The New York Times real estate section had a piece on how to use rewards cards to offset the cost of home renovations. I was interviewed for the story, along with some other miles and points gurus, as well as a few property owners who have leveraged their remodel budget for outsized rewards.
Fortunately however, ours wasn’t one of the properties featured in the accompanying photos. When the New York Times is asking to send a photographer over, you really want more of your remodel to at least be at this point:
Living room is trending towards done
Rather than this point:
Someday the shop vac won’t live in the entryway, but today is not that day
As is often the case with big media stories, the final version places much more emphasis on the impossibility/wow factor, rather than the nitty-gritty details that make it all possible.
And since I’d already gathered a bunch of this info for the interview, I figured it might be helpful to those of you looking to get the most out of your own renovations.
Background on our project
I don’t want to go into too much detail on this, because OMAAT is not a house blog (though we have the start of one here, if you’re super into that sort of thing), but we purchased a mid-century modern home last April that was…decidedly lacking in the “modern” department.
Living room before
According to property records, our 1960’s house has had five owners, and four remodels. Hearing from the neighbors though, there have been nearly two dozen families who have lived here over the past 50 years.
Needless to say, the property was somewhere between “desperately needing updates” and “fixer-upper” when we moved in.
The bones of the house are amazing (my dad nearly had a heart attack when we opened a wall to find air-dried old-growth fir had been used for the framing), but there was a significant amount of deferred maintenance, and some truly ill-advised renovations that had been done over the years.
Raspberry wood paneling, why not?
As an example, at some point the original open mid-century floor plan was closed off, making the house feel very dark. There were also nine different types of flooring, and no two rooms had the same baseboards or window-trim treatments.
This photo from the listing will tell architectural enthusiasts everything they need to know
On the scale of remodels, ours was theoretically relatively minor. We wanted to restore the original feel of the home without creating a time capsule, so basically set out to undo the prior renovations, bring consistency to the space, and then update two of the bathrooms.
We took out one and a half walls that weren’t original, and moved another by three feet, but didn’t have any structural changes to contend with, thankfully.
And then we got to do a surprise bonus kitchen renovation, so that was fun. ProTip: don’t accept “unable to inspect due to owner’s belongings obstructing space” on your home inspection.
At least we then had an excuse to change out this kitchen that really didn’t match the house…
…for something more in keeping with the style. Eventually we might even have a range hood and backsplash!
Fortunately, (since we’d been aggressively saving to buy a house in California for the past ten years, and only needed a fraction of those funds for a down payment on a house in Spokane) we had the cash on hand to do all of this.
That gave us much more leeway in terms of earning miles and points for the project, as we could use a variety of cards to earn the most miles possible.
Get welcome bonuses
This is the focus of the NYT article, and I’m not going to go into it too much. I think if you’re reading One Mile at a Time it probably seems obvious to apply for new credit cards before making major purchases.
I will add the addendum that it’s critical to think about your travel goals, and how a given card will help you achieve them rather than automatically opting for the best bonus available.
As an example, the day our loan closed we applied for two cards each — a Chase Freedom Unlimited® for him, The Business Platinum Card® from American Express for me, and one apiece of The Blue Business® Plus Credit Card from American Express. Those cards didn’t necessarily have the highest bonuses available, but they fit best with the gaps in my mileage strategy.
Just something to think about.
Leverage promotional interest offers
We don’t talk about this much on OMAAT, as we like the emphasis to be on paying cards off every month and generally being responsible with your credit, but there are a slew of cards offering promotional interest periods as part of the welcome bonus.
The promotional period varies across card and issuer, but in all cases you will want to pay any balance off before that period ends. These cards have variable rates afterwards, but are certainly not low-interest products.
In our case, his and hers versions of The Blue Business® Plus Credit Card from American Express with generous credit limits gave us plenty of breathing room on several of our large purchases. No Mas Coach utilized a similar strategy with a cash-back card for their remodel, so there are a few ways to play this.
Negotiate discounts for paying in full
Fortunately (or possibly unfortunately, I haven’t decided yet), we’ve been able to do the bulk of the renovation work on our own, with extra help from my dad and other skilled family members. And it doesn’t hurt that my husband’s engineer brain is comfortable tackling any project I can come up with.
And that’s all good, because procuring goods and services in Spokane is shockingly difficult. There is way more demand for skilled tradespeople than there are people performing those tasks. We waited six months for countertops, as an example, because there is literally one person in a 300-mile radius building concrete countertops of any quality.
Seriously, if you’ve ever thought “my life dream is to build artisan cabinetry” or whatever, come join me in Spokane! You’ll have more business than you can handle. And the snow isn’t that bad.
But one thing that helped us in both getting skilled help more quickly and being able to earn miles, was offering to pay in full — and negotiating discounts for doing so promptly. Many small businesses here prefer not to take credit cards, or will charge a processing fee. Paying a 3% fee typically obliterates the benefit of any rewards you’d be earning, but in many cases we were able to get a 5% discount (or more) for paying ahead of time and in full.
For companies that didn’t take credit cards, we sent a check through Plastiq. I’ll happily take a net ~2% discount and put the charges on a mileage-earning card.
Shopping portals!!!
There is a lot of creative hoop-jumping you can do with purchasing gift cards for home improvement stores, but I honestly don’t have time for that. I also like having the warranty protection provided by my credit cards should something go wrong. Shopping portals are easy, and can be insanely lucrative.
We tried to time our big purchases to coincide with big shopping portal bonuses. The best way to prepare to maximize these purchases is to find a few potential retailers that carry a given item, then set alerts on cashbackmonitor so you can purchase during promos.
I found tile that I liked for the bathrooms, made a list of what retailers stocked it and at what prices, and then waited.
Master bathroom is not quite ready for its closeup
But is vastly improved from what we replaced
Eventually, the British Airways Mall had one of their triple Avios weekends, and I earned 26 Avios/$1 on two bathrooms worth of tile. That ended up being about 130,000 Avios — no complaints there!
Check your Amex Offers
Amex Offers can be lucrative for all kinds of purchases, and in my case, I scored big with an offer for an additional 1x point/$1 spent at HomeDepot.com with an eligible card.
You might think “Sure, but how much are you really ordering from an online hardware store, when you can just go down and pick stuff up?”
And the answer, my friend, is EVERYTHING.
Home Depot offers “buy online pick up in store”, and those transactions process as web purchases. That means you can also use a shopping portal (usually offering at least 2x, but sometimes 6x or more), and not have to wait for delivery or pay shipping fees.
So when you drill through the water line while installing your vanity, you can order repair supplies en route!
Bonus: ordering online for in-store pickup can be a major budget saver. I don’t think my dad or my husband have ever even driven past a Home Depot without spending an impulse $100+, so having someone else fetch specific items rather than leaving them to wander the aisles saved us goodness-knows how much money. The extra miles were just icing on the cake!
We’ve used other Amex Offers as well, for everything from bonus points for our smoke detectors to statement credits for furniture purchases. It’s always worth checking.
Bottom line
Somehow, shockingly, this remodel hasn’t killed me, and we’re getting to the point where we can see the light at the end of the tunnel in many rooms.
Sadly, that light comes from the yard, where there is ~250 feet of fencing that needs to be replaced.
At least I’ll be able to earn more miles.
Ultimately, while there are more complicated “extreme stacking” ways to maximize points, I don’t know that those are terribly realistic for busy professionals or people doing so much of the construction work themselves. But even with the bare minimum of effort, we’ve earned an average of 5x miles for every dollar we’ve spent on renovations.
And if you’re considering remodeling a home yourself as a way to earn miles, I would highly, highly, highly recommend doing literally anything else. 😉
Anyone else doing home renovations? Want to share some mileage-earning tips (or wine/sob stories)?
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