Target’s big annual gift card sale is this weekend

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are in the rearview mirror, but the deals haven’t stopped just yet. In fact, this weekend only, Target will offer a Target gift card sale. On Saturday, Dec. 3 and Sunday, Dec. 4, Target gift cards are 10% off in-store and online with a one-time-use Target Circle discount.

From milk and bananas to clothes, luggage, toys and home furnishings, Target is the one-stop destination for almost everything. It’s pretty hard to go wrong buying a Target gift card whether for yourself or someone on your shopping list. Maybe that’s why so many agree that you can easily walk into Target for one thing and accidentally leave with the whole store.

If you know you’re likely to regularly shop at Target for the foreseeable future, buying discount gift cards now also helps you meet a minimum credit card spend to earn a credit card sign-up bonus. That way, you’ll meet the deadline for the earning spending bonus and save money on Target purchases over time. If you have some Toys-for-Tots type purchases to make and donate, these gift cards can make it easy to stretch those donation dollars 10% further, too.

To take advantage of the kick-off to the holiday savings, you’ll first need to activate the offer in your Target Circle account. This limits the number of gift cards you can purchase to just one account.

A few restrictions apply:

• Offer valid for one transaction of up to $500 in Target GiftCards ($50 maximum discount) at Target or Target.com per Target Circle account. The transaction can include multiple Target GiftCards.
• The offer doesn’t include Target Visa gift cards, Target MasterCard gift cards, Target American Express gift cards or gift cards that other retailers have for sale in the store.
• Offer excludes reloads of previously purchased Target gift cards and cards given in exchange for electronic or prepaid trade-ins, cards provided for merchandise returns and cards provided as free promotional cards with qualifying purchase.

You can purchase smaller denomination gift cards up to the $500 discounted max or one $500 gift card. If you want to increase the value of this deal, you can pay for your discounted gift cards with a Chase Freedom Flex via the PayPal checkout option on the desktop Target.com site. If you haven’t already maxed out your $1,500 toward Freedom Flex’s 5-points-per-dollar bonus categories for this quarter (including PayPal), you should earn 5 points per dollar spent on this purchase (activation is required).

With this, you can buy a $500 Target gift card for $450 and earn 1,350 Ultimate Rewards points (or $27 at current valuations of 2 cents per point) via PayPal with the Freedom Flex card. If you also have a premium Ultimate Rewards card, such as the Chase Sapphire Reserve, then those 2,250 points you’ll earn are worth $45 according to TPG valuations. That totals $95 in savings/earnings on a $500 purchase. This is beneficial if you’re going to spend those are dollars over the coming weeks and months anyway.

Going through a shopping portal before clicking on the Target website is also good advice, though gift card purchases are typically excluded from earning cash back.

Additional reporting by Jennifer Yellin and Melissa Klurman.