Everything in me goes against buying gift cards as Christmas gifts. Part fo the fun in Christmas shopping is finding the perfect gift for that person, if I give a gift card… why don’t I just give cash? And if they’re giving me a gift card… aren’t we just trading cash? That’s kind of ridiculous.

How do I define the perfect gift? I have always defined the perfect gift as this: something that the other person absolutely loves and not only never would have bought for themselves, but may not even know it existed. Those are hard standards to meet, and I don’t meet them all the time. But it’s a nice goal, I think.

That being said, have I given gift cards before? Sadly, yes. Sometimes they are a necessary evil when either you don’t know the other person that well or they have a specific need. Plus, if you seriously can’[t figure out what they’d like… a gift card is better than something that will end up on a yard sale next summer.