Do you use gift cards?  I’ve had several in my wallet for the past year, but I hesitate to use them because I never know what the remaining balance is.  I mean, do you know how embarrassing it is to try to use a gift card when you don’t know what the actual balance is – you know that there IS a balance – but they decline your transaction?  Yeah, that happened to me at Wal-Mart last week.

I wanted to insist that I wasn’t a scammer trying to hijack the items on the conveyor belt, since the pitying look the cashier was giving me made me feel that way.  GAH!  This is why I stay home in my yoga pants and order things from Amazon, people!

One of the solutions I came up with was to write in permanent marker directly on the card, but you can see above that even that will rub off and then I’m back to square one.

I’ve seen other people stick tape or blank labels directly onto the cards to write the balance on, but that can sometimes interfere with the cashier swiping the card.  So this is my solution:

A post it note.  It will stick to the card, and I can write directly onto it, but I can whip it off and hand the card to the cashier or swipe it myself and stick the updated post it right back onto the card.  Easy-peasy.

How do you keep up with your balances?

P. S.  Gift cards make excellent gifts!

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