More than you want to know about gift cards

I don't think it always is a faux-pas, and it depends on the recipient and your relationship with them.

Some people believe that cash is an impersonal gift and that you should spend more effort to find a personal gift that the recipient would enjoy. I would find it weird if a friend came to my birthday party and gave me cash, but a gift of a nice whiskey or gin, or a silly joke gift, would feel normal. (Also no gift at all would be fine!)

I've given cash as wedding gifts with the suggestion/hope that the couple spends it on something fun during their honeymoon (but of course they're free to spend it on whatever they like). Plenty of friends who I've talked to have agreed that cash is a fine wedding gift (and sometimes preferred). Most people set up gift registries for weddings, so it's not like the non-monetary gifts from the registry are a big surprise that required a lot of thought and personal attention on the giver's part.

> Anyone who tries to put me down for doing so will simply not be receiving a gift from me next year

Hell, anyone who complains in any way about a gift they've received should fall off the gift-giving list, regardless of what the gift was. Even if someone gives you a gift you don't like or won't use, the gracious thing is to accept it and give thanks. It really is the thought that counts. If you can re-purpose or re-gift it to someone who would actually appreciate it, and do it in a way that won't end up offending the gift-giver, all the better.

I've heard the argument that you should tell the gift giver, because you don't want them to waste their money on something you don't like, but I'm not really persuaded by that. Maybe in some situations, but probably not most. Again, depends on the relationship between the people involved.

I agree that it's shittier (from an ease-of-use perspective), but I don't agree that it's more crass. The usual objection to cash or cash-equivalent gifts is that they're impersonal and show that you don't know the recipient well enough to pick a gift they'd like, or care enough to expend the effort to find one.

A gift card (at least if it isn't something generic like Amazon or Starbucks) at least says "I wasn't sure what to get you, but I know you like X-type things, and store Y is all about X-type things, so here's a gift card for store Y". I think this sort of thing can work well for hobbies where a gift-giver might not be able to reasonably choose what to get. Like, for example, I wouldn't mind a gift card to a hobbyist electronics store like Adafruit, but, given the nature of the things I buy there, I would never expect any of my friends (or even my girlfriend) to know what I'd find useful from there without asking me for a specific thing to get for me, which would ruin any amount of surprise. But on receiving that gift card, I'd think it was a nice surprise, and very thoughtful that they remembered that time I was talking about how I bought an ESP32 dev board and was playing around with some electronics projects.

But yeah, if someone gave me an Amazon gift card, I would find that as thoughtless as cash (fortunately still easy to use, since I buy things from Amazon all the time, and I can easily just add the gift card to my account and then not worry about it anymore). And if someone gave me a Starbucks gift card, they clearly do not know me at all, as I don't drink coffee.

Again, totally agree that gift cards are worse than cash from a usability perspective, but I think they're less crass. You might be unhappy to receive a gift card, but there are many people who would fell warmer and fuzzier receiving a (thoughtfully-selected) gift card, rather than cash.

> And the principle of it is that the cash they could have given you is now earning the retailer interest?

As the article says, vanishingly few retailers make interest or investment returns off gift card money. Nearly all of them consider it working capital and use it to help run their businesses.

Either way, I find this to be a weird objection. A gift is about the giver and the receiver. If a third party makes interest off some unrelated side transaction, it's kinda petty to be worked up about it.

And safe and easy. Cash in an envelope could be lost, and then it's gone. A check could be lost and would need to be canceled and re-written. And either way you have to take an extra step to get it in your bank account. (At least with a check, most banks have a phone deposit option. You'd have to physically take the cash to a bank branch or at best ATM.)

Sounds OK to me. I could imagine 'gift cards are just interfaces', which is laconic, among other adjectives.

Here's an idea to make a cash gift more fun. If I know a family member is trying to save up for something they want (that is either too pricey or too personalized to buy as a gift outright), I'll fold up some cash (origami style - sometimes with tape) in the shape of that item and send that as a gift to contribute to the purchase of the item.

It shows you put some thought into the gift, while leaving them free to spend the money where and however they want. And carefully unfolding it all is a bit of payback for the creative wrapping some siblings like to do :)