By ERIN TURNER
It happened to me just today…I ended up at a restaurant that I have a gift card to and guess what? I left the gift card at home! Grrrr! So frustrating to miss that opportunity to save some money!
Our society has embraced the gift card as an easy yet thoughtful gift for birthdays, thank you’s or Christmas. If your household is like mine, you have a stack of them in a place waiting to be used for a special dinner or just whenever you want to use it.
I found the perfect spot in my house for them and we all know they are there and we all check them whenever we are headed out. The only problem is…well, unless we absolutely plan to frequent one of those places we leave them in their “perfect spot”. But in all reality, we sometimes end up going into stores or restaurants which weren’t in our plan.
So, as of today I’ve taken those gift cards and shifted them to a binder. If you’ve read any of my couponing posts then you know all about the Coupon Binder. A gift card binder is the same idea…having all your cards sorted and in something which is portable.
For my coupons, I bought page protector for currency. They have three pockets on each page which are slightly bigger than a dollar bill. While these work great for the coupons and can work for the gift cards, I think a better option is the baseball card protectors. You can pick them up at Walmart for pretty cheap. A gift card would slide into those pockets like dream! In fact, it might be so pretty that you wouldn’t to use the gift cards! Ha!
I sorted the cards into categories and labeled them. This way I know what we have and it’s easy to see and access the cards. So, when my husband suggests stopping for lunch (as he did today), I can flip open my binder to the restaurant gift cards and make a decision on the location based on what we have in the binder!
Now, initially I thought I’d leave the binder in my car and that way I’d never be caught without it. But as I thought more about that, I concluded that was probably not a safe idea. If my car got broken in to, I would end up losing a lot of money in gift cards. So, a word to the wise…treat your gift cards just like cash. You wouldn’t leave a wad of cash sitting in your car so you shouldn’t leave a stack of gift cards!
I am just putting the binder close to where I gather my things before heading out the door. It’s visible and accessible so there is no reason why I should leave home without it.
By having this binder all sorted and ready, I will never be caught off guard by an unexpected trip to a place for which I have a gift card. This helps my budget, it uses the resources I’ve been gifted and it is just plain smart!
Plus having the binder with me for every outing will also remind me to use what I have! In sorting our cards out, I noticed I have lots of coffee shop gift cards! I’m so excited because coffee from a coffee shop is a treat for me…it’s just not in my budget to spend money regularly on coffees. But with these gift cards, I can indulge and not worry about spending a dime of my budget. Watch out Latte heaven, here I come!
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Erin Eisenman-Turner is proud to be a native Missoulian. Along with her husband and three sons, they raise chickens, pigs, rabbits, and vegetables at Turner Family Farms in the Orchard Homes area. When the farm chores are done, the coupons clipped, and the blog written, you can find Erin exploring Montana, collecting antiques, and trying to maintain a well-run, happy, and organized home for her family. Read more of Erin’s blogs about homesteading, farming, homemaking and other fun things at TurnerFarmLiving.com
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