How to Save on Home Renovations With Credit Cards

Renovations: Financing

Check if grants are available to increase your home’s energy efficiency and keep track of your renovation budget.

In fact, by joining a contractor’s program, you can also save money on renovations.

Purchasing Materials

And don’t forget to check out the Best Price Guarantee on Home Depot, Home Hardware, Rona and Réno Dépôt for building materials, new countertops or a complete basement renovation. There are savings of up to 10% with some businesses.

Two or three times a year, IKEA has promotions to save 15% on kitchen and/or bathroom purchases, plus get a 10% back in IKEA gift cards on IKEA kitchen installation service.

Using a credit card to purchase materials and tools is an option. The right credit card will be used to optimize your spending. This is only valid if your credit card balance is brought to zero each month. The best ones offer air, hotel, travel or cash back rewards.

Choosing the Right Credit Cards

Here are our suggestions for the best credit cards for home renovation projects. First, there are a few questions to ask:

Here are the credit cards accepted at various home improvement, garden centers and hardware stores:

If you have an RBC credit card, check your RBC offers. A few times a year, there are credits offered of up to 10% on purchases at RONA. You just need to activate it, like this one:

This way you can earn account credits for purchases made at Réno-Dépôt or RONA.

All this happens automatically.

A Credit Card With Cash Back

It’s the best way to avoid headaches with home improvements! And in our experience, it even works for purchases from garden centers.

Choose the “Home Improvements” category to get 2% cash back quickly and easily on all purchases at hardware and home improvement stores, such as Canadian Tire and Patrick Morin in this example:

This also applies to :

We also tried a transaction for a container rental for renovation waste, but it wasn’t classified as being in the renovation category. So we didn’t get the 2% cashback on this transaction, unfortunately. Sometimes it’s trial and error.

This can comes in handy when you need short-term liquidity, especially when renovations are unexpected (like a flood or major water damage, for example)!

A credit card promotional offer may allow you to borrow money through a balance transfer or cash advance for periods of 6 to 12 months, at no interest or at a low rate.

For example, see this balance transfer offer from CIBC (for the CIBC Select Visa* Card) or this other balance transfer offer from MBNA (for the MBNA True Line^® Mastercard^® credit card).

Then you use the money to finance your project. However, we warn you to be very careful, because you have to respect the conditions of use. If you don’t, the benefits you’re hoping for won’t be to your advantage.

For more information, please see our article on “Using Credit Card Cash Advances Wisely“.

Home Improvement Store Gift Cards

You can earn more points or cash back by purchasing home improvement store gift cards at multiplier stores!

For example, you could use the American Express Cobalt^® Card to earn 5 points per dollar when buying gift cards at the grocery store. Points accumulate much faster this way, because otherwise you’ll only earn 1 point per dollar if you buy directly from the hardware store.

The following gift cards are available in grocery stores:

However, there are no Canac, RONA, BMR, Patrick Morin or Réno-Dépôt gift cards available in grocery stores.

By buying them there at the same time as your groceries, it’s as if you were also earning 5 points per dollar for your home improvement purchases.

For example, if you buy $500 worth of Home Depot gift cards at IGA with this Cobalt Card from American Express :

This 2,500 Membership Rewards points can be :

Or, you could use your Scotiabank American Express^® Card Gold to earn 6 Scene+ points per dollar when you buy Home Depot or Canadian Tire gift cards at IGA.

Then use Scene+ points to reimburse your travel expenses, go to the movies for free and pay your grocery bill.

Consider the Welcome Bonuses!

Renovations are a major expense in the life of a household. It is also a time when these expenses happen over a few months (between 1 and 6 months generally).

You need to leverage this large expense by unlocking welcome bonuses. Especially for cards that you would not have targeted first due to the high level of spending required!

For example, if you have $5,000 to $10,000 to spend at a home improvement or hardware store, you could rack up points as fast as a pneumatic nail gun:

One example is all those business credit cards that require you to spend several thousand dollars in 3 months. Some that even individuals can apply for.

Ideas for Using All Your Reward Points

After all that effort, reward yourself with your well-earned points:

Bottom Line

There are several ways to take advantage of this important expense! Again, we remind you to pay your credit card in full each month. Otherwise, the interest paid will wipe out any points earned.