Gift cards/found money - how do you use 'em?

So you find yourself in possession of a general-purpose gift card, or some other chunk of found money that you weren't expecting. How do you use it? Do you put it toward something you were planning to get anyway, just defraying the cost? Or do you use it to buy something that you otherwise wouldn't have bought, since you'd already budgeted for the things you were planning to buy?

I always tell myself I should apply this kind of stuff toward things I was going to buy anyway. Then I wind up putting it toward something I wouldn't have bought, and figure that the whole point of a gift is kind of wasted if you use it for something boring. Am I an irresponsible jerk? What do you do?

Chaz wrote:

So you find yourself in possession of a general-purpose gift card, or some other chunk of found money that you weren't expecting. How do you use it? Do you put it toward something you were planning to get anyway, just defraying the cost? Or do you use it to buy something that you otherwise wouldn't have bought, since you'd already budgeted for the things you were planning to buy?

I always tell myself I should apply this kind of stuff toward things I was going to buy anyway. Then I wind up putting it toward something I wouldn't have bought, and figure that the whole point of a gift is kind of wasted if you use it for something boring. Am I an irresponsible jerk? What do you do?

I try to convince myself that it should be used to buy myself a treat, something I really want, but in the end it usually goes towards more functional stuff (right now, that's mostly going into making a surplus in case something goes wrong in the house!)

Some day I'll pull the trigger and get that mechanical keyboard though

I usually use them to buy things that would normally be too expensive for me to justify buying outright. I recently did that very thing with a $50 Amazon gift card I was given for being a top performer at work. I used it towards buying a 64GB Playstation Vita memory card, which on its own was $104. I can't justify that price, but $54 after applying the gift card is a price I felt I could stomach.

A few weeks ago, I got a $50 gift card from work too. I should have put it toward my Switch purchase this week. Instead, I figured I'd already earmarked the money for that, so I wound up getting the Criterion del Toro collection when it went on sale for $20 off yesterday.

Same thing I do with potions in video games; save it until I "really need it". #fifthofnever

Is it possible to deposit those cards in a bank account?

I'm terrible with remembering to use these. At one point recently I had ~ a dozen sitting around in a shoebox, plus some at work, plus a few more around the house, plus the two in my wallet which I never remember are there until 15 seconds after I swipe my normal debit.