Strategy: Funding Your Travel Through Home Renovations

Renovating your home and travelling seem to be two distinct projects that are not necessarily financially compatible. When planning renovations, a trip is usually not in the annual budget plans!

However, with a different approach, your renovation work can become a springboard to fund your next trip. It’s a great reward for your patience and perseverance, especially after spending time amidst dust, plaster, and paint!

To improve the house, we dove into the work and, at the same time, accumulated points. Here’s the strategy I used to take my whole family to Orlando for 5 days, with all these expenses incurred with contractors and at renovation centers.

Thanks to using my points, the total cost of my trip was approximately $1,000, or $50 per person per day, including the hotel, flights, meals, souvenirs, and park tickets! Not bad for a trip that would have cost $6,000.

I have a TD Aeroplan Visa Infinite* Card and my spouse has an additional card. As a result, we have earned enough Aeroplan points for four round-trip flights from Montreal to Orlando. It allowed us to get free checked bags for the flight.

At Home Depot and Rona, we used our card to earn all the points from the welcome offer.

The TD First Class Travel Visa Infinite* Card earns TD Rewards Points, and you can earn them even faster with its welcome offer.

The electrical contractor accepted credit cards, which allowed me to earn points quickly.

Thus, I was able to use 160,600 points (worth $803) for four nights at the Universal’s Endless Summer Resort – Surfside Inn and Suites, Orlando. Combined with the annual $100 Travel credit offered by the card, this stay cost me approximately $179 in total.

The AIR MILES program allows you to purchase Universal Studios park tickets in Florida. To earn them quickly, I combined various promotions (Shop The Block, promotions offering up to 40% back on Miles redemptions, etc.) and signed up for the BMO AIR MILES World Elite Mastercard.

By paying the plumber, I was able to meet the conditions of the welcome offer. In total, including exchange rebates, I used exactly 15,016 AIR MILES Dream Miles for 4 two-day tickets to Universal Studios parks. Here we come, VelociCoaster and butterbeer!

Meals represented the highest portion of the budget, as there aren’t really any points that reimburse restaurant meals at their optimal rate. We took the opportunity to indulge in decadent snacks, treat ourselves to an evening meal to enjoy the atmosphere of City Walk, and buy food at the Walgreens pharmacy near the hotel.

My trick was to charge the vast majority of our hotel restaurant meal expenses to our room bill. This way, the cost appeared under the hotel’s name, categorizing it as a travel expense, and I was able to use my Scene+ points at the optimal rate to reimburse everything.

When it comes to earning points, the welcome offer along with various Scène+ promotions at IGA helped me boost my points balance faster to reach my goal.

In addition, the Scotiabank Passport Visa Infinite Card allowed me to avoid foreign currency conversion fees.

I used an Uber to get us from Orlando airport to the hotel and vice versa. This was coded as a travel expense by Scene+ and allowed me to reimburse this expense with my Scene+ points so it cost me nothing.

Then, upon our return, I was able to pay for Valet parking at Park’N Fly at Montréal-Trudeau International Airport with my National Bank World Elite Mastercard. It’s a card I really appreciate and keep in my wallet year after year, mainly because of its $150 annual credit. This allowed me to completely cover the $146 Park’N Fly bill.

Plus, the car was cleared of snow and warm when we arrived thanks to the Valet option, despite the two major snowstorms that hit Montreal while we were away.

Home renovations and travel can work together as part of a well-planned strategy.

Whether you’re planning a trip to the new Epic Universe at Universal Studios, Disneyland Paris, or any other destination, the principle is the same: use your credit cards strategically to turn every dollar spent into travel rewards. These are purchases you would have made anyway.

It’s also a way to reward yourself after the inconveniences of renovations!