Luckily it was known trusted contractors that were super honest and wanted any future work I could toss at them, so it wasn’t an issue.
This is a common sentiment, and even expressed by others when this thread first started. And this "sounds good on paper" and fits with what people want to assume about their project: good guy, I trust him, gonna be perfect work, gonna finish on time, etc. This is what people assume, and have a right to, because this is what they desperately want to believe. And they might have even bothered to get a reference that proves that's how their guy has performed in the past. But here's the rub:
No construction project goes perfectly, and some go south quite badly, and of those, many went south through no fault of their "great guy, great reputation" builder. Maybe he gets in an accident and can't work. Maybe there is a massive shift in the labor force and he can't get any subs to work. Maybe a pandemic destroys the supply chain and causes massive inflation that impacts your project (sound familiar)? Maybe the guy's wife asks for a very expensive divorce right before your plaster goes in, or his kid gets sick. Maybe he pours someone else's pool with a bad batch of gunite, and now has to "make up for it" somehow. Any number of things can happen that would plummet your builder into insolvency, or bankruptcy, and if it's between
his financial wellbeing and
yours, how do you think that's going to play out?
Maybe you get a crooked builder, maybe he's the most honest person alive, but there are just too many things that can go wrong in a long, complicated, expensive build for you to gamble your hard-earned savings that's it's all gonna work out fine. The only way to partially protect yourself from these scenarios is to make sure, contractually, that the actual value of your build, at any point in time, always equals or exceeds the money you've paid. Which means you pay for materials
after they are on site. You pay for a progress step
after it's been completed, and you make your final payment
after the job is done. Otherwise, you're just gambling with your money, but a gamble in which you can only break even or lose, not win anything. Not even Vegas is that risky!
As pointed out, if a builder won't agree to that, he is telling you in no uncertain terms that he does not have enough cash on hand to float the cost of materials or labor, even for a few weeks. He has no savings. He has no credit. He's not very good with his own money, so you can assume he won't be with yours. And/or he's not particularly confident that his product will satisfy you. That is not a sustainable business model, prone to failure. Do you really want to get into a five- or six-figure business deal with a stranger that just told you that?
I'm sure they love hearing from me. 
