Startup Idea: Incidental Gift Cards App
One of the best ways to save money and reduce spending is to purchase gift cards at a discount from other people who are unable to use them. This works across all brands and industries: restaurants, airlines, pharmacies, everything. For example, if you know you're going to spend $50 at Cheesecake Factory tonight, you can go to a variety of websites and purchase a $50 Cheesecake Factory gift card for $40. That's an instant savings of 20%.
However, in order for this strategy to work, you need to be sure to meet a number of conditions:
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you should only buy gift cards for expenditures you are going to make regardless. If you trip up psychologically and make a purchase you wouldn't have made without the discount then you are actually losing money, not saving it.
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you can't let any portion of a gift card expire or go unused, or again, you're losing money rather than making it. Therefore, you should acquire the gift card right before you're about to use it, and it must be immediately accessible digitally (not a plastic card).
It would be great to have an app that would solve these problems for you automatically by presenting you with "incidental gift cards" whenever it contextually detects that you're at a location where discounted gift cards are available.
For example, if the app sees you're at Applebee's, it should help you calculate how much you're about to spend then, then deliver the highest-value Applebee's gift card available (without going over) digitally to my phone.
Would save a lot of money over the long run -- which you guys could take a cut of!. Currently I solve this problem manually by buying gift cards in advance online on websites like Gift Card Granny, and tracking them painstakingly in a spreadsheet.