With the holdiays quickly approaching that also means that the need to purchase gifts. Don’t worry and get in a panic because this article will bring up an extremely important question that shoppers have been asking for years. Why is money not seen as an acceptable gift to give but gift cards are?

Instead of just giving the money as a gift, the consumer goes out of there way to spend their money on an item that the recipient may never even use. Where instead the consumer could just bypass the middleman (the store where gift cards are sold) and give them a gift that the recipient will always have a use for. Unlike money, gift cards are also limited to only one store and there are no benefits to the shopper limiting themselves. Also unlike money, gift cards expire within five years of being purchases so that extremely old gift card to Pottery Barn that your great aunt matilda give you is now useless. Exchanging money for a gift card is like throwing your money away. This statement is reinforced by a study done by the New York Post that estimated $44 billion dollars were being wasted in between 2008 and 2014 due to gift cards expiring.

That really shows how much of a scam that gift cards really are so let’s do everyone a favor and stop spending money on these useless plastic cards. After reading this article and you still feel like giving someone a gift card then give them $20 bucks with a letter attached linking them to this article.