I wish that I had posted about this while you could still get in on the deal, but I really didn’t piece the whole plan together until Saturday evening, when it was too late.  I’m going to post about it now because a) I am pretty pleased with myself over this and b) this sort of promotion happens relatively frequently, and next time you can steal my idea and make it work for yourself.

K-Mart was running a promotion this past weekend for Father’s Day.  If you buy $50 in K-Mart gift certificates, you got a $10 reward card.  The reward card could be activated on Monday, and is valid until July 31. I had heard about this deal but I wasn’t planning on trying it.  K-Mart is ridiculously over-priced on most things, and I hardly ever go in there unless I"m just in the mood to browse, or looking for something specific that I can’t find elsewhere.  But on Friday afternoon, I was at Walgreens and decided to walk over and look for a dishwasher basket.

(Sidenote: why can I not find a dishwasher basket?  You know, to contain all the sippy cup parts that pile up on the side of the sink?  I have looked in several stores and can’t find one anywhere.  The protective paint stuff started peeling off on the old one and depositing rust all over my dishes, so I had to throw it away.  Now I am hand-washing all sippy cup parts and frankly, I am no good at keeping up with this task.)

Anyway, while I am walking around not finding a dishwasher basket, I see a sign for the promotion at approximately the same time that I realized that swing sets were on sale.  My parents wanted to buy a swing set for my daughter for her second birthday, but they’ve been having trouble finding one in stock.  (Her birthday was the beginning of May. Meijer believes that was the "end of the season" and did not restock, so the raincheck they got wasn’t worth much.)  Originally, I was just going to buy a couple and let my parents have them if they wanted to in order to bring the price of the swing set down, but.. well. It’s me, and complicated is what I do.

Step One: Buy eight $50 K-Mart gift cards.  Three of these are for my parents, who did tell me to go ahead and buy the swing set they had in stock.)

Step Two: Buy swing set.  We also bought some Pepsi on sale, so that wiped out all three of my parents gift cards after tax.

Step Three: Activate rewards gift cards. Success!

Step Four: Stop in at K-Mart and pick up six $50 BP* gift cards. Pay using all eight rewards cards first (since they expire soon), and then the remaining $50 cards. 

Step Five: The only thing left is to spend the remaining $30 on the last gift card–those are the reward card dollars belonging to my parents, but in a format that does not expire next month.  Handy! 

And so… I just got $50 in free gas for running into K-Mart a few times and spending a few minutes yesterday activating all those gift cards. Plus, Evie gets a swing set! 

Win!

*They sell other gift cards than BP, but to me, that’s the most practical choice.  It’s exactly the same as money** that way, since we will use it.  I was tempted by a couple of restaurant cards, but that would just mean we would spend more money on going out when we wouldn’t otherwise be going.  Of course, I could have kept the money at K-Mart and Sears (the cards are also good there) but we don’t buy that much there, so it just wasn’t as practical.