How to use your prepaid Visa cards without hassle

More and more retailers are offering their mail-in rebates via a pre-paid Visa card instead of an old fashioned check. This gets a number of consumers confused as to how much they spent on the card, how much remains, and things like that.

To minimize the hassle involved, here are some suggestions on how to spend your pre-paid gift cards:

* use them to reload your reusable cards for the exact amount (Kinkos, laundry, coffee cards, etc) for the exact amount. Problem solved!

* use them to buy services (iTunes, prepaid phone service, etc)

* use the whole amount of the gift card to pay part of a pending bill (cable, DSL, telephone, etc)

* If you use a credit card rewards program, make sure you don't use these cards on things that would otherwise get you a reward of more than 1%. You don't want to lose the extra percentage points!

* If your credit card offers special benefits on purchases (price assurance, extra warranty, etc), and you want these on a particular purchase, then be sure not to use the prepaid gift card as part of the promotion.