Gift Cards

Since I've been working with the Total Money Makeover and trying to abide by Dave, I no longer carry any credit cards. I actually feel a little sad about this, because before I used to have a HUGE card organizer that held all my credit cards. I always thought I was impressing others with my huge collection. It took a horribly long time to realize I was just ruining my life with those little "money suckers". So now I'm addicted to gift cards. I try to "earn" them as often as I can.

Like Sunday, Target had in the circular that if you bought two specific paper items, you could get a gift card for $5.00. So I went and bought one of each of the advertised paper items, used a $0.35 coupon for one and a $0.75 coupon for the other and I STILL got my gift card. And considering that every other store was advertising similar paper products at the same price (with no gift card) I figure I got a GREAT deal. And seriously, a Target gift card ALWAYS comes in handy.

And just a side note: Walgreens does this rebate program, which I will explain more about later, that gives you your rebate back by gift cards or check. But, if you request the gift card, they automatically add an additional 10% of your rebate onto your card. Cool, huh?

I also earn gift cards through a website called MyPoints. It's pretty neat because they send you an e-mail or two just about every day. Almost every e-mail is worth 5 points. Plus, their surveys they send are worth at least 10 points and if you a qualify and finish them, it's 50 points. (These are actual surveys, they only want your opinion.) You can also earn points by shopping online. Just browse through their links and click on through. It depends on each store how many points you earn per dollar, but the least amount you can earn is 2 points per dollar, some have deals where you earn 10 points per dollar. And the stores aren't some crazy place you never heard of; nope. Gap, Joanne's, Target, Payless, eBay, some good places. You can also earn points by playing games, doing searches, and printing and using their coupons. It's really great. I almost always have enough points every month to cash in for at least a Starbucks gift card. The places you can redeem your points for are great, too. I've gotten gift cards to Circuit City, Target, Walgreens, Starbucks, Subway, Barnes & Noble and Gap. They also offer gift cards to restaurants and charities, it all depends on you.

Now that you have all of these cards, you need to check out one more place every gift card holder should have: leveragecard.com. On this website, after joining for free, you register your gift cards. All you need is the card number and it usually does the rest, so you don't have to scratch off the little PIN ID or anything like that. I did notice, however, with my Victoria Secret card, that I had to type in all the info, including the balance. Apparently the site is still new and they are trying to get more merchandisers to allow leverage access to gift cards. What I like about leverage is that they give you interest for the cards that they can verify. I haven't even been with them a month and I've already earned $0.04 cents for the few cards I have. You can also buy more gift cards and even trade your cards using this site.

Check out the sites. I by no means promise miracles by joining up with each site, I personally enjoy them. I love going somewhere and using a gift card that I earned. I love the fact that just by doing what I would normally do, someone sends me little plastic cards with money on them...which I can spend however I want. No budget attached.