How To Save Money on Home Improvement Projects
I had some flower beds I needed to redo in the backyard and all involved it was going to cost around $300. We had to replace some plumbing pipes last year and it tore our back yard up and left me with a lot of work to do. Knowing that I had some of these projects coming up I have been keeping my eyes out for good deals to help reduce the costs. Here is how to save money on home improvement projects, 30% off via deal stacking!
Gift Card Deals
There are two major players in the home improvement game, Home Depot and Lowe’s. Home Depot is usually my go to vendor since they are usually less expensive and there is one a mile from my house. Sometimes convenience wins!
The problem is normally Home Depot gift cards don’t go on sale often. That hasn’t been the case as much this year as we have seen with some recent deals. But even when Home Depot gift cards do go on sale, or there is a way to get them at a discount, they are usually for 10% off. Lowe’s gift cards on the other hand go on sale pretty often and you can sometimes get them for as much as 15% off.
This time around I had my choice of the litter since both cards where 15% off with the recent Speedway deal. I ended up going with Lowe’s because they had the item I really wanted and Home Depot didn’t. Plus I knew there was another feather in Lowe’s cap, more on that later.
Breaking Down the Speedway Gift Card Deal
In June Speedway had a deal where you would get a $15 gas gift card when you purchased a $100 3rd party gift card. Speedway carries both Home Depot and Lowe’s gift cards which made this deal perfect for my needs.
My wife drives a lot for work so a gas gift card is pretty much 100% value to me. That means I could get Lowe’s gift cards for essentially 15% off.
I would also earn 2,000 Speedway points for the purchase which is worth about $2 when I go to redeem them for Speedway gift cards. I used my recently upgraded Ascend card from American Express. The Ascend card earns 6X Hilton Points per dollar at US gas stations which is 2.7% back in my estimations (valuing Hilton points at $0.0045). Plus, I still needed to finish my $3,000 worth of spend to get the 150,000 points upgrade offer. That is an additional 50 points per dollar (22.5%) on that spend but I won’t include that into my calculations.
If I add all of that up I received $15 in gas, $2 in Speedway points and $2.70 in Hilton Honors points for my $100 purchase. That is a discount of 19.7%. Not too shabby, but it gets better!
Lowe’s Coupons on eBay
There are Lowe’s coupons easily available on eBay. These will get you 10% off of your purchase up to $500 in savings! And they sell for the rock bottom price of 50 cents a piece if you weed through enough of them. I purchased one of these and it was emailed to me within minutes for my online purchase. That knocked 10% right off the top!
Don’t Forget Cash Back Portals!
I was going to do this purchase online as well versus in the store so I could nab a few more percent off via cash back portals. I checked Cashbackmonitor.com to see who was paying the best. The Chase Freedom portal was paying 2 Ultimate Rewards points per dollar so I went with that one. If I value UR points at a reasonable 1.5 cents a piece that is 3% back via the portal. These deals are starting to really stacking up!
Adding It All Up
My total bill came to just under $300 but I am going to round it to $300 even to make things simpler. I used the 10% off coupon first which brought the cost down to $270. I went through the cash back portal for 3% back on the $270 or and additional savings of $8.10. Using the Lowe’s gift cards I got at a 19.7% discount saved me another $53.19.
When I subtract the $53.19 and $8.10 from the $270 cost I end up with an out of pocket cost of $208.71. That is a savings of $91.29 or a discount of 30.43%!
Final Thoughts
Stacking deals to save money on something I had to buy anyway is one of my favorite things to do. With proper planning and using multiple deals I was able to save close to $100 on my $300 project. That is some amazing value and it allows me to spend that money somewhere else or make the project a little more elaborate if I want to.
What are some of your recent stacking wins? Share them in the comments!
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