When I do get a gift card, what I end up doing is giving it to someone else who would appreciate it more. Or, if I can't find such a person (it tends to be 50-50), then I sell it through a local classified ad site for 50% of the value it contains.
Wouldn't the much better gift be to take them out for a meal at their favorite restaurant?
> The cash might just be used at the gas pump or buying groceries.
If someone gives me some money and I spend it on gas or groceries, then I clearly need the gas or groceries the most at that time. I don't see the problem with that.
But my main point, really, is that both cash and gift cards are (generally speaking) terrible gifts because they don't have the one thing any great gift needs: to indicate that the person cares about you enough to put some thought into the gift. The actual gift isn't the thing itself, it's the time and attention put into the thing.
But between the two poor choices, I consider cash to be the better option.
You're thinking of gifts for local friends/relatives. Think of your grandmother who lives 5000 miles away and has never been on a plane. Can she take you out to eat on a whim? No. But she can connive to get you to take yourself out to eat, and think of her as you do so, making you perhaps a little more likely to take a 5000-mile flight to visit her one day. This is the use-case that gift-cards serve.
That's a reasonable use case (although I still think there are much better options).
However, that's not the sort of use case that is usually involved when people give gift cards.
Cash is often spent on normal things (or things the giver might disapprove of e.g. alcohol) rather than "something nice" -- Gift Cards are a good middle ground between paying someones electric bill or getting them a jacket that doesn't fit or suit their wardrobe.
Direct cash is infinitely better than deciding where someone much spend money at.
No gift at all and the promise of a good moment together is even better than that. Enjoy your time, not your possessions.
Good old consumerism in action.
If you know that your mother enjoys that particular spa, then I agree, it's a good, thoughtful gift -- basically that's the right way to use gift cards/certificates.
That's not how they're used for the most part. For example, 90% of the time when I'm given a gift card, it's for Amazon -- the thought behind that is precisely the same as it would be for cash, except that I am now constrained to using it on Amazon rather than somewhere else that may be a lot better for me.
For people who think of them that way, it just raises the question -- then why not give cash? Cash is much more useful.
If she takes 50 bucks and uses it in groceries it’s because she needs them. If you arrange a spa day outright then it’s not a question of money.
I'd rather get cash from my proverbial rich uncle, but I'd prefer a gift card from a friend. honestly my favorite way to exchange presents with friends is just to tell each other exactly what we want. then we each get a useful thing that reminds us of our friendship.
For the most part Christmas gifts are about balancing an equation by buying each other shit you don’t need and then hoping your spend cancels each other out. If it doesn’t, resentment and drama.
You can both spend/save the exact same money together by buying nothing. Club together on food, drinks, hospitality. Get some good ingredients and booze, some stuff for the kids, and then help make it happen.
Don’t bother trading things you would have already bought yourself.
Unless you’re a child.
I agree entirely with this. This is why my social circle (and most of my family) has a "no gifts" rule around gift-giving holidays and events (children excepted). But not everyone follows that.
I’m happier now than I was playing their game. The only time I do gifts now are because I genuinely, altruistically, want to share something.
And that is the sort of gift that actually has meaning!
I frequently give gifts to my friends and family, but rarely around some sort of event. It happens when I see something that I know a particular person would love, so I get it and give it to them.
I think that makes the gift truly meaningful. Not because its actually personalized, but because it demonstrates that I was thinking about them at a time when I was not expected to be.
In my family, for Christmas, everyone fills out a short questionnaire (hobbies, goals, what are you learning, where are you going, favorite authors/genres) then we use the questionnaires to guide gift giving. This way, there's still room for creativity and thoughtfulness in gift giving, but it's guided by the responses. Plus, it's fun to read everyone's answers and you can give gifts that line up with multi-year trends after a while.
If we boiled everything down to sheer logic we wouldn't celebrate Christmas at all. The point isn't necessarily what makes the most "sense," it's about tradition and good feelings.
But we no longer feel like we have to buy something for the other on some arbitrary date looks like a birthday or holiday.
It's so freeing. Bonus: we have less stuff in our house.
Trying to implement this with my extended family. We still but gifts for the kids though, they enjoy it.
your system sounds nice too though, just a little more effort than I want to put in.
And about selling gift cards. You can get more than 50%, if you sell for Bitcoin etc on /r/BitMarket.
That fact is one of the main things that I value about gifts!
> You can get more than 50%, if you sell for Bitcoin etc on /r/BitMarket.
I don't want Bitcoin. I can get more than that other ways, too, but they all involve more time and effort, turning the card into a burden.
Selling the card locally for half off means that I can unload the thing quickly without any real hassle.
I'm happy for you.
Me, I've gotten some baffling gifts.
In other words, I think of gifts as a kind of communication.
What I do: buy a discounted expensive item in bulk and hand it out as a gift (e.g. Happy Socks).