I live with my parents so I don’t pay rent or buy groceries right now. As far as I can tell there is no way to convert the gift cards into money (into my bank account). I can’t add them to Amazon or PayPal or use them to pay off any debt.
Is my only option to literally keep track of how much is left on these gift cards everytime I go out? I have like $550 in gift cards from work that I have received over the last 2 years and never used.
You can use them as your form of payment on Amazon to buy multiple Amazon gift cards. Then email the Amazon gift cards to yourself, and redeem them on your account. That’s what I always do.
If you don’t want Amazon, you could buy store or restaurant gift cards (anywhere you know you’d use it). Then you don’t have to keep track of the total the way you do with a Visa/MasterCard gift card.