Frugal February Prep: Gift Cards
Tomorrow we embark on our Frugal February adventure and there is still time for you to decide to join us! There is no commitment…I am not organized enough to have worksheets, sign-ups, daily newsletters to encourage you. Let’s be honest I write this blog for fun and for a creative outlet, not to add more stress to my life. Instead this is an informal gathering of like-minded friends who will commit to not spending for a month while frugalling up their homes.
I’ll be posting every day letting you know how we are doing in our quest to save money and get back to the basics of life. I need to post daily to keep myself accountable when things become difficult. I’m hoping our journey will inspire you to jump in and experience the fun on your own.
As we near ever closer to our starting date of February 1st we’ve been going through and figuring out what “rules and regulations” we are going to follow. Doesn’t that sound so official, lol?
One of the ways we’re being frugal is to use up what we already have. And some of those things to use up are gift cards. I went through all of the gift cards floating around our house and in my purse, sat down and called all of those phone numbers on the back of the cards. I wrote down how much is on each card.
The big question we’re now faced with is how to treat the extra money…do we consider them “free” money to be used for splurges and purchases? Or do we consider them to be money to be used for our regular spending for allowed purchases like grocery shopping?
The answer we came up with is…both.
For cards at places where they have groceries (think Costco, Walmart, etc) we will use those balances towards regular grocery shopping in an effort to lower what we are using from the household income to pay for expenses. The money not used towards groceries can then be put towards our savings.
As for the other gifts cards we’ve decided to use those if we decide and/or if we need to…perhaps for a gift purchase or for clothing needed we can use the gift cards to meet a need. When things get really hard or stressful I may choose to treat myself to a Starbucks using a gift card. We’ll see what the month holds and how we choose to use them.
So there you have it…that’s how we will be using our gift cards. But that may not be what you decide for your family. And that’s the beauty of this challenge! We can all follow different rules and still cheer one another on.
And if you’re like me, you might find that you have several cards with no balance or random wallet items that you no longer need. I was able to throw enough away that I could finally get my wallet to snap closed…something I hadn’t been able to do in ages!
Do you have gift cards lying around you haven’t used? Will you be using them during this Frugal February? Comment below!
