So the other day, my dear husband was cleaning out his wallet.  “What’s this?” he said, pulling out a bunch of plastic cards.

Oh… nothing really.  Just the gift cards I had given him *7 months ago* when he moved across the country a month ahead of the rest of us, to make things a little easier on him while there.  They were all cards we’d bought as a part of a fundraising program at my son’s gymnastics club.  There were two cards for Subway, gas cards for Esso and Petro-Can, a card for Blockbuster, and a couple others.

There was at least $100 on these cards, and he had completely forgotten that he had them!

Since he, quite astutely, recognized that he would probably forget about them again if he kept them, he wisely gave them to me. 

Free Money!

After having completely forgotten that we had these, it was like getting free money.  It’s like when you dig out your winter coat from storage at the end of the fall and find a $20 bill in the pocket.

We’re really pinching pennies right now, having just had to buy a new computer, new car seat, and… oh yeah, the HOUSE… so we haven’t been able to do many trips out for fast food, for instance.  I know, I know, we’re better off… but it’s still something fun that Flipper and I like to do sometimes.

So we greatly enjoyed our “free” sub sandwiches!

Then we went to Blockbuster… Flipper also has a gift card he got for Christmas, worth exactly one Wii game rental for one week.  While there, we realized that our rewards membership thing had expired, so we bought a new one — that’s the thing where for $10 you get a ton of coupons, plus for another $10 you get another huge coupon book.  A great thing if you use them regularly, which we usually do.

One of the coupons was for a free month’s trial of their game rental program — for $30, you rent one game at a time, for up to one month.  Keep one game the whole time, or trade it in for another one every single day.  I had always thought it was an annual subscription kind of program, so waaaaaaay too expensive for us, since we don’t rent games that often.

But it’s actually not.  It’s a month at a time.  You can set it to auto-renew, or just buy one month.  It’s just an alternative method of managing game rentals.  If you know, for instance, that you have a month’s vacation and intend to spend it playing video games in your underwear the whole time, then spend the $30 and get all the games you want.  Apparently some people also use it when they get a new game system and want to try out a ton of games.  They’ll play a few hours on each game, trade for another one every day or even twice a day, and keep a list of the ones they liked.  After the month, they rent one they liked the ‘regular’ way for a week to play it through, or buy it outright if it’s worth it.

So with this free coupon, and others from the package, we walked out of the store with his game (which he can keep the whole month if he likes, or get another one later), a Wiggles movie for Pomme, two bags of microwave popcorn (another unhealthy but enjoyable treat lol), and tons more coupons for later.  And the total cost to us?

$0.  Because the old gift card covered it.  And Flipper still has his week-rental card to save for another game!

On the way home, I stopped for a free tank of gas at Petro-Can.

Now, does anyone know where I can find a lost gift card for a year’s worth of mortgage payments?

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