You Don't Need Coupons to Stretch a Buck! - Lowes Adventures

So it's not that I have anything against the other home improvement stores like Home Depot or Ace Hardware, it's just that when my husband and I were looking to buy a refrigerator, the best price, plus the best financing options, were at Lowes.

I love Lowes. I love Lowes because they have WAY better clearance items than any other home improvement store in my area. I love Lowes because they have a great selection of plants, many of which end up on clearance as the season draws to a close. I love Lowes because their plant lady (at least at my Lowes) is sometimes willing to work with me on pricing, so I get the plants at even CHEAPER than the clearance price!

But equally as important, I love Lowes because they'll give me 5% off all of my purchases or really nify 0% interest financing if my purchase is over $299 when I use my Lowes credit card. Typically it's 6 months with 0% interest if you make regular payments and your receipt was $299+. But for the Memorial Day weekend extravaganza, Lowes increased the months to 18 months of 0% interest!!!

Now usually when my husband and I use our Lowes card, we opt for the 5% off our purchase because we intend to pay off the full balance when we get our bill. When we bought our refrigerator, we opted for the 0% financing because we were able to buy an expensive refrigerator and spread out the payments and fit it into our budget that way. We paid off the fridge within the timeframe and we didn't have to blow any single monthly budget, making a huge lump-sum payment.

So why am I talking about this?

My husband and I constantly have a laundry list of house projects. I guess that's what happens when you buy a house, or so I'm told...

In any regard, when we bought the house, the home inspector pointed out that portions of the door case/trim on both exterior doors were rotted and very soft. That was 2.5 years ago....

Needless to say that project never got very high on our list of things to do, so it just didn't get done. But when we saw the special financing offer at Lowes, it gave us incentive to get the costly project done. Doors are not cheap. Even cheap doors are only relatively cheap. We didn't really have the $200+ to buy doors right now, but the financing options will help us spread that out over many months!

We bought a great steel exterior door that is prehung and ready to go for $119 and found a really nice storm door that was on sale from $134 down to $119. Of course, that's nearly $240 just for doors, yikes! We filled in the rest of the needed $299 for the financing with other things we needed to finish projects we had started. Some spray paint to finish painting the front railings, high-heat spray paint for the ring in our fire pit, sand to finish the base for my garden bench my hubby built me for Christmas and other random odds and ends.

In all, after opting for the 18 month 0% interest, we'll be paying $19.XX/month (at minimum) and we'll be able to fix the back door now, rather than waiting longer and letting it rot some more.

Now we have to figure out the front door, since it's one of those fancy doors with side lites and will cost us a bajillion downs to fix, even the cheap way!

Disclaimer: I was not compensated in any way for this posting. I simply love Lowes :-)

Happy Couponing!
-Coupon Mama Massachusetts