5 Top Uses For Christmas Cash
Christmas is over. But many people receive cash and gift cards as gifts during the Christmas season. Often people will spend it on essentials like rent or food. But some people want to get more out of that gift spending and that’s what this article is all about. We came up with 5 of the top uses for Christmas cash.
1. Give It Away To Charity – Many believe that what goes around comes around and what better way to give to the Karmic atmosphere than by giving the money away to those that need it most. You may already have your own charities that you like to give to. Or you can search around for others. One thing that is usually lacking after the Christmas season passes is charitable giving. There are various stores that will gives a portion of the profits to charity. One such example is The Greater Good! They work with various vendors and will contribute to selected charities based on your purchases.
2. Set Up A Trust Fund For Your Kids’ College – Sure, it may not be a lot of money and college costs go up every year. But every little bit helps. And there are creative solutions that can actually help you put money aside when you purchase items that you would buy anyway. One example of this is UPromise.
3. Buy Something Frivolous – If you think about it, when do you ever get to do this? When’s the last time you were able to put some time into your favorite hobby? If that is what you are into, you can get some ideas from HobbyTron. They run daily deals with some fantastic prices.
4. Buy a Gift For Your Significant Other – At the time of this writing, Valentine’s Day is just a little over a month away. Why not use the excess Christmas cash to give something nice for your spouse or partner. If that is the direction you choose to go with spending your cash, you could consider unique romantic chocolate gifts delivered worldwide from France.
5. Start An Online Business – It’s never been easier to start a business today with the advent of the internet. But many people try to wing it when doing so and end up doing all the wrong things that waste time and money. What’s worse is that those wrong activities can lead them into the wrong side of the law. It’s always best to learn how to do this right with proper instruction and support.
What About Those Gift Cards?
These five top uses described above will only work with cash. But what if you received a bunch of gift cards? If they are Visa or Mastercard gift cards, they can easily be applied to the ideas above. But if they are store specific cards and don’t match the vendors, you will not be able to use the cards for the top uses – unless you redeem your gift cards for cash.
Many people don’t realize that there is a huge secondary market for gift cards. Sure, you’ll give up some of the cash value of the card as a fee but this is not really too much of an issue if the card you received is from a store that you would not typically buy from anyway. For stores that you would buy from, you could simply wait until you have something you wish to buy from that store and then use the card then.
If you have some excess cards that you want to cash in, CardPool offers an exchange for you to buy or sell your gift cards. You never have to deal with the counter party yourself. CardPool will act as the middleman and take up both sides of the transaction. It’s a great way to use cash that you wouldn’t normally be able to do. Signing up for CardPool is completely free as well.
Hopefully you can see that there are some great ways to use the Christmas cash that you got as gifts as well as redeeming any gift cards that you would not normally feel compelled to use. You can use the cash for buying something that makes you feel good. We’ve all been taught that it’s better to give than to receive. But since the cash was a gift for you, there’s certainly nothing wrong with using it on yourself or loved ones.