Use your gift cards

A few weeks have passed since the holidays, which means that most likely you’ve already forgotten a lot of what was given and received. But here’s something you shouldn’t forget: any gift cards you got! Make a plan to use anything you or your family members received in the next few weeks.

I’ve been thinking of this because next week I will finally be using a restaurant gift card I got back in April. There’s really no reason to let it wait that long. If we’re talking a local place, it’s probably easier for their book keeping to redeem the gift card close to when it was purchased. And if we’re talking a big company like Amazon, well, they don’t need to be sitting on that extra capital! Why not put it to use?

I know this can take some planning, so if your kid got a gift card to a shop at the mall, see if there’s a window you can go next weekend. You might try to batch this, so someone goes to Claire’s, someone else goes to Dick’s Sporting Goods, and so forth. Then maybe you all go out to eat at a restaurant where you have a gift card. Play your “cards” right and it can be a cheap adventure.

If the gift cards are redeemable online, you can add this to your weekend to-do list. Sit down with the kids who received cards and look through the available merchandise. If the person isn’t sure (some people are both indecisive and under-buyers), and it’s something like an Amazon gift card, you might give the person cash for future use and convert the gift card to your usual household spending (if your house is anything like mine…we order a lot of random one-off things there). That way at least an unused card isn’t sitting around.

And if you got a card? Try to buy something fun. The best presents are often things you’d like but that you probably wouldn’t buy yourself. So adopt that same mindset while shopping.

But do try to do this shopping. I know I’ve found old gift cards sitting under piles of stuff or when we’ve cleaned out kids’ rooms. Those unused cards haven’t been doing anything for anybody (well, except for Amazon or Target’s bottom line). Better to put them to work.