Summer means home improvement. And wildfires.

Rick here. It’s been an eventful week at our house. 

We cut the cord: We finally joined the crowd and ditched basic cable, saving about $100 a month. 

We’re also taking a hard look at streaming services, which have been piling up, and again we’re not alone: More than half of Americans (55%) plan to significantly decrease the number of subscriptions they have in 2026 in order to save money, according to a recent NerdWallet survey, conducted online by The Harris Poll.

So much TV, so little I want to watch.

We’re hiding out from smoke: Summer is, increasingly, wildfire season, and here in the Seattle area it’s smoky right now, with air quality again edging into unhealthy levels. We have the house sealed tight, with air filters running.

But while the smoke blotting our magical Northwest summers is bad, fire is worse, as residents of Spokane in the drier (and hotter) eastern half of the state can attest. A complex of fires in and around the city have destroyed or damaged hundreds of structures, including homes. 

Fires are again raging throughout the drought-parched West this summer, to devastating effect. Below, I’ll dive into what the increasing reach of wildfires and other natural disasters means for homeowners.

We’re painting the house: Summer is also home improvement season. We’re having the exterior painted — and as I write, one of the painters is up on a ladder, taping plastic sheeting to my home office window.

Goodbye, view. See you in a few days.

By the way, do you know how much it costs to paint a house? A lot. And frankly, it’s money I’d rather spend on just about anything else. But maintaining a home is part of the bargain when you own.  

In today’s MoneyNerd, personal finance writer Lauren Schwahn talks to some of our colleagues about their current home projects — how they’re tackling them, and how they’re keeping costs in check. 

Also this week: 

- Lauren Schwahn, personal finance writer

Summer isn’t just for beach trips and barbecues — it’s home improvement season, too. Judging by my Instagram feed, it definitely seems like everyone is ripping out kitchen cabinets or retiling bathrooms. 

Well, everyone except me. My biggest home upgrade this summer? A new sheet set and duvet cover. As a renter, major renovations would require landlord approval. I don’t have the budget for them right now anyway. 

But that doesn’t mean I’m not curious about how other people handle home projects. I asked three members of NerdWallet’s editorial team to share what they’re working on this summer, how they’re keeping costs in check and what they’ve learned along the way. 

Whether you’re planning your own project and could use some guidance or you’re just nosy (like me), read on.  

Sara Rathner, senior writer/spokesperson

📍Location: Richmond, Virginia.

🏡 The project: We're finishing our basement. It's something we always thought about doing, especially after visiting friends with finished basements. They were such useful spaces for kids, entertaining and hanging out. I'm looking forward to my basement looking like a cozy family room instead of a raw, industrial space haunted by a vengeful ghost.

💰 Money saving strategy: Hahahaha it's so expensive. Like laughably expensive. But we're only doing this once, so we want to do it right. Money has no meaning anymore. It's like scooping up a handful of sand and letting it filter out through your fingers.

😮 Something surprising: We interviewed contractors for months. I didn't realize how many would promise to draw up an estimate, only to disappear. Or how many would send us estimates that were missing major parts of the project. If you get an estimate that seems low, go through it line by line.

💡Tip: Take whatever you thought it was going to cost and add another $10,000.

- Rick VanderKnyff, news editor

Natural disasters, including wildfires, have always been part of life. But as the Earth gets warmer (and yes, it’s getting warmer), the danger from wildfires is on the rise. They’re getting bigger, more frequent, and more difficult to contain. 

To date in 2026, U.S. firefighters have responded to more than 45,000 wildfires, which have burned more than 5.5 million acres. As I write this, there are 86 active “large” fires across the country, 44 of them in Oregon and Washington. (Large fires: 100 acres or more in timber, 300 acres or more in rangeland).

And increasingly, wildfires are encroaching on urban landscapes, as we saw last year with the Paradise and Eaton disasters in California, and this summer in Spokane. 

It is not merely a U.S. phenomenon, of course, as the recent catastrophes in Spain and France showed. And it’s not merely theoretical. “A World Ablaze: The Climate Future We Feared is Here” is the headline on an article this week from the Union of Concerned Scientists. 

The insurance industry — on the hook to cover losses from floods, hurricanes and other storms as well as fires — is certainly taking notice (even if policymakers aren’t) and raising prices. First Street Foundation, a nonprofit research and technology group that models property-level climate risk data, reported last year that climate change is reshaping the U.S. housing market in two significant ways. 

One is the skyrocketing cost of homeowners insurance, which is rising faster than home appreciation. First Street data shows that insurance premiums accounted for 23% of average mortgage costs in 2025, up from 7%-8% historically. The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas estimates that 203,000 mortgages per year could fall into delinquency from 2025 to 2055 because of higher premium costs.

The second factor cited by First Street is climate change triggering shifts in consumer preferences, which is borne out by a November 2025 NerdWallet survey conducted online by The Harris Poll.

Of Americans who plan to buy a home in the next five years, the poll found, 30% say they’ll take the likelihood of serious weather events or natural disasters into account when choosing where to buy a home. 

The survey also found that 15% of nonhomeowners say the costs and difficulties associated with securing homeowners insurance — which is due in part to climate-related risk — is preventing them from buying a home at this time. 

Is climate change real? It’s real enough to affect your finances, whether you live in a danger zone or not. NerdWallet has lots of resources covering all aspects of both home insurance and coping with natural disasters. Here are two:

- Alex Rosenberg, insurance writer

It’s a Nerdy kind of treat when I can put my money where my mouth is. So when I was working on a big data analysis piece about saving money on car insurance, I had to give it a try.

It took me less than two minutes to log on to my insurance company’s website, bump up my auto insurance deductibles, and get the confirmation that my bill went down about 21%. (Yes, I timed it.)

The hardest part was remembering my password.

But here’s the thing: Because my premiums were already pretty low, I’m one of the worst candidates to save money this way. Folks with higher premiums can potentially save a whole lot more, according to my analysis of NerdWallet’s gigantic piles of rate and deductible data.

It’s not free money. You might actually need to pay that higher deductible amount, so it wouldn’t be a bad idea to put the savings away to cover the difference.

I put together a calculator to help you see what you might save. And you can take the same approach with homeowners insurance, so I built another calculator for that, too.

Your mileage (sorry, the pun was right there) may vary, so take a look and see what you might save and how long it’d take to break even.

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In the news segment of this week's Smart Money podcast, senior news writer Anna Helhoski talks to Aaron Klein, a senior fellow at the Center on Regulation and Markets at the Brookings Institution, about what comes next for prediction markets. 

Watch below.

For the full episode:

The stock market can be rising while your own finances still feel squeezed. Watch below to find out why the market isn't the right way to measure your own financial health.

Your MoneyNerd team: Courtney Neidel, Anna Helhoski, Rick VanderKnyff and Lauren Schwahn.

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