Baby showers were extremely helpful to me because experiences friends and family with babies shared items I didn’t even know about, but were useful.

Personally, I don’t like to give cash because it’s impersonal and doesn’t allow me to express creativity of something relevant to my friendship or affection. I rarely get it perfect, but a gift let’s me interact with the recipient to find out how they are doing, what they need, what I think will help best.

If I don’t know someone well enough that I can’t help with an item and would only send cash, I use that as a filter for whether to send a gift.

I also don’t like receiving cash from friends, but appreciate gifts.