Got a quote from a local trusted contractor of $4000 for a new furnace + install. The contractor is not a big box company, so they don't offer fancy in-house financing or anything. The most they can offer is paying half before the install, then paying half when the install is finished. But that's only a week or two timespan just for the furnace to be ordered and such.

I have $24,000 in savings currently. It would take a significant amount of time to "rebuild" the savings lost if I paid cash. (I can typically save anywhere between 300-800 dollars a month depending on how often emergency situations come up and utility bill usage.…