookie cutter plans. You can’t just. Put a plan on a block and be like, cool. Yeah, that’s my build. Like, how do you actually want to customize it and live in it and what are your goals and what areas do you need for your life? So, yeah, I think that’s 

Sarah Schaeffer: super important. I think something that people don’t often think about, and again, it’s why I really try and help people think before you even get your head into the build.

Think about who you are and where you’re headed, but then you’ve got to factor in that life changes, and there’s got to be an element of flexibility in your home. Everyone experienced that in the last few years with lockdown, people having to work from home, people losing income, all sorts of things. And suddenly it was like, Oh, so there has to be margin financially, obviously in your lives for whatever may come, but I think your home can be built in a way that’s flexible for change as well.

And so, like, for example, the home we built now, we didn’t just think, oh, we’ve moved here sort of for lifestyle and our kids at this age. We thought, well, what age are they going to be in five years time? My eldest is 19 now and her needs are very different to when we moved here. My son was five, you know.

Yeah. And having that flexibility, so you don’t have to move home again, if you don’t want to, you know, we have a, like parents are aging now and we’re thinking about that, or perhaps if you wanted to work less, do you have a space that you could use, you know, for a rental income, you know, is it external access to that room and a bathroom next door, you know?

So I think it’s important to build the home that you want for now, but create the flexibility within that design. So if, The situation changes, your home can sort of evolve with your family and goals. Yeah, I love 

Jaimi: that. You’ve put that in a really, really good way. Yeah, it’s for now, but you want it to be flexible and to allow that change for your long term from whatever 

Sarah Schaeffer: they might come.

Yeah. What 

Jaimi: tips do you have for people who are looking at building their first home? 

Sarah Schaeffer: Yes. What tips? I feel like we learned a lot in our second build. Our first build was a smaller build. It was a two bedroom at the back of our existing home. We never lived in it. So it was purely sort of, yeah. And to move forward financially for us.

Whereas the second home that we built in Northwestern Sydney, we had to think really carefully. Because we had a limited budget, but it was in an area where people building homes more extravagant than ours. And then we ended up selling three years later and we did well because the market had grown. But our home was, it was well located within the suburbs.

So that was really great, but it just didn’t have the things that all the other homes had. So one of the things we sort of learned from that home, and I’m always telling people is to. If you are on a budget, which usually if it’s your first time, there is some sort of budget. Yeah, absolutely. Put the things in the home that if you needed to sell it, it’s still sort of relative to the homes around it.

Um, because we didn’t have high ceilings in our home and pretty much every other suburb. In every other home in the suburb had high ceilings and we had a few air con units, but we didn’t have ducted air con. So we reflected back and we thought about, we probably should have put our money into the things that are really hard to change later on.

Like you can add a deck later on. You can upgrade your landscaping later on. There’s a whole, you can upgrade your kitchen bench tops pretty easily, you know, from a laminate to a stone. So, but to increase your ceiling height. Can’t do that. Definitely can’t do that. You can do ducted air con usually, but it’s a lot more expensive if you’re not doing it at the point of where the frame is being built.

So I think to really pick and choose the things that are harder to do later on. And then if you stay in the home, you can always upgrade those other things, you know, that aren’t so hard to change later on. So think really mindfully about where you’re going to spend your money in your first home. Yeah, for 

Jaimi: sure.

And yeah, I always tell my clients that with their money and everyone always had a budget. We can always upgrade a million things and we’re over the budget. But what is more important is the structural items. And then you can work on those other upgrades later. Like you can’t add high ceilings, but you can add painting or landscaping or air con or stone bench and those things later that are easier to change to make your money go further in the non structural items 

Sarah Schaeffer: that you can’t change later.

And I think that’s really hard when you’re building in a new estate because you think, yep, okay, we’re just going to do this and we’re going to keep it simple and we’re going to stick to our goals. And then everyone starts building around you. And it’s a little bit like, Oh, we’ve got this dingy little house, but you’ve got to keep your eyes, like you’ve got to keep focusing on what you want and where you’re headed.

So like where Matt and I are at now, we, we love where we live and we’re in a place, but if we didn’t make those decisions back then, and the first time we bought was really rough, you know, and then we slowly built it up. It’s a journey. No one just ends up somewhere. Right. So the first time is never the forever home.

Yeah. Don’t get caught up in everyone else. Keep your eyes on where you’re headed and yeah, just keep moving forward a step at a time. Yeah. Yeah. That’s 

Jaimi: really good way of putting it. How does being prepared and organized affect 

Sarah Schaeffer: your build? So being organized makes sure that you are going to make the right decisions with your build.

It is such a huge investment building a new home, and I’ve seen it happen time and time again. No one really realizes till you get Sort of start going through the process of building your home, how much is involved in that and how many decisions. And it’s kind of like pre build, it’s all exciting. And we’re looking at, you know, what our home’s going to look like and where we’re going to live.

And then it comes to making the decisions. And I remember in our first time sitting down with the electrician and just going, I don’t know, like, where do you, you know, where do you want to be like, where is he supposed to go? Yeah. And suddenly you’re like. Oh, I don’t know. So that pre planning and that organization, and it really is about how you live, even if you just take some time and I’m starting up a webinar, I’ll be releasing a webinar shortly.

I might put, um, if you sign up to our newsletter, I’ll be releasing it through that when we do go offer that for people to come along. So around. Walking through spaces, thinking about your current living situation, you know, when you go to a display home or even just in friends homes, what are the things that like, Oh, that works really well, or that makes my life easier.

And why is that, you know, like a little bit more space in this room, the difference that that makes and starting to really. Think those things through because if you can do that pre build before you’re in the stress of like, okay Now they’re doing the soil tests and all these unknowns come about and your budget’s thrown It’s going to help you then when you go to the electrician to know exactly what you want because it’s not about The lighting and the power points it’s about How you live and all of those things serving the way that you want to live.

But if you haven’t had the time to plan and organize and think about that, then you’re just going to say, well, I don’t know how many PowerPoints do you think I need in that room? And I don’t know how many downlights you have no idea what decisions to make. So being organized pre build sort of sets you up for that next.

stage to sort of keep you focused. But if you get overwhelmed in that decision making part of the build, you just end up going, Oh yeah. Okay. Yeah. Okay. What do you think? And then you move into the home and it really doesn’t work for you. So you have to be organized. You really need to gain clarity around where you’re headed so that each step of the way you’re making the right decisions, how you spending your money, where you’re upgrading and all of those things.

So that organization prebuilt, it’s not just prebuilt, like it’s all the way through, which is why the co home planner. It’s not just like a pre build. It’s not a pre build planner. It’s to keep you focused and on track all the way through, right. Even past, like once you’ve moved into the home, it’s still going to be carrying on.

Right. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. 

Jaimi: Death doesn’t stop when you finish building or you get your keys and you’ve just got a whole nother list that you’ve got to keep working through and moving and yeah. So it’s definitely good. Always organized and prepared 

Sarah Schaeffer: definitely helps. And the more that you can get out of your head, I know like Jamie, you run a business, you know, when it’s in your head, like you’re up at night thinking all the things that are happening.

Like I have a piece of paper on the side of my bed and I’ve got a whole heap of other things that plan my business and life. But just to get those things out of your head is so important. It creates space for you to think creatively because you do need creative space when you’re building a home as well to think about.

How it’s going to work, what you want it to look like, and if your head is so full of clutter about all the decisions you’ve got to make, you don’t have any creative space, so the planner and the downloads and the checklist, all of those things helps you take that out of your head to give you the headspace to breathe and communicate with your partner and communicate with your builder and make sure that you’re just not making these random, chaotic decisions that will end up costing you thousands upon thousands of dollars.

Jaimi: Yes, yeah, very good point. And it is so many people just make these decisions and yeah, they cost. Money to fix later, and I don’t think that’s what 

Sarah Schaeffer: they realize. And I think I love, we both connected over your concept of being, you know, boss, being a boss. And I think, you really do, you don’t need to know everything to be the boss of your build.

Like, I think it’s like, oh, you know, you’re not the expert of your build, but you are. The one who is going to be living in your home when everyone’s gone, when the build is finished, when the interior design is gone, you have to be invested. You have to create space and room in your life to own this build because you can’t put all your trust in your builder.

You can’t put all your trust in your interior designer. You need to know what you want and then utilize their skills and their expertise to help that come about. So I think people do need to step up and say, right, I’m going to take responsibility and being organized and having clear communication and having everything in one place really will help you do that.

Yeah. 

Jaimi: And it just makes the process so smooth for the clients, for the builder, for the building broker, sales rep, everyone involved. The process is just so much smoother. It goes faster and then everyone’s happy because everybody wants 

Sarah Schaeffer: fast timeline. I think that’s why actually we’re selling so many more planners now to builders and designers and they’re gifting them to their clients because it’s actually helping them.

It helps me. Their clients are turning up and it’s like, they’re, they’ve got a new excitement and they’re not sort of loading it all onto them. And they’ve sort of taken a bit more responsibility. And so it’s like a win win. So yeah, a hundred 

Jaimi: percent. And that’s why it helps me and it helps them. So it’s, I feel like it’s a win win for 

Sarah Schaeffer: everyone for sure.

Jaimi: Well, thank you so much, Sarah, for joining me today on this podcast episode. I know we’ve spoken a lot about. Organization and preparing and the planner and how that can help along your building journey. So thank you so much for joining and if anyone wants to download any downloadables or buy the planner, I’ll add the links in the show notes so you can go check it out.

Have a look at Sarah’s. website and Instagram. And yeah, if you have any questions, feel free to DM her. She’ll be more than happy to answer them. But yeah, thank you so much for joining me on the episode today. 

Sarah Schaeffer: Yeah. Thank you so much, Jamie. It’s been great. Thank you. 

Jaimi: Thank you so much for tuning in to the Home Building Like a Boss podcast.

I hope you enjoyed today’s episode and learned something new. Remember, you’ve got this and I’ve got your back. Until next time, stay inspired, stay informed.

I can’t wait to chat with you on the next episode. Don’t forget to check out the show notes for more information and free resources. If you haven’t already hit that subscribe button. So you never miss an episode of the home building like a boss podcast.