Wednesday, May 7

Didn't Work for Me: Gift Card Budgeting

In theory, budgeting with gift cards was great. In reality, we didn't even make it one month.

What didn't work:
  • My spending at various stores is somewhat inconsistent
    There is one store where I spend the majority of my grocery money, and another where I buy the majority of my specialty items. However, I don't spend the same proportion of the total at each store regularly. Depending on what I'm planning to cook in the upcoming week or two, I may need more items from the specialty store. Additionally, sometimes my local grocer has a great sale on a few items that I want to purchase. Because store fliers usually are only published weekly, I wouldn't know at the beginning of a given month whether or not I'd be buying 18 pounds of butter three weeks later.
  • Two words: cheap(er) gas
    While no gas is cheap these days (we're up over $3.75 a gallon here), I do generally look to buy gas at the lowest price available. Often that's at one of two local stations, but sometimes there will be a better deal somewhere else. I really didn't like the idea that I'd have to pay more for gas, just because I didn't have the right card.
  • Generic gift cards come with fees
    I had considered purchasing a portion of my budget in basic Visa or American Express gift cards to deal with some of the issues above. Unfortunately, for a $50 card, I'd have to pay a $3-$5 activation fee. I wasn't willing to spend up to 10% of my budget for the privilege of using my own money.
So, there you have it. What sounded like such a good idea at the time, in actual practice really didn't work for me.

Check out more cautionary tales at this week's special WFMW: What DOESN'T Work For Me.

2 comments:

  1. That's interesting. I am considering doing gift card budgeting, but I only go to WalMart and Albertson's, and Costco Gas. I've found a website that donates 1% of your gift card purchases to charity. Appreciate your perspective on this!

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  2. I'm also trying the gift card budget idea. At the beginning of each month I'm going to buy three cards: Walmart, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon.com. The amount is always going to be the same for each card, that way my monthly bank statement will remain a constant. I won't always spend everything on each card every month, but each consequent month I will spend the remainder of the previous month's card before I spend a single dollar on the current month's card. It's much easier to have a bank statement that reads : transaction #1: $150.00 than it does to have one with thirty transactions for amounts ending in 7, 3, 6, 9 and/or 1. When it comes to money, the mind prefers 5s and 0s (mostly 0s.)

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