Strategy: Funding Your Travel Through Home Renovations

Renovating your home and travelling might seem like two distinct projects that aren’t financially compatible. Typically, when planning renovations, a vacation isn’t part of the annual budget!

However, with a different approach, your renovation work can become a springboard for financing your next trip. It’s a great reward for your patience and perseverance, especially after all that time spent in dust, plaster and paint!

To improve our home, we dove into renovations and simultaneously accumulated points. Here’s the strategy I used to bring my entire family to Orlando for five days, using all those expenses incurred with contractors and at home improvement stores.

Thanks to the use of my points, the total cost of my trip was about $1,000, or $50 per person per day, including 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. We accumulated enough Aeroplan points for four round-trip tickets from Montreal to Orlando, which also included complimentary checked baggage.

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

The TD First Class Travel^® Visa Infinite* Card accumulates TD Rewards points, accelerated by its welcome offer.

The electrical contractor accepted credit cards, so I got the points pretty quickly.

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

The AIR MILES program allows you to purchase park tickets for Universal Studios in Florida. To accumulate miles quickly, I combined various promotions (such as “Shop the Block,” offers with up to 40% off mile redemptions, etc.) and signed up for the BMO AIR MILES World Elite Mastercard.

By paying the plumber, I was able to meet the terms of the welcome offer. In total, including redemption discounts, I used exactly 15,016 AIR MILES Dream Miles for 4 2-day tickets to Universal Studios. Here’s to the VelociCoaster and the Butterbeer!

Meals were the most significant part of the budget, as there aren’t many points programs that optimally cover restaurant expenses. We took the opportunity to indulge in decadent snacks, enjoy an evening meal to soak in the City Walk atmosphere, and purchase food from the Walgreens pharmacy near the hotel.

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

For accumulation, the welcome offer and Scene+ promotions at IGA boosted my points balance quickly.

Plus, with the Scotiabank Visa Infinite Passport, I avoided foreign currency conversion fees.

I used an Uber to get us from the Orlando airport to the hotel and back. This was coded as a travel expense by Scene+ and allowed me to reimburse this expense with my Scene+ points so it didn’t cost me anything.

Upon our return, I was able to pay for the Park’N Fly Valet parking at Montreal-Trudeau International Airport with myNational Bank World Elite Mastercard. It’s a card I really appreciate and keep in my wallet year after year, especially because of its $150 annual credit. This enabled me to pay off the $146 Park’N Fly bill in full.

Additionally, the car was cleared of snow and warmed up upon our arrival, thanks to the Valet option, despite the two major storms that hit Montreal during our absence.

Home renovations and travel can complement each other in a well-planned strategy.

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

It’s also a way of rewarding yourself after the inconvenience of the work!