Clutter Video Tip: Got Gift Cards? 3 Ways to Make Sure You Use Them

Each week we are posting a one-minute-ish quick video tip on something useful and practical that you can apply right away! Have you used those great gift cards you got for the holidays? Do you know where your gift certificates and special offers are? Or did you get a gift card that you aren’t exactly thrilled about? Don’t stash these cards and forget about them. (Click here to watch on YouTube if you can’t see the embedded player.)

Transcript:

Hi. I’m Lorie Marrero and today’s Clutter Video Tip is about gift cards. Did you know there are 30 billion dollars in unused gift cards out there? That’s over $300 per American household. So, let’s help you use those and enjoy them instead of having them in a pile somewhere.

One thing you can do is make sure they’re more visible so that you remember you have them. You can do something like this – a bulletin board on your backdoor where you have the gift cards right there available when you’re on your way out the door to that location you can just grab them and go.

Another thing you might think about is just keeping the gift cards in your wallet. You know, they really are just like cash. They spend like cash, so you can store them in your wallet with your cash. And if you don’t like the gift cards that you received, if you don’t shop at that store, for example, you can actually exchange them. Many people don’t realize there’s an entire gift card economy out there. There are many different websites where you can buy and sell the gift cards at a discount. One of my favorites is called plasticjungle.com. (Update August, 2016: This link is no longer active, please contact us at service@clutterdiet.com for updated information.)

If you are thinking about wallets and spending, you might want to know about our clutter prevention wallet reminder sleeves. These wallet sleeves contain the five most important questions you should ask before purchasing anything. So, you want to keep your favorite debit or credit card inside and then when you’re ready to spend, you can make sure you really need that item before you bring it in the door. You can find out more about that at clutterdiet.com/freetips.

See you next time, and may you always be happy and grateful for having more than enough.

You may have been looking for tips on how to manage spending or what to do with old gift cards.

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