Gift certificates can be a real pain in the ass if the store won't give cash after you've used one. Personally, I go to a store that I know the recipient of the gift shops at, pick out a gift, and get a gift receipt to go with it. If they hate what you get them, they still have the equivalent of money to spend at the store anyway. Since merchandise varies so much from season to season, I'd rather give cash or an actual piece of merchandise than a certificate.

I guess that I now agree that cash is the best gift. One of my economics professors, who had enormous pride on his cheapness (being economic), extolled the virtue of cash over anything else, since it allowed the recepient to maximize his utility. For example, a heroin addict going through withdrawal would love nothing better than a hit; an alcoholic would invariably use the money first on the thing that is most valuable to him, booze.

But then again I was thinking, if the guy giving the gift is a drug dealer and is able to give the heroin addict friend more heroine than the addict would be able to obtain on his own for the same money, it would be more cost effective for everyone if the dealer gives the heroin directly to the addict friend.

I don't know why I'm using drug analogies.... I don't even use drugs.

Gift cards are the worst present ever! The only reason stores sell them is because they know people are thoughtless lazy-asses who will buy anything that doesn't require them to do much. Also, the stores know that if someone buys something with the card and there is a little bit left but not really enough to buy much of anything, it can possibly encourage the person to buy something they usually would not have intsead of letting that little bit of left over credit go to waste. Cash is accepted everywhere and is a far better gift than gift cards for that reason alone. The argument that at least some thought was put into buying a gift card instead of giving cash could not be further from the truth. It actually takes less thought, because if you give someone cash you most likely thought about getting a real present and could not come up with anything and you at least thought about having the decency to give the person something they can actually use for practical reasons or for extravagent reasons. The only instance when I have ever heard of a valid reason for giving some one a gift card is when parents gives their college student children gift cards to grocery stores to make sure they spend their money on groceries and things like that. Actually I take that back somewhat because you can buy beer at grocery stores, I am a college student who loves beer, I should know.

Your first reply is to a 2 year old thread? :)

*boggle* :crazy: :crazy:

At any rate, I prefer cash myself. Gift cards never get used, because I feel awkward using them for some reason .. like.. "uhhh.. ... here.... here's my gift card.."

It's better than starting a new thread, ey?
My family is so cool (read: incredibly lazy) that almost all holiday and birthday gifts are nice hard cash. But gift certificates are far better than useless stuff. The last christmas gift from the boss at work was a pick of some flasy kitchenwares for the full-timers and gift certificates to the movies for the part-timers. The full-timers were all jealous of us part-timers.

I don't care about gifts that people think I want. Cash is just fine for me. Not really a big gift person anyway though.