Tips & Tricks Tuesday: Tracking gift cards with location alerts

It’s easy to tuck a gift card away, only to forget about it when you get to the store. Or you use part of one and have a balance left – but how much?

This week’s tip, shared by libertyjohnson, suggests a nice way to keep track of your gift cards and their balances… and get an alert when you’re near a store.

While getting my office sorted through using the GTD system recently, I came across several gift cards that still had small balances on them, some of which I had forgotten about for years. I gathered them all together, called to check balances and decided to tuck them into my wallet so I would have them with me while running errands. But how would I remember the cards and the balances when I was close to the related store?

Remember The Milk!

I input each card into RTM using @gc as a tag, and added the remaining balance for the gift card/store to the task’s name - Target Gift Card - $8.97 balance, for example. I left them without due dates, if there was no penalty assessed when not using the card for an indefinite period of time. And I added a specific or general location for the respective store, saving them to a personal or shopping list, depending.

Turning GPS and Location Alerts on [in the Android app], when I am going to running errands, RTM alerts me when I am in proximity to the location I have a gift card for. If I have a need anything - cross referenced on my shopping list, I can use up the remaining balance on the gift cards before dipping into my budgeted funds.

I love the creative ways we can utilize RTM to help make our lives a bit easier and a lot more productive.

Thanks for sharing this tip, libertyjohnson! You’re our Tips & Tricks Tuesday winner this week.

Do you have a suggestion for our weekly Tips & Tricks post? Got an interesting set-up or idea? Head over to the Tips & Tricks forum, add a new topic, and let us know how you use Remember The Milk. Each week we’ll give away a 1 year Pro account to the user whose idea inspires the Tips & Tricks Tuesday blog post for that week.