I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who wasn’t always a fan of getting gift cards as a gift growing up. To me, gift cards just weren’t sentimental. They were an uncomplicated escape for someone who felt the need to give a gift. While I was happy to be receiving anything at all, I’m someone who believes that presents should have a personal touch and have meaning. Gift cards absolved the buyer of all obligation and meant that whatever I purchased only meant something to me. No memories shared.

As time went on, I found gift cards to be a permanent thing in my life, so I resolved to accept them. Even in the freelance world, companies were offering to make payment via gift cards instead of sending payments to our bank account. Admittedly being paid via Sephora gift cards wasn’t that bad as I always had a new beauty product that I wanted to purchase (you can read how I stay on budget and still look great here), but when I companies started sending Visa/Mastercard/Amex gift cards myself and many other fellow freelancers weren’t to hip to the idea.

Here’s why cash based gift cards don’t work for most people.

1. They’re too restrictive: Have you ever taken a look at the terms and conditions that come along with a gift card? Yes, it’s technically you’re money; however, here’s a limited list of things you can do with it.
2. They expire: The thought of money expiring still blows my mind, yet if you don’t use your gift card promptly you may lose all the money on it or a small portion of it every year after a specific date (it’s all in those pesky terms and conditions)
3. You can’t get cash back. The money has to stay on the gift card. Meaning you have to keep up with exactly how much you spent at all times and only use the card for that amount or it can be declined.
4. Some gift cards don’t allow you to use them to make online purchases. While there are some gift cards out there that let you register your name and address so that you can use them online, there are many that don’t. You can only use them in brick and mortar stores. There go those pesky restrictions again.

After receiving over $1000 in payments via Visa gift cards from a company, I was fed up and decided to try something that in theory seemed like a logical solution however the means by which I was hoping to achieve this had never been tested.

I was going to send myself an invoice and use the gift cards to pay myself with this Ultimate Gift Card Hack!

Sounds easy enough, right?

Here’s how to do it!

To set things into motion, I created an alternate PayPal email address.

I then added the visa gift cards as payment cards onto that PayPal account

Next, I proceeded to try and send money to myself as a friend.

Now here is where it gets a bit tricky because like me Paypal wants to be paid if we use their service so I had to make sure I calculated how much I would be assessed in fee’s when sending the payment (use this nifty calculator here). For instance, if I only had a card that had $100 on it, I could only pay myself $96.80. This way, the remaining balance would cover the fee.

Okay, so you might be thinking, “but, you’re losing money this way!”

Yes, you are, but think about it, would you instead pocket $96.80 in cash or be held captive by a piece of plastic for $3.20?

“I’ll take the cash for $100 Bob!”

So let’s carry on. Once you’ve paid the invoice you’ll get an alert via email, text, facebook, however, you’ve got it set up that you have sent yourself money and bippity boppity boop the money is now in your personal account and no longer on a gift card!

Now if a company insist on paying me via gift card, I don’t bother to argue because I know I can get the money off quickly and easily. If you need a video walk-thru on how to, this is done, I shared it on my IG stories under “Money Hacks.”

Give it a try and let me know how it works for you. I promise you’ll never look monetary gift cards (AMEX/Visa/MasterCard) the same way again.