Building the home of your dreams is very exciting yet can be overwhelming at times. While you strive to achieve comfort, aesthetics, efficiency, and a solidly constructed home, you must first establish a budget that you can afford. So the house design is crucial in the budgeting and planning stage of your dream home. Research a variety of home plans and generate a list of amenities that are most important to you and your family’s needs sot that your house design will fit your lifestyle as well as be affordable to build. The first place to look at to cut dollars off the top is to look for a house plan that is of more simple design, the more simple the shape and more simple the rooflines, the easier it will be to frame and the truss package will be much easier on your wallet. So simply put, bigger is not always the answer for nice amenities. You can save money by avoiding extra tall ceilings and having tray ceilings built into the truss system for added appeal and build on floor trusses so that your mechanical chases are built to save money on HVAC, plumbing and electrical expenses. Another great wat to save is to design your home for future expansion, build on a basement foundation and leave it unfinished, select a room in attic truss system that can be a future bonus room and these areas can be left unfinished until you have your home loan paid down and you have more equity to work with. It will prove to be much more affordable to build an unfinished area than to add on to your home at a later date. There is no substitute for good planning, the more information that you convey on your home plans, the more potential you will have to save money and have fewer miscommunications with your builder through-out the construction process.