Yet another holiday season has passed and many Americans have a new stack of gift cards to spend during post-holiday sales or throughout the year. For 2021, the average shopper spent about $200 on gift cards over the holiday season. that’s roughly a  five percent increase from 2020.

But what do you do with all those gift cards? Read on to find out:

Gift Card Basics

According to a Ben’s Bargains Gift Card Study of approximately 2,300 online shoppers, over 70 percent of the respondents received at least one gift card during the holiday season. In addition, more than a third of respondents received three or more gift cards during the holiday season.

After you receive a gift card, there are a number of simple steps you should take in order to properly manage your newly received gift.

1. Make a copy. If you are prone to misplacing gift cards, make a copy if you have a scanner / printer. If you do not have that hardware on hand, simply write down the gift card number and issuer’s toll-free number on a piece of paper. You could also take a photo of the card if you have a digital camera or smartphone. If for any reason that the card is lost, you will have a record in order to complete a purchase.
2. Read the terms and conditions. Not always found on the actual gift card, the terms and conditions outline restrictions, usage fees, expiration dates and time decay rate on the card. While many major retailers are lenient on these restrictions, major issuers of cash cards (American Express, Discover, MasterCard and Visa) can charge a fee for use after an expiration date on the actual card.
3. Check the balance before going shopping. The vast majority of retailers have online tools that allow gift card owners to check the balance of their card. In addition, the company will include a toll free number to check the same information. I like to check balances every few months, mostly because it acts as a reminder to utilize the card for purchases.

Managing Several Gift Cards

Another interesting fact from our recent study: over 45 percent of the respondents have lost a gift card at least once and nearly one fourth of all respondents have lost gift cards on multiple occasions. Regarding monetary value, approximately 40 percent of the respondents received gift cards this year totaling at least $100 and 10 percent breaking $250 in total value.

With such a large volume of cards being given each year, here are a few tips to help you better manage large quantities of gift cards:

1. Register your gift card. Usually a feature found on an online retail site, you can log into your account and apply the gift card immediately instead of waiting for a purchase. This is an ideal way to get the gift card ready for use without actually using it. If the card is limited to a brick & mortar location, it’s possible that the retailer could still allow you to register the card in case of theft or loss.
2. Turn multiple cards into one card. Some retailers offer gift card transfer options, specifically those that are limited to brick & mortar locations like restaurants. Starbucks, for instance, will allow you to transfer balances between gift cards as long as you have the gift card number and the security number (usually has to be scratched to be viewed). This is ideal if you received multiple gift cards for the same store, but don’t want to carry around all of them.
3. Look into smartphone app storage. There is an app available for both iOS and Android called Gyft. This application will allow you to store all your gift cards in one place, your smartphone. Rather than carrying all those cards around in your wallet or purse, the card information will be brought up on screen for use in a store. In turn, cards uploaded to Gyft can be added to Apple’s Passbook application for easy access with other cards like rewards cards.

What to do with Unwanted Gift Cards

When we asked our users about what gifts they dislike receiving each year, over 20 percent of respondents said that they do not like receiving gift cards. It’s likely that some people simply don’t like the impersonal nature of gift cards and others aren’t interested in the retailer. Of course, there are plenty of ways to get rid of gift cards in order to get something you actually want. Here are some ideas:

1. Sell your gift cards. In addition to auction sites like eBay, there are sites specifically dedicated to purchasing gift cards and are somewhat easier to deal with than the auction process. Utilizing sites like Raise and GiftCardGranny, you can sell your gift card for 50 to 90 percent of the total gift card value very quickly. People that use these services are typically paid cash through a Paypal transaction. However, be aware that eBay auctions are typically between 80 to 95 percent of the value of the card, but you will have to deal with additional eBay fees.
2. Donate your gift cards. If you simply don’t need the gift cards or the cash value, consider donating the cards through a service like DonorsChoose or your favorite local charity. Many nonprofits will accept gift cards in order to pay for needed items, like clothing or food for a homeless shelter. Think of it as a more honorable form of regifting. These donations are also tax-deductible, assuming you itemize those deductions during tax time.
3. Convert your gift cards. Interestingly, some retail establishments will allow you to convert your unwanted gift cards into reward points, airline miles or other gift cards. For instance, CVS allows you to convert another retailer’s gift card into a CVS gift card. The same goes for United airline miles and Best Buy reward points. If you received one of those prepaid Visa or MasterCard gift cards, a Reddit user discovered you can convert it into Google Wallet funds and use a physical Google Wallet card to withdraw those funds from an ATM.

The Complete Guide for Managing Your Gift Cards (so you don’t lose them)

Do you have a Visa gift card from last year that has a remaining balance of $2.73?  Did your great Aunt Erma send you a gift card for the Old Country Buffet? Did you receive yet another $5 Starbucks gift card that’s probably going to get lost before you spend it? Did you receive a gift card for a retailer that’s an hour drive away and doesn’t have an online site?

Fear not, you can convert those gift cards into something you can actually use; cash or perhaps something as good as cash, an Amazon gift card. Here are a number of options to convert your unwanted gift cards:

Option 1: Turn your Visa gift card into an Amazon gift card.

Particularly useful when you have a few Visa / Mastercard / AMEX / Discover gift cards with a few bucks left on each, converting these will let you bank all the balances on your Amazon account.

1. Log into your Amazon account, go to your account page and add your gift card as a payment option.
2. Check your remaining balance on the card (either online or via phone), then go to an Amazon eGift card page. Set the remaining amount as the eGift card’s value and put your own email address in as the recipient.
3. Go back to your Account page, click Gift Cards and apply the gift card code (received via email) to your balance.

Option 2: Sell your gift card on a 3rd party gift card site.

There are a number of these types of sites, CardPool, CardCash, Raise, etc… Ultimately, you are going to take a percentage hit when selling the card, but you will have something more valuable if you weren’t planning on using the card in the first place.

Here are some examples with a $50 Best Buy card (as of 12/26/19):

• Cardpool: Offers a check for $40.00 or an Amazon gift card for $42.50. (You also have the option of selling the gift card on the marketplace for a slightly higher rate, but it will take longer).
• CardCash: Offers a check / direct deposit / Paypal for $43.50 or an Amazon gift card for $45.02.
• Raise: Offers payout via check / direct deposit / Paypal for $41.56. (This is paid out when the card sells on the site. It will sell faster based on your price, but your payout could drop.)

Payment values will vary based on the popularity of the retailer. eBay is also an option, however gift cards typically sell up to 20% off the original value, then you also take a hit on eBay fees and potentially PayPal fees.

Option 3: Use a Gift Card Exchange forum

The most popular one of these is probably the sub-Reddit, r/giftcardexchange/. You do have you educate yourself on rules of trading and make sure you are trading with a legit person. Another good trading forum is CheapAssGamer; great for video game related trades as well as gift cards.

Option 4: Donate your Gift Cards

Some charities will allow you to donate gift cards, regardless of the size of the balance. You can claim it as a charitable contribution at tax time, assuming you itemize.  Check with your local charity to see if this is an option.

Option 5: Sell your gift card using Craigslist / Facebook Groups

While meeting in-person to sell a gift card isn’t the easiest option, you can typically get a good return. Make sure you meet in a public place and have access to Wi-Fi / LTE service to verify the balance of the card for them. It’s an easy way to make quick cash (without getting hit up by online fees) or barter a trade for another item.

How to convert gift cards you don’t want into cash / Amazon gift cards

As the 2016 shopping season approaches, we will start to see flash sales and discounts that rival or even beat Black Friday prices as October comes to a close. Deals such as $400 tablets marked down to $99, $60 video games marked down to $5, etc… These type of deals will only get more frequent as we move into November, thus it’s important that you start to budget out the money you want to spend on gifts (or yourself) this holiday season.

With that in mind, there’s an extremely useful trick to saving even more money on holiday purchases that the majority of shoppers typically overlook each year, discount gift cards. While it requires a predictive strategy to deciding where you want to spend your holiday purchasing dollars, you can easily save 10% on holiday purchases, perhaps even 20%.

As of late, the best place to score solid discounts on gift cards has been eBay. For example, GiftCardMall recently ran an eBay promotion yesterday that offered a $100 Toys R Us gift card for a 15% discount at $85. By purchasing two cards (the limit), a parent that needed to shop for toys now has $200 of purchasing power at Toys R Us for just $170.

In addition, you can tie that into a service like eBates or Upromise to get an extra 1% back, bringing the cost down to $168.30. (You will also earn 2% in eBay dollars that can be redeemed the following quarter.)

Of course, a 15% percent discount for a Toys R Us card is fairly rare. On discount gift card sites like Cardpool and Raise, the typical discount on a Toys R Us card is between 5 to 7 percent. The same goes for other popular merchants, like Walmart, Target and Best Buy. (That’s not much better than some credit card rewards programs.) You have to watch deal sites to spot the flash sales that discount cards between 10% to 20%. For example, GiftCardMall followed up that Toys R Us sale with a Sears gift card on eBay that’s 15% off.

The best way to approach this method of spending is to analyze your holiday shopping bills over the last few years. Figure out where you most frequently spend your holiday shopping dollars as well as the total dollar mount spent at each store. This will allow you to guesstimate where you will make purchases this year.

In addition, be on alert for stores that sell gift cards to other retailers. Toys R Us, for instance, sells gift cards in the store for other merchants. You can turn your 15% discount at Toys R Us into a discount at Amazon or another popular retailer. You can also use gift card exchange services on sites like Cardpool or GiftCardZen to exchange that card for another merchant’s card.

Three Extra Tips

1. Most merchants will also allow you to combine multiple gift cards into one, making it easier to keep track if you are purchasing multiple cards at a time. You can also use multiple gift cards on retail sites during the checkout process, although limits differ between retailers. Check out Ben’s Complete Guide to Managing Gift Cards for more information.
2. Wait for the best sales during November to take advantage of your recently purchased gift cards and remember that you don’t have to spend all of it. Most retailer gift cards have a fairly long shelf life and can come in handy over the next several months. Just think of it as an instant discount on anything you purchase.
3. The best time to score discount gift cards, beyond flash sales, is after major holidays. For instance, check the week after Christmas to see a flood of unwanted gift cards being listed on various discount sites as well as eBay. Due to the increased volume, you can score some excellent deals. Combine that with planning out your purchases over the next few months to maximize your spending power even more.

The secret to saving 10% to 20% on top of Black Friday sale prices

For every year the movie theaters and production companies want to edge that ticket price up ever so slightly, the premium on gift cards rises right along with it. You may be holding one such card in your hand right now. Before you go on calculating just how much popcorn and candy you can shove into your pockets at once, you’re going to need to choose a movie to see first.

January movies can often be among the year’s best. That’s when all the Oscar contenders make their final push for publicity and public favor, hitting wide release after gaining accolades on the art house market. If you’re feeling up for a “serious” outing, the following should suit your high-minded need:

A Most Violent Year

Though Jessica Chastain is certainly the biggest name here, both her and Oscar Isaac have been slowly growing their respective reputations as front runners for the best scripts around. Chastain made her go with Kathryn Bigelow’s Oscar-winner Zero Dark Thirty and Isaac hit his stride in the Coen Brothers’ sorrowfully underplayed Inside Llewyn Davis. Why not have the two meet up as a power couple in a moody New York City, towing the line between gangster violence and running an honest business?

A Most Violent Year is reviewing quite well in the run-up to wide release, critics lauding the two stars, each pulsating in this unique marital duet of subversive and understated power against each other and the violent world around them. Also, it’s a chance to see Isaac before he explodes onto the scene in next year’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

American Sniper

You’ve likely already seen that one trailer. Bradley Cooper is sitting behind a high-power sniper rifle, surveying a modern-day Middle East war zone as a young boy and a woman cross his sights. One of them has a bomb and it’s his terrible decision to make. Don’t expect to exit the theater laughing. Cooper plays real-life United States SEAL Chris Kyle, the sniper with the most recorded kills in U.S. history.

This true story hits the big screen under the often quiet and contemplative direction of Clint Eastwood. He seems to have found the perfect western twang in Cooper as the two wrestle with America’s wars through the narrowed scope of one very dangerous man. Though critics aren’t completely torn, some are praising the film’s realism and directness in its approach to the toll of war on one man and his family, while others just highlight Cooper’s performance and deride the tunnel vision Eastwood’s taken to the subject matter.

Selma

Of all the movies on this list, Selma screams Oscar the absolute most. Is it a true story? Yes. Is it about a universally revered man who crafted great change? Yes. Does it reflect an alarming relevancy to current events? You betcha. Martin Luther King Jr. goes front and center, portrayed by David Oweloyo with eerie likeness, as he leads the fateful civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.

Reception is all around great. The critics are soaking in the film’s biographical approach, similar to Spielberg’s Lincoln for its ability to fully examine King within a short window, rather than some sprawling, epic life story. Protesters and other players get their fair share of screen time as well, all the more highlighting King’s own contributions to the cause as well as everybody else’s.

Inherent Vice

Everything about Inherent Vice is deliberately oddball, but we’d expect no less from acclaimed director Paul Thomas Anderson. Whereas with previous award-winners Magnolia and There Will Be Blood Anderson dripped humor in around the drama, this time around he’s gone full nutjob and perhaps created his most divisive film yet. Some love it, some hate it. That’s not too surprising for a film based off a novel from Thomas Pynchon, whose prose is as complex as it is oft tangential.

Joaquin Phoenix bobs his way through the reportedly jumpy script as private detective in the groovy ’60s and ’70s, bumping heads with an eclectic cast along the way. There’s a kidnapping plot somewhere in there, but it’s more about the shenanigans than the middle, beginning and end. In that order.

If those three movies are meant to be taken seriously, then the following two are how we relax. Perhaps the Academy frowns upon action heroes and far-flung plots, but we casual moviegoers know better. It’s about the entertainment, after all.

Blackhat

At first glance, Blackhat and its starring man, Chris Hemsworth, seem a bit too far-fetched, a bit too fantastical to fit into the hacker-turned-hero casting call of this latest thriller. The trailers depict a lot of people yelling none-too-interesting bits of hooha about evil hackers and good hackers and all the innocent bystanders standing in between all the geniuses. Only one detail should stand out, but it’s one that matters. This is all from director Michael Mann, the guy who brought us Heat, Collateral and The Last of the Mohicans.

He doesn’t put out a film all that often (the last one, Public Enemies, hit in 2009), so it’s worth paying attention when he does. Mann’s best films dig into the psyches of criminals, the kind we love and the kind we hate, so the world-disrupting hackers of Blackhat is a great start. Expect the best kind of old-school thriller/action scene-setting with just a touch of modern paranoia. Maybe more than a touch.

Taken 3

Let’s admit this right now: Taken 2 was a rushed mess completely derivative of the first, far superior film. Shame on us, let’s try and get fooled again. The best evidence towards Taken 3 outdoing its predecessor is the primary marketing line for the film: It Ends Here. It’s the first of the series to take place primarily in the U.S., with constantly underestimated hero Brian Mills on the run in L.A. after the murder of his wife. He has to protect his last remaining family member, that daughter that can’t seem to figure out how to run, by doing sweet action stunts and driving cars into stuff that cars wouldn’t normally drive into.

This is the Liam Neeson series that inspired a million Liam Neeson movies, so it deserves our respect. Forest Whitaker classes up the joint as the guy on Neeson’s tail. His investigation is going to blow Mills’ mysterious past wide open, and with an end clearly in sight the writers have no limit to the pain and suffering they can bring their ill-fated hero. To be clear, that’s a good thing for the audience.

Predestination

You’d be forgiven for having no idea that this movie existed before reading this article. Directing duo the Spierberg Brothers and Ethan Hawke, who previously collaborated with the vampire flick Daybreakers, go for time travel next. Predestination gives us Hawke as a Temporal Agent, a special dude who saves people’s lives by preventing stuff from happening, jumping from decade to decade, from head trip to rabbit hole, all the while mentoring another time traveler portrayed by newcomer Sarah Snook.

Hawke knows sci-fi and the Spierberg Brothers seem to be gaining traction in their clean, mind-bending style. This one’s got a chance to hit cult status down the line, so if you want to be hip you need to get on the bandwagon while it”s still just a wagon. In this scenario you’d be the band, making you the coolest cat around.

7 January Movies Worthy of Using Your Holiday Gift Card

Amazon’s new Surprise! app needs to know something. Take a quick moment and evaluate whether any of these agree with you:

• You often receive passive aggressive text messages from family members “gently” reminding you that an anniversary, holiday or birthday is coming up.
• You’d rather just buy a gift card and get it over with, and you’re okay with getting gift cards in return.
• eCards are better than real cards, because trees.
• eCards are better than real cards, because animation.
• An eCard and a gift card are the peanut butter and jelly of the Internet.
• Amazon lives in your wallet.

If you nodded your head, then you’re in luck. Amazon will never let you forget to give somebody a gift. Ever again. The Surpise! app, just released on the app store currently sitting in your pocket or purse, does a number of things better than your brain. It keeps a calendar of gift-giving events, reminds you of those events and, finally, let’s you send an eCard packaged nice and tight with an Amazon gift card.

The calendar in Amazon’s iOS and Android Surprise! App.

eCards in Amazon’s iOS and Android Surprise! App.

Customization in Amazon’s iOS and Android Surprise! App.

Here’s the iOS version and here’s the Android version. The eCards are fairly simple at the moment, albeit with a small dose of customization. Users can insert photos, videos, audio and text into the templates. If the app is a success, expect a much more robust version in the future. And coming from the laziest among them, this thing is going to be a hit.

And for those who’ve long settled for the innocent shrug on those very special days, avert your eyes and make sure your parents never hear of this horrifying invention.

Amazon’s New Surprise! App Keeps the Laziest Gift Shoppers on Their Toes