As most people are officially out of the holiday season and trying to get accustomed back to normal life, it is now that many people realize how many gift cards they actually received during the last couple of weeks. I know I fall into that pile, and as time goes on I am convinced that a gift card is probably the worst gift a person could give.
If you really think about all the things a gift card symbolizes we can easily see how useless a piece of plastic it is. Here are some reasons why I hate these horrible cards:
- Lacks thought: A gift card shows that you really didn’t take the time to actually think about what the person would want; moreover, because of your laziness now I have to make a trip and forced to purchase something in that specific store.
- Budget Constraint: The common mistake that I feel most people make about gift cards is that it allows the receiver to decide what they really want, but most of the time that is completely wrong. I can’t tell you the number of times I receive $10-15 gift cards to stores where things people actually want cost $20+, and, although these are usually just tokens of friendship, I am now forced to chip in some of my own cash to get something I want. Without the card I might have not purchased anything and saved money.
- Wallet stuffer: Another thing I hate besides gift cards are fat wallets. I like to try and keep mine as thin as possible and gift card free.
However, if you are truly compelled to distributing gift cards then try and limit them to service oriented or quantity based items. Some examples include: massages, restaurants, free golf rounds. These things allow for the activity to be full compensated for and show more thought then a $15 gift card from Best Buy.
So why not just give cash?
For some reason, it has been a taboo to give cold hard cash as presents, but really there is only one difference between gift cards and cash. Gift cards can only be used in a certain store. Cash can be used everywhere and the options are unlimited. You can shop anywhere, invest it, or even pay some unpaid bills off.
At one point gift cards were cool. They resembled credit card power and I was thirteen. By no means am I the law on gift giving, but really are gift cards all their cracked up to be? What do you think?
By the way, if you ever receive a gift card for a present, then just gift the card right back to the sender at a future occasion and see what their reaction is.