Gift cards: 7 reasons to give them

Prominent personal finance blogger Liz Pulliam Weston recently repeated her disdain for giving plasticized cash as gifts. I agree that in many instances giving a gift card can imply a lack of tact or thought, but I won't go so far as to say that gift cards are evil across the board. They do have their place. I'm not really big on gifts myself but we give gift cards, and we receive them too, and receiving them never bothers me for a second.

Gift cards may rightfully deserve disdain but let's also not forget that non-gift-card gifts can be equally thoughtless. One landlady I had got dozens — if not hundreds — of exactly the same thing for everyone on her gift list. One year I got a T-shirt. Perfectly nice T-shirt, but everyone on her list got a T-shirt. (How do I know? She told me.) Or Bill Murray's character in Scrooged (eBay) was going through his list of family/business contacts, giving them either a bath towel or a VCR. OK, that's two choices for everybody, but still. Or “gifts for him” and “gifts for her” displays in your face at retailers this year. Nothing says “I love you” quite as weakly as a bottle of aftershave or a loofah.

Here are seven reasons why gift cards are appropriate to give:

• It's very easy to be fair with gifts to several groomsmen, bridesmaids, children, etc. My grandmother was very fair with her children and grandchildren at Christmas. She spent almost exactly the same amount of money on each. When I was giving gifts to my groomsmen for my wedding, I also wanted to be fair, so I got them each a personalized mug and a gift card or gift certificates to some place I knew they would enjoy. One guy was into sports, another liked his bagels and coffee, and another was an avid book reader, so I purchased gift cards in the same amount for all of them, and I knew that there wouldn't be hard feelings.
• Isn't choice a gift? Giving a teenager an iTunes gift card says a lot about the freedom it gives the teenager to listen to what she wants to. Or from another view, I don't like swinging and missing. I just gave a friend a can of Wasabi peanuts because he had given some to me before, so I thought he liked them, but actually he can't stand them. Well, shoot.
• Return lines suck, big time. The goal of any business is to sell as much product as they can get away with and take back as little as they can get away with. Return policies are getting stricter; the time window to return something is shorter, and there may be a restocking fee — if you can return the item at all. Additionally, they don't hire a whole lot of extra employees to man the return center. So you wait. And wait. And wait. What's more, if you include a gift receipt — so that the recipient can return the item if they don't like it — doesn't that indicate they “do not trust their judgment about selecting the right present for those whose tastes they ought to know”? (I wonder what Miss Manners would say about gift receipts.)
• Gift cards are cheaper to mail. If you have a limited budget, gift cards are inexpensive to mail. A gift card costs 41 cents to mail. It costs nothing if you e-mail it. More gift-giving bang for your buck.
• Isn't taking a little financial weight off of someone's shoulders a gift? A gift card to Wal-Mart for someone who could use the help is perfectly fine in my book. If you give them stuff they really don't need, it doesn't help them as much as free choice would. Or subsidize one of their habits for a while so that they can have a little more breathing room in their checking account.
• Sometimes a gift card or gift certificate acknowledges that you do indeed know the person's tastes. My sister picks up Dunkin' Donuts on her way to work. Do you think she would enjoy a Dunkin' Donuts gift card? My wife's grandmother eats breakfast with her friends at McDonald's. Do you think she would enjoy McDonald's gift certificates? Of course! Do you think it would indicate that we know something about the recipients when we give them? Absolutely!
• Some people are pretty predictable and/or hard to buy for. I'm one of them. I usually find a meal I really like at a restaurant and stick with it. That, and I almost always feel bad answering people when they ask what I'd like to receive as a gift. (I already have way more than I need, so why ask for more?) Gift-card-'em.

If you enjoy getting gift cards, great! Here's a way to get some without buying anything. Just read some e-mails.