Gift Cards! The gift that keeps on giving

Gift Cards:
These are a great way to save some cash. I know that some of the warehouse stores like Costco and Sam's sell these at a discounted price. Most stores sell Disney gift cards and several carry gift cards for the larger airlines. My brother will pay for his entire trip using these. I know that our grocery tore frequently offers fuel perks when purchasing gift cards. It's usually .10 off a gallon for every $50 worth of gift car purchase. At various times throughout the year, they will offer .20 fuel perks. Items like gift cards can be purchased throughout the year and you can always requests them from friends and family that you normally exchange gifts. The nice thing about this is that you can use them online or at the Disney store. So they aren't just relegated to being used on vacation. We have personally found that these are also excellent for teaching life lessons to our girls. For each trip we give each of them a gift card with money on it. They get to use it at their discretion. But once it's gone, that's it. It has help to teach them the value of a dollar, simple math and they have learned not o buy the FIRST thing that they see! When your 3 year old is looking at an overpriced stuff animal in a gift shop, your logic will fall on deaf ears! These have really helped with that. Our girls now wait and evaluate what they want to buy.

Another benefit to the gift cards is that helps with budgeting and helps prevent "vacation splurge". Vacation splurge is that phenomenon where you forget that you have bills and such and spend freely. It happens to the best of us.

CAUTION: HIGH RISK\HIGH REWARD BENEFIT TIP!
We are a family that puts 90% of our costs on a rewards card and pays it monthly...usually. Now, this is where you essentially "double dip" but it's a significant outlay of credit.
If you have a rewards card, you use it to purchase the gift cards, thus earning your credit card rewards while procuring the discounted gift cards. Obviously you should not put more on your credit card than you can afford to pay with cash. It's great savings but please be careful as one monthly finance charge can wipe out all of those cost savings that you were about to recognize!