Jul 30, 2015 4 min read

It’s time to put my foot down about how we treat money in this house. In just one day this week, I unearthed $347.12 just by looking around and, mostly, paying attention.

For a family that likes to think it’s careful with finances – I’m all about the emergency fund – we sure are reckless about the smaller, everyday stuff.

I’m not talking about loose change in the seat cushions. We don’t have much of that because the change ends up, instead, at the bottom of the washing machine. Every load pays me back a few quarters’ and a nickel’s worth, the proceeds from change jammed in the pockets of little denim shorts worn to the amusement park or the pool. And I don’t go to the pool – much less wear shorts – so we all know the culprit here. That same person has also been known to stuff crumpled dollar bills into pockets; but since they don’t fall to the bottom of the washer, they end up in the dryer lint trap, shrunken to 80 percent of their original size. I re-wet them, smooth and stretch them out and lay them in the sun to dry.

Of that big sum I found, about $150 worth was in gift cards, those seemingly perfect gifts for that special someone. At least that’s what we’ve been told: If you don’t know what to buy the person and don’t want to give them cold, impersonal cash (or in my case, warm, shrunken cash), give them a gift card, so they can get exactly what they want.

That would be nice, if the cards ever actually made it into the store. While cleaning the various pencil-holding cups on my desk, I found eight gift cards, mostly to stores that sell teenage girl clothing. None of the little code boxes had been scratched off – a sure sign the cards had not been used.

Am I the only person who is repelled by the scratching-off part? Something about taking a coin to that patch of chalky paint reminds me of nails on a chalkboard. I’d avoid it, but you have to scratch to find the code before you can check the balance.

Most of these stores’ websites let you look up the card balance, which for me was a pleasant drill of typing in long lines of numbers and then being told I had money. Most of the cards had $20, but a few had $25 or even more. I now know how I will pay for back-to-school shopping.

It’s nice to have the cash, but it’s a little disturbing to think that we received these gift cards and then promptly tucked them away where they would be forgotten. They should have been in my wallet, especially the Starbucks card with four iced mocha frappaccinos’ worth on it.

And now to the other $200 I found this week; it was a close call. A month ago I got my son a new phone, and the purchase included a rebate in the form of a prepaid Visa card. We walked out of the store and, of course, promptly forgot about the card. When the mail came yesterday, it was all junk and catalogs. I tossed an envelope that looked like a credit card come-on. An hour later, while tossing other trash into the bin, I saw the envelope. Could that be it?

That bit of junk mail contained the gift card. I should have known the envelope couldn’t announce that a prepaid card was inside.

I pulled it out of the trash, annoyed that I’d come close to making a $200 donation to the landfill. I used the Visa to buy groceries – and a gift card for a friend’s graduation.

Beth Dolinar can be reached at cootiej@aol.com.