Happy Friday! It's the end of the grading period, so Kiddo had the day off of school. We ran out to the thrift store to drop off donations, then picked up the groceries. She's been ostensibly cleaning her room since.
I had a realization in January that the gift card bag didn't comfortably close anymore. Every time we receive gift cards as gifts, rewards, refunds, or purchase bonuses, I toss them all into a little zipper bag so I can find them again. Just about every system I have created is a firm recognition that I do not trust myself to remember what I did with something, and this is no exception. Any time I find one floating around the house for this reason or that, it also gets thrown in the bag. The idea is that I will use them when we go to those places. My success has been spotty at best--the gifts get used, but many of the rewards and refunds sit there, partly because the part of my brain that is looking for everything to fall apart has decided that these are supposed to be part of the emergency fund. It's getting ridiculous in there, so I decided I would try for a month in which I did as much of our shopping as possible with gift cards. It's a suggestion of some financial gurus to kickstart debt payoff, if you're in that boat. January just turned out to be one of those months that would have been disastrous if I had added any more tasks, so it fell by the wayside.
Fast forward to a couple weeks ago, when I found a couple more gift cards in the garage and attempted to put them in the gift card bag. Not a good moment. We are now in Low-Spend November. My first task was to load all the Target gift cards onto the website. I had clearly not spent very many of the cards from the gift card sales that Target puts on every December (10% off gift cards up to the limit--I call it the Make-Your-Own-Sale), so we came up with a total that caused my husband to bring up the fact that Target sells Lego. I'll be sending a wedding gift next week for already-paid-for (I'm loathe to say that it's free, because we did pay for a lot of those gift cards), and groceries also did not hit any of our accounts. Tonight, for Takeout Friday, we will be utilizing the fast food gift cards my mother presents to us every Christmas. Sadly, I never remember I have them until after I've paid for the food, so we have a backlog that should feed us happily for the month. Some week, when I'm feeling fancy, I'll use the restaurant card from my sister's Date Night gift that was supposed to get used in the spring, before our plans changed.
I'm only using the gift cards of the big corporations for this activity, though. I plan to continue to pay full price at the locals, even if I do have a gift card. They need all the dollars they can get right now. It reminds me of my time in undergrad. One of the benefits of being a theatre major was a complimentary season ticket to all of the shows. It was practical, since we were expected to see everything in performance, and many of our classes included assignments related to the performances. A few times, though, the show would be selling amazingly well, and we would be encouraged to see the shows in final tech /dress rehearsal, or at the brush-up performance on the Wednesday of the second week of the run. The chairman of the department, aware of the tight margins for funding, wanted us to make it possible for them to sell more tickets at full price. I'm treating the small businesses the same way--if I can swing it, I'm ignoring the gift cards or prepaid things to pay for everything right now, rather than making them depend on their reserves. I'm also brainstorming ways to show up more for the little guy right now. In our corner of suburbia, it's really easy to do just about everything through big corporations. Within a mile or so, for restaurants, we have McDonald's, Burger King, Jack in the Box, Panda Express, Popeye's, Round Table Pizza, Mountain Mike's Pizza, Taco Bell, Subway, Papa Murphy's, Starbucks, and Black Bear Diner. We can also easily select from Target, WalMart, Raley's, Rite Aid, Dollar Tree, Home Depot, Lowe's, Safeway, Costco, CVS, Grocery Outlet, 99 Cents Only, and a myriad of others within a seven-mile radius for groceries and home goods. I do my best to go to Ace Hardware, which is independently owned, first for our home fixes, and I'm working on my family to expand their culinary expectations to include the downtown diners a bit more. We usually order treats from the groups that are out of their regular business plan due to the fairs shutting down. My holiday planning already includes several independent artists, but I wonder if I can do more. Those of us who have something to spare need to use the power in our wallets to help lift up the people who are trying to keep their businesses afloat. There are a lot of people at crisis point right now, and we have to do more to defend the vision we have of our hometowns.
In other news: is there anything cuter than a toddler who can't decide whether to take a nap in the high chair or eat? Tiny was extra cute tonight, waking herself up by dropping her chicken nuggets. She is definitely not tired, though, and she is insulted by the mere suggestion that she might want to go to bed.
No comments:
Post a Comment