After making your largest purchase ever in your life (New Home), the next step will be doing renovation and buying home appliances.
You can either choose TIME OR MONEY, depending on which is more important to you.
In order to save money, you will need to sacrifice your time and vice versa.
This post is about choosing Money OVER time.
1) ID
- Choose the ID which is not GST registered company. By doing so, you saved paying 7% GST.
- Most of the ID only accept Cash, Cheque or Bank Transfer.
If your ID accept Grabpay, then you are in luck to save around 8 - 13% of your renovation cost by having UOB ONE, UOB YOLO credit card and CapitaStar account.
Just top up your Grabpay account over the weekend (Sat 0000hrs till Sun 2359hrs) and you can get 8% cashback (Cash rebate cap at $60/mth, thus max $750 topup. Note that min spend of $600 is required per month in order to receive the cashback. All Grabpay top up amount is counted toward min spend).
UOB ONE card is not as simpler and straightforward as UOB YOLO.
If you do it right, you will be able to get 10% cashback.
Firstly, you need to know your card quarterly cash rebate cycle.
Secondly, you need to spend $500/$1000/$2000 for 3 consecutively months with min 5 transaction/mth.
Eg: You will need to topup 5 x $400 to your Grabpay account for 3 consecutively months in your quarterly cash rebate cycle.
Renovation usually is 5 digit figures. Thus you will need to start planning early to maximise the cashback as per person the max topup is $2750 per month (YOLO + ONE card).
For every dollar you paid to your ID via GrabPay, you will gain GrabPay points (This is on top of the 8 - 10% credit card cashback) and can easily become Platinum tier (2X reward points).
You can exchange for S$5 Capitamall voucher with 1900 Grabpoints.
2) Buying Vouchers
If you intend to purchase your home appliances in Courts / Gain City / Harvey Norman / Best Denki, you can purchase individual shop vouchers in Carousell.
For the above, the discount % is usually 6 - 10%.
Anything lower than 6% and lesser than $600 voucher is a waste of time and effort to purchase as you can use the below credit card for payment instead:
- HSBC Advance card Up to 3.5%
- AMEX True Cashback 3% (First 6 months of card received) / 1.5%
- Maybank FC Barcelona Visa Signature Card 1.6%
- Standard Chartered Unlimited Cashback 1.5%
Occasionally, CapitaMall will have CapitaVoucher promotion such as "Get $10 CapitaVoucher with every $100 CapitaVoucher purchased" / "Get $30 eCapitaVoucher with every $300 eCapitaVoucher purchased". So keep a look out for such promotion!!
3) Buying from Courts
The reason I prefer Courts over its competitors is because Courts have a very powerful price match policy (Link).
Basically you can start shopping for your home appliances and by putting a deposit, you can secure the price. If in the future the price dropped or you saw a lower price offered by their compeitiors, and as long as the item have not been delivered, you can get the price match.
The price diff can be in few hundred dollars in the span over few months.
Trust me, lower can get even lower.
Best denki: No price match (Link).
Gain City: Price match for 8 days (Link).
Harvey Norman: Price match for 10 days (Link).
4) Buying from Taobao
I am sure you had heard of good story and horror story about buying items from Taobao.
Buying from Taobao do able to save you quite alot of money.
Just make sure when you make the purchase, READ and READ the reviews (especially those with Photo and 追加) and Shop rating.
Do not just choose the lowest price unless you prefer horror story.
For example:
Shop A have 1000 reviews and selling for S$120.
Shop B have 100 reviews and selling for S$100.
To have a better peace of mind and lower your risk of horror story, purchase from Shop A.
5) Buy from JB
If you are not comfortable buying from Taobao, the next best option will be make a trip over to JB.
Shops such as StarWorld Lighting and Tampoi Lighting are located side by side and you will see alot of Singaporean there.
Remember to factor in the 7% GST + delivery fees when you do your shopping over there.
6) Choose the right credit card
It doesn't matter if you belong to the Cashback gang or Miles gang.
Choosing the right credit card can save you alot of money too.
Simply type in the merchant’s name in the search bar or filter by the merchant spend categories, and they will instantly tell you the cards that give you the best rewards for your expenses.
7) Knowledge is POWER
Join some of the Renovation Facebook group such as Budget Reno (Singapore) or your own HDB BTO group or Telegram group such as Singapore Renovation.
You will be able to get advice and ideas from there.
Related post:
1) Home renovation regrets that costs you thousands of dollars
2) Buying Vouchers
ReplyDeleteIf you intend to purchase your home appliances in Courts / Gain City / Harvey Norman / Best Denki, you can purchase individual shop vouchers in Carousell.
For the above, the discount % is usually 6 - 10%
how do you get 6 - 10% for above mentioned merchant vouchers ?
Buy via Carousell.. You need to spend 2 mins everyday to check Carousell listing once per day. It take me close to 2 months to purchase $8000 worth of Courts + Gain City voucher.
DeleteHint: Courts voucher very easy to find because one company located in North area are rewarding their employees with Courts voucher..
2) Buying Vouchers
ReplyDeleteIf you intend to purchase your home appliances in Courts / Gain City / Harvey Norman / Best Denki, you can purchase individual shop vouchers in Carousell.
For the above, the discount % is usually 6 - 10%
how do you get 6 - 10% for above mentioned merchant vouchers ?
Sometimes the hardest thing about saving money is just getting started. Awesome tips! Thank you! Buying from Taobao works perfectly :) All you need is lots of patience ;) Also for those who can't read the language, ordering from Taobao is a headache.
ReplyDelete