gift card with a small balance | what to do?

Gift cards are easy to give and a practical way of making a gift. They are essentially Debit Cards with the logo of a major credit card company — American Express, Visa, or MasterCard — and the recipient can spend them most anywhere those credit cards are accepted (with a few exceptions).

The problem arises when your balance gets close to zero. Hard to use a tiny balance in a store, and if you keep the balance on the card long enough, bank fees will reduce your balance to zero. In fact, banks probably make millions of dollars just this way.

I recently came upon the perfect solution. Amazon sells gift cards for as little at 15¢. I used my MasterCard with a remaining balance of $1.56 to purchase an Amazon gift card for myself. Shortly thereafter, I received an email, clicked the link, and applied to my amazon.com account. The credit never expires and never carries any fees. Has nothing to do with travel, but thought I'd pass along this idea for what to do with a gift card with a small balance!

copyright (c) 2014 by David Ourisman LLC. All rights reserved. We provide Virtuoso and other Preferred Partner amenities as an affiliate of Brownell Travel. If you have comments on this column, or questions about booking travel, email me or visit my website.