Home Imporvements

[Nick Rutkowski]

Hey y'all! So my parents want to do some home improvements so they can have their house ready to sell in a few years. They're planning on taking out a loan for 15k for total expenses.  I want to know what would be the cheapest way they could do this?  Also, is there any programs I could look up that could help? 

Some of the things they are doing is painting, carpet replacement, replacing a skylight, counters, and putting in new tile in the kitchen.  

Thanks  a lot!

[Jerry Bruckenheimer]

@Nick Rutkowski

I am doing the same, upgrading my rental in advance of selling in the near future. 

I chose to do it slightly differently to avoid a Heloc or 2nd mortgage encumbrance, so far I've paid zero interest and my numbers are going to be triple what your parents expect to spend.

I have a credit forum if you or your parents would like to dig deeper but the basic brush strokes are these.

1. Purchase Lowes/Home Depot Gift cards at two venues, a. Gift card resellers which are discounted from face value at 7-9% b. Lowes/Home Depot gift cards purchased at office max / staples using a credit card that offers 5% cash back.

2. Sign up /apply for credit cards that offer significant sign up bonuses ($400 - $1500) and convert those sign up bonuses to lowes/HD gift cards. These cards have minimum spend requirements to get the bonuses, you guessed it, knocked those out purchasing lowes/HD gift cards while at the same time earning more cash back or points from the purchase of lowes/HD gift cards. 

3. Paid off the credit cards monthly where possible but planned for debt and applied for another credit card, the Chase Slate - $0 fee and 0% interest for 18 months.

4. Applied for bank accounts that offered significant bonuses ($400-$600) many of these have requirements that you have to meet but they're easy including things like maintaining a small minimum balance or establishing direct deposit (can be done with certain ACH payments) ;) Converted those bonuses to lowes /HD gift cards.

5. Where possible, funded those bank accounts with credit cards that do not charge cash advance fees (depends more on how the bank processes credit card funding deposits than the credit card itself) thus earning points / cash back on those account findings by credit card purchase that I converted to....lowes/HD gift cards. and then simply paying back the credit card I used to fund the new account with directly from the new account.

There are lots of tricks and caveats but so far I'm 30k in on my upgrades, $0 debt, 0 interest, not to mention significant discounts to lowes/HD prices, and moving along nicely only risking unsecured debt and leveraging a great credit score.