Bargain Quest

-Would you say that I had a plethora of gift cards?
-Oh yes.

15 is a lot more than I ever wanted to be hauling around in my purse. My collection now has its own rubber band to keep it separated from the rest of the junk floating around in there.

I’m accumulating them faster than I can spend them. Let’s tally up the values and how I came by them:

1. $60.31 - Actual gifts received in the form of gift cards (Chili’s, Outback, Ann Taylor)

2. $20.44 - Purchases we made that were returned without the right credit card to credit back to, ie: bought with my husband’s card and returned by me. My new rule is anything that we might possibly return goes on my credit card so I’m not saddled with a refund via store credit. (Books-A-Million, JCPenney)

3. $314.19 - Gifts returned with or without a receipt (Barnes & Noble, Steinmart, Macy’s, Sears, Dillards, Circuit Cityx2)

4. $23.42 - Kohl’s is a special case return, because I had a receipt and the corresponding credit card, but took the refund as a gift card to keep a discount that the returned item had qualified me for

5. $74.74 - Gift cards received for a rebate (Walgreen’s via EasySaver) or as a reward (Target w/Thank You Points for opening a Citi Professional credit card)

For the impressive grand total value of $493.10. I didn’t realize it was nearly that much ’til writing up this post. Tomorrow I’ll add my thoughts on getting the most out of gift cards…