So, you are thinking about taking on a home improvement project, but you aren’t sure about how you are going to pay for it. Well, luckily for you, you have several options to choose from and, depending upon your situation, you may even be able to make some cash off of your home improvement project or at least borrow the money without having to pay any interest. Stick with me and I will tell you how.

The first financing method most homeowners consider is the home equity loan. There are two different types of home equity loans for you to select from. The traditional type will give you a lump sum of cash that you will have to pay off with regular monthly payments. The other is called a home equity line of credit and works much like a credit card, which means you don’t pay on it unless you borrowed from it. Both of these loans can be a great option if you have built up equity in your home because they generally have low interest rates and you may be able to write off the finance charges on your taxes.

Depending upon your financial situation, you might also want to consider using a credit card. I know, I know. Everyone always hears that using credit cards is a bad idea. But, if you play the game right, it could actually work out quite nicely. When doing my kitchen remodeling project, I actually managed to make money from my credit cards. How? Let me tell you.

First, the appliances I liked were from Lowe’s. So, when it came time to purchase them, I applied for a credit card through the store and got an introductory offer of no interest for the first 6 months. So, that was a free loan that I could postpone paying for a few months. Since I purchased the appliances all at one time, I was able to take advantage of a special rebate offer and a sale that saved us over $1,000. By getting the card paid off before the six months was over, I paid absolutely nothing on the loan. In order to use this method, however, you need to be certain you can pay off the card within the allotted time period. You also need to avoid using the card for any other purchases until you have paid off the purchases you made at the introductory rate. Otherwise, the new purchases will be charged a high interest rate and, when you send in payments, that money will go toward the 0% interest rate purchases instead.

When it came to many of my other kitchen purchases, I used my rewards credit card and paid it off at the end of each billing cycle. This way, I didn’t have to spend anything on finance charges and I earned reward points. By the time all was said and done, we actually made a couple hundred dollars off of our rewards cards. Since we were doing the work ourselves and the project ended up stretching out over several months, we were able to use the credit cards and get them paid off each month.

The only expense that we had to pay interest on was the cabinetry and counters, which we purchased all at the same time. In order to save here, we used a credit card check that waived the check fees and offered a very low interest rate that was better than what you would get with an equity loan. Again, you have to watch it with these checks because they can really hit you with some terrible fees. If you are smart about it, however, you can get a lower interest rate without having to put your house on the line by taking out an equity loan!