Maximizing Rewards on Moving and Furnishing Expenses
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With summer just around the corner, some of you may be facing major moving and furnishing expenses. Here’s a complete guide to maximizing the rewards and returns on these purchases.
Budget your moving and furnishing expenses
Moving expenses
When planning a relocation, you should consider several typical moving expenses. These costs vary depending on the distance to be covered (from the same neighborhood to the other end of the country), whether you use professional movers or do it yourself, etc.
Here are some common moving expenses to keep in mind :
- Moving supplies: These include cardboard boxes, tape, bubble wrap, packing paper and other materials needed to pack your belongings securely.
- Hiring professional movers: If you decide to hire professional movers, the cost will be based on factors such as the distance of the move, the size of your home, the amount of stuff you have, and any additional services you require (e.g., packing, unpacking, furniture disassembly, storage).
- Truck rental: If you choose to do it yourself, you might have to rent a moving truck. The cost will depend on the size of the truck, the distance travelled, and the duration of the rental.
- Fuel costs: You’ll also need to consider the fuel price for the moving truck or your personal vehicle if you’re making multiple trips.
- Storage: If you have to store your stuff during the move, you may incur costs for renting a storage unit.
- Packing services: If you don’t have the time or ability to pack your belongings, you may choose to hire professional packers. This service can save you time and effort but comes with an additional cost.
- Utility connections and deposits: You may have to pay fees to subscribe to or transfer utilities such as electricity, gas, water, internet and cable services to your new home. Some providers may also require a deposit.
- Cleaning costs: If you’re leaving a rental property, you may need to cover the cost of cleaning to leave the apartment the way it was when you moved in. Similarly, if you’re moving into a new home that requires cleaning, you may have to cover these expenses.
Remember that these are general expenses, and the actual costs can vary based on your circumstances. It’s a good idea to create a budget and estimate these expenses to better plan your move.
Furnishing costs
When you move house, you may be faced with a number of common furnishing expenses as you set up your new home. These expenses can vary based on your needs, preferences, and the condition of your new residence.
Here are some common furnishing expenses to consider:
- Furniture: You may need to buy or replace furniture such as beds, sofas, dining tables, chairs, chests of drawers, desks and shelves. The cost will depend on the type, quality and quantity of furniture you require.
- Mattresses and bedding: If you’re moving into a new home, you’ll need to buy a new mattress, pillows, sheets, blankets and other essentials.
- Kitchen appliances: If your new home is not equipped with appliances, or if you want to upgrade them, you’ll need to buy a refrigerator, stove, microwave oven, dishwasher and other appliances. These costs can vary significantly based on the brands and features you choose.
- Electronics: If necessary, a budget should be set aside for electronic devices such as a TV, audio system, computer or other appliances, depending on your preferences and needs.
- Lighting fixtures: If your new home doesn’t have adequate lighting or you want to change the fixtures for aesthetic reasons, you may need to invest in lighting fixtures such as lamps, chandeliers, or ceiling lights.
- Window treatment: Depending on how much privacy and light control you want, you’ll need to buy curtains, blinds, shades or drapes for your windows.
- Rugs and floor coverings: If your new place has bare floors or you want to enhance the ambiance, you may need to purchase area rugs or floor coverings.
- Storage solutions: Consider the need for storage solutions such as bookshelves, cabinets, dressers, or storage containers to organize your belongings.
- Decoration and accessories: Depending on your personal style and preferences, you can budget for decorative items such as artwork, mirrors, plants, vases or other accessories to personalize your new space.
- Home improvement and repair: Depending on the condition of your new home, you’ll need to allocate funds to improvement or repair projects. These may include painting, installing light fittings or any other necessary renovations.
It is important to note that these expenses can vary considerably depending on your needs and budget. Consider prioritizing your purchases based on what you need immediately and items you can acquire over time. Also, you can buy new items or opt for second-hand items to better manage costs.
Keeping the Cost Down on Moving or Furnishing Costs
The most obvious way to save money on moving costs and furnishing your new home is to do it yourself, instead of hiring professionals and buying what you need second-hand.
For example, we recently benefited from a buy-one-get-one-free offer for paint, which reduced our costs by half!
Taking Advantage of the Right Credit Card
With your budget, you can more easily separate your moving and furnishing expenses down by categories in order to choose the right credit card to pay with.
For example, the Tangerine World Mastercard offers categories of home improvement items, home furnishings and gas that give you a higher return in terms of cash back.
With the Tangerine World Mastercard you can change your reward category each month. Since this has to be done before your monthly statement is issued, it’s best to plan ahead.
Or try the CIBC Adapta🅪 MastercardMD. There’s no annual fee, and it automatically determines your top three spending categories each month, to reward you even more.
Cardholders accumulate :
- 1.5 points per dollar in the 3 monthly categories where you spend the most (including “Home improvements”);
- 1 point per dollar on all other purchases.
Another option for getting the best return on your purchases would be to identify all the expenses that can be purchased with a gift card found in grocery stores.
If your credit card gives you 5% cashback at the grocery store and 1% cashback on other purchases (like at IKEA or Home Depot), take advantage of this by buying gift cards from these stores at the grocery store! So, if you buy $100 worth of IKEA gift cards at the grocery store, you’ll get $5 (5% x $100) back. If you buy the $100 directly from IKEA, you’ll only get $1 (1% x $100).
The savings are enormous if you buy for several thousand dollars!
For example, you can buy packing supplies and small appliances on Amazon. At IKEA, you can find all kinds of kitchen accessories, furniture and home decor at an affordable price.
Gift cards for these two stores, to name just a few, can be found in grocery stores. Therefore, if you use a credit card with a high multiplier in this category, such as the Scotiabank Gold American Express® Card which is the best at IGA, you could get up to 6% cash back on your moving and furnishing expenses.
- Annual fee
- $120
- Our valuationMilesopedia first-year estimate First-year valueWelcome bonus$500Total$500Rewards on your spending are not included. The calculator that adds them from your own profile is on the card's page.
- $500
- Welcome offerAfter $7,500 in 12 months
- Up to 50,000 points
- Ends Nov 1, 2026
Apply Now
on Scotiabank's website
Taking advantage of a signup bonus
Suppose you don’t feel like juggling several gift or credit cards during this (naturally stressful) period. In that case, you can also make your moving and furnishing expenses worthwhile by unlocking the welcome bonus on a new credit card.
It’s just as lucrative (if not more so) and simpler to manage, because you can put everything on the same credit card. For example, the National Bank World Elite Mastercard® regularly offers a generous welcome bonus plus an extended purchase guarantee, which can come in handy when you’re splurging on a brand-new washer and dryer!
Exclusive
- Annual feeNo annual fee the first year
- $0 $150
- Our valuationMilesopedia first-year estimate First-year valueAnnual fee rebated$150Total$150Rewards on your spending are not included. The calculator that adds them from your own profile is on the card's page.
- $150
- Welcome offer$150 annual fee rebated
- First Year Annual Fee Rebate
- Ends Nov 4, 2026
Apply Now
on National Bank's website
The Scotiabank Gold American Express® Card offers an attractive welcome offer. You can use the bonus Scene+ points at IGA, for example, to reduce your grocery bill.
- Annual fee
- $120
- Our valuationMilesopedia first-year estimate First-year valueWelcome bonus$500Total$500Rewards on your spending are not included. The calculator that adds them from your own profile is on the card's page.
- $500
- Welcome offerAfter $7,500 in 12 months
- Up to 50,000 points
- Ends Nov 1, 2026
Apply Now
on Scotiabank's website
Taking advantage of balance transfer promotions
While we encourage people to employ credit cards only as a payment method and not to finance their moving and furnishing purchases with them, balance transfer promotions can be a helpful tool.
These balance transfer promotions are often shaped the same way:
- 0% interest for up to 10 months versus 1% transfer fee
- 2.99% interest for 10 months with 0% transfer fee
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).
The balance transfer period, interest rate and transfer fees vary from offer to offer. In addition, you can benefit from these offers as a new customer or receive one to activate as an existing customer.
The aim of balance transfers is to take advantage of a lower interest rate while your money is being put to better use elsewhere. When used correctly, it’s an effective way to save money.
We signed up for the CIBC Dividend® Visa Infinite* Card to take advantage of its generous 10% cashback bonus; we made regular purchases and unlocked the bonus. Then, around two months later, we received a letter about a balance transfer offer at 0% interest for 10 months and with a 1% transfer fee.
In the meantime, my spouse has applied for the National Bank World® Mastercard® and met the spending requirements. Since that card came with excellent purchase insurance, we bought several large appliances with it.
We then entered the CIBC Dividend® Visa Infinite* Card, which had a balance transfer offer issued in the form of a cheque that we could deposit into the account of our choice; the funds from the balance transfer could pay another credit card balance directly, but for our property management, we opted for a cheque.
As we see here, we incurred a 1% transfer fee on the $5,000 we had available.
When the cheque was deposited, we paid the National Bank World Elite Mastercard bill in full, as usual, to clear the balance. The purpose of doing it that way was threefold:
- Benefit from a 0% interest rate on $5,000 + 1% transfer fee ($50) while avoiding the use of our higher-interest mortgage line of credit for 10 months.
- Being able to invest or save $5,000 at our leisure during that same timeframe.
- Benefit from the National Bank World Elite Mastercard® purchase insurance and extended warranty since our moving and furnishing expenses were technically paid with that card.
While 10 months is not a long-term timeframe to invest in the stock market, we often have promotional saving account bonus interest like this one:
In fact, over the past 12 months, I’ve taken advantage of an interest rate offer of 5% for 4 months with my CIBC Savings Account and another savings rate offer of 5% for 5 months with our Tangerine Savings Account that followed.
By using the balance transfer promotion, I saved $5,000 instead of paying off the credit card right away, and I earned interest on that amount for 9 of the 10 months I took advantage of the balance transfer.
Don’t forget that we also took advantage of sign-up bonuses for the CIBC Dividend® Visa Infinite* Card and the National Bank World Elite Mastercard®.
To sum up in terms of numbers, this strategy of using CIBC’s balance transfer instead of our own money gave us the following results:
- Welcome offer to look out for a few times a year
- $150 in travel credits
- Purchase insurance and extended warranty
- No annual fee for the first year
- ~$80 interest on our savings (at an annual rate of 5% on $5,000 for 4 months)
- ~$100 interest on our savings (at an annual rate of 5% on $5,000 for 5 months)
| Account | Savings and benefits |
| Carte Dividendes CIBCMD Visa Infinite* |
|
| Carte Mastercard World Elite de la Banque Nationale | |
| Compte d’épargne CIBC | |
| Compte d’épargne Tangerine | |
| Marge de crédit hypothécaire |
- Avoid higher interest charges, since the current prime rate is 6.7% (at the time of writing).
Conclusion
Moving and furnishing expenses can quickly add up. However, if you set a proper budget and buy second-hand as much as possible, you can save a considerable amount of money.
As for purchases you must make in stores, carefully establishing a credit card strategy to maximize your returns or to take advantage of hefty welcome bonuses is an excellent way not to leave any cash or points on the table.
Taking this a step further, the option of credit card balance transfers can be another practical tool for saving money and growing your savings or investment account.
Every time we use our hard-earned money, it’s also a question of opportunity cost, and depending on how you can shape it, you can come out ahead!
What is the average cost of a move, and what budget should I allow?
You need to calculate the professional mover’s hourly rate, the number of people (or pairs of arms) involved and the duration of the move. This can vary between $100 and $200 per hour, depending on the time of year.
For an apartment, it can be 3-4 hours. For a complete house, the move can take a whole day (6 to 8 hours).
Are there heavy objects like a piano, grandma’s large solid wood sideboard, a precious work of art, or a hot tub? If so, there will be additional fees of at least $100 or more per item. Travel and mileage fees are also to be expected if the distance to be covered is long.
Don’t forget the associated costs, such as disconnecting and reconnecting services, buying cardboard boxes, unpleasant surprises, address changes and pizza for everyone at the end of the day!
How to deduct eligible moving expenses on taxes?
2 conditions must be met for the provincial (CRA) and federal (Revenue Quebec) governments:
- The move was required to hold a job, practice a profession, operate a business or attend an educational institution (full-time student enrolment in a post-secondary program);
- Move at least 40 kilometers closer to your place of study or new place of work, even if it’s seasonal.
You can choose between the detailed or simplified method for deducting moving expenses. Forms are available on various government sites to help you with your tax return.
Eligible moving expenses are:
- Transportation and storage rental costs ;
- Lease termination fees, if any ;
- Costs associated with the move (cost of replacing driver’s licenses, plugging in/out, etc.)
- Meals and vehicle expenses (used to travel between the 2 addresses) related to the move;
- Temporary living expenses, sale of previous residence and acquisition of new residence ;
- Other incidental expenses.
