Marc Serafino
At the time I’m writing this, Home Depot’s network counts more than 2,200 stores across the United States, Canada and Mexico. Whether you work in the home improvement field or enjoy do-it-yourself projects, there’s a good chance you frequently visit a Home Depot store, or browse the its website.
And we want to help you save money, so we came up with a list of…
12 Ways to Save Money at Home Depot
Most of these work for just about anyone…
1. Buy a pre-owned gift card
Gift cards keep topping the chart as one of the most sought after gifts. However, not everyone is able or want to use them, and would rather get a cash instead. So what are they doing with a gift card they don’t need? They sell it at a discount. And that’s where you kick in to buy this pre-owned gift card and save. You can buy these gift cards for Home Depot at sites like Gift Card Granny and Raise. (Related: 7 Gift Card Hacks to Help You Save Money)
2. Get coupons & special deals
Home Depot is running special promotions all the time. You can grab their flyer (that usually has coupons) while in the store, or sign-up for the company’s free newsletter and get alerted when some deal is available. Also, you may want to check out their daily deals, tagged as “Special Buy of the Day,” that come with up to 31% discount. Word of warning: you shouldn’t be buying stuff just before they are on sale — if you want to save, you should buy only the things you need. So consult that list before buying anything new either from Home Depot or from any other merchant.
3. Join the Garden Club
Speaking of signing-up for newsletters… Gardeners will want to join the Home Depot Garden Club to benefit from special promotions that are delivered via email and through Home Depot’s mobile app. Right now, every new member — it’s free to join the club — gets $5 off their next purchase of $50 or more.
4. Take advantage of the low-price guarantee
For select items, Home Depot offers a low-price guarantee that “works” for both online and in-store purchases. For online purchases, Home Depot will match both the item price and shipping costs, while for in-store purchases — they vow to beat competitor prices on identical items by 10%. You will have to do some work in order to benefit from this policy, but it could be worth the effort. For one thing, you will have to prove that the item in question is really available for less on some other site or at some other store. An ad, printout or photo of the cash register will do the job. Several exclusions do apply to this policy, including custom products, open-box merchandise and stuff bought on auction sites.
5. Rent stuff
Many items you don’t need all the time, and there is no good reason why would you have to own them — you can rent them, instead. Home Depot lets you rent some of their products on an hourly, daily or weekly basis at a fraction of the cost. So take advantage of that.
6. Buy “oops” paint
This is the paint that a customer returned because it wasn’t the color they wanted. It is, naturally, offered with a steep discount as Home Depot can no longer sell it as new. The “oops” paint section offers one of the best discounts you can get at Home Depot, with cans that are usually sold for about $100 going for $30. That is one hard to beat deal.
7. Check out the Clearance Section
For one reason or another, this section is not easy to find it in many Home Depot locations, and some of the stores even don’t have it. If they do have a clearance section, it’s usually located at the very end of the store, and in that sense you are best off asking about it (rather than browsing the store looking for discounted items).
8. Get cash back on your online purchases with Ebates
No need to leave the money on the table, with Ebates offering anywhere between 1.5 and 5 percent cash back on every dollar you spend at Home Depot. So instead of visiting Home Depot’s website directly, do it through Ebates to benefit from their cash back offer — which BTW is available with a number of merchants.
9. Consider a Home Depot Credit Card
Like any other major merchant, Home Depot has its credit card (a few of them actually) that lets customers buy stuff with 0% APR. At the time of writing this article, the card offers 6-month interest-free financing on all purchases of $299 or higher. This could be useful for major home revamps, but as always — we advise you to pay your credit card balance in full, every month — to benefit from 0% at all times.
10. Military personnel get discounts…
Home Depot runs special deals for military personnel, active duty service members, and veterans. On Memorial Day, Veterans Day and Independence Day — they all get to benefit from a 10% discount, and the same applies to family members of disabled veterans.
11. Schools get tax-free shopping
This trick is only good for items that are purchased with school funds. So it’s just teachers and educators who could benefit from tax-free shopping at Home Depot… You will need a validly issued tax exemption to qualify and with it you can create a tax exempt ID on Home Depot’s website.
12. Learn how to do-it-yourself at Home Depot’s free workshop
And as a result, you won’t have to pay a contractor to carry out certain projects! Home Depot offers a number of free workshops for DIY projects during which you can learn new skills, and when the time comes for your own project — you will be able to do it without any third-party help.
Anything else?
As usual, we want your feedback to learn an additional trick or two we have failed to mention in this article. If you have something else to add — how you save at Home Depot — feel free to add that in the comments section below. We (and our readers) are always on the lookout for money-saving tips, so do help us out. Thanks. 😉
