I tend to save the most money by being able to do my own stuff up to code. 

Start small and make your mistakes then.Don’ttrust me.

In that case you might save taxes building with them.

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Hey everyone, I’m just curious if any of you have any good links to blogs about saving money on food costs for a family.

Gentrification starts with racism.  

One way to save some money, especially if you are local is to split the job. 

The increased cash flow would make such a substantial difference in your daily life that not paying it off would be foolish.Outside of that, I can't see many reasons I would take a 15% tax hit to save 4% on a mortgage, which is really only effectively about 3-3.5% depending on your tax bracket.

Hiring someone to do the work will likely cost too much (I would charge a small fortune, it's an incredible amount of work) and doing things as cheaply as possible will bite you in the *** later when you start having issues with your own shoddy work and/or materials.