Why you should clean out your room...

So for a recent challenge, I cleaned out my master bedroom.  You would not believe what I found!  One of my biggest finds was unused gift cards.  You see, when I got gift cards, I would put the ones that I knew I needed right away in my wallet, and the others I would just place in my night stand to grab when I needed them.  Well after a few years this meant that i had a ton of cards in my drawer and no clue how much money was on ANY of them.  So I used the internet and my phone to try and find the balances.


First I set them all on the couch and sorted them by type...

 Then I started looking up/calling to find the balances.  When I did, I wrote the balance on a post-it and wrapped it around the card.

Here were my highest and lowest balances remaining:

My total of UNUSED gift card money, some of which was over 3 years old was $464.30

Look at all the money we can use at these stores without dipping into our budget!  So excited (why didn't I do this before?)

Ralphs - $10

Mobil - $25

Starbucks - $45.80

Barnes and noble - $20

Walmart - $25

Target – $15.05

Visa - $10

AmEx - $75.51

Coldstone - $10.84

McDonalds - $10

Sees Candy - $5

Olive Garden $ .82

Crate and Barrel - $50

Babies R Us - $14.51

Costco – $11.66

Macy’s $126.95

Best Buy $8.16

Do you have any unused gift cards laying around?  Check them out, you may discover you have more buying power than you thought!

Cheers,

Ashley