I am lucky enough to have more than enough money to maintain the life that I want to have. Giving me cash makes no material difference to me. It will most likely sit in a savings account for potentially the rest of my life. Don't do that especially if you need it (please!).

Finding an actual "physical" gift can be hard, time consuming, stressful, would prompt you to spend more than you afford to "ensure a proper gift", etc.

Gift cards for something I don't usually do is a relatively easy way to solve that. It's like saying "I know you can afford it, but you don't seem to XYZ that often, and maybe you'll like it". XYZ can be [discover a store], [try an experience], [visit some place] or anything else. If I know someone put a little money on that, I will honour that and hopefully discover something new, which is the best gift ever !. And you can put the exact amount that you feel comfortable putting (and in fact the amount itself does not really matter).

But indeed, if the recipient is in any position where cash could be helpful, or if they are saving for a purpose (travel, house, child, ...). Just give cash instead.

I know some people are “hard to buy for” but this might be an indication that you shouldn’t be giving them a gift. If you don’t know them well enough to have a gift idea, or don’t feel comfortable asking for ideas, are you really obligated to get them something?

So she bought an Amazon gift card. And then she created a wishlist of items she thought the mother might need, doing the research to find reputable brands, unique solutions to problems, "best mom gadgets", etc (such as the pacifier that you can put liquids into; it lets you get liquid medicines into the baby, like cough syrup, without stress). She sent the gift card, and the link to the wishlist with an explanation.

It was both a pragmatic and thoughtful approach, without the risk of buying something she already had, or didn't need or want.

It is a great idea, but it makes more sense when the recipient does the registering IMO.

If you are unlucky enough to have to get medicine into a baby, something has happened and you are hopefully under the supervision of a doctor or a nurse who can aid with the practicalities.

Small babies are delicate machines and gifting any sort of medical aid "just in case" might give the recipient ideas. Feeding a baby cough syrup may have been just an example but sounds downright dangerous. Please be careful.

I realize this was just a casual example, but kids under two generally shouldn't be given any cough or cold meds (there are no over-the-counter cough meds for kids <2 sold in the US).

Definitely still useful for other meds though.

I didn't m to sound facetious but now I'm thinking about the ways of making a SaaS out of this : the incentive for the giver is easy enough ; the card maker gets a cut ; AWS should give you a great deal on hosting..

They aren't fancy or anything, but they scale up well and folks will look forward to it.

Even if the recipient doesn't care for truffles (vegan, weight-loss dieter) they like the packaging, and they have something to share. And truffles are easy to make.

For a few years now we've bought a bunch of peaches sometime in the summer and made a bunch of peach jam, put it in pretty little jars, and brought them to holiday gatherings with my family around Philadelphia. It's always a hit.

The thing is, they actually have good peaches up there too! I know this because I ate so many of them when I lived near a good farmer's market there!

Philly peaches: I believe that Robert E. Lee's troops got through a lot of "foraged" (stolen) peaches on the march to Gettysburg. Presumably squits was a big problem in the confederate army.

https://www.jetpens.com/Kurochiku-Mejirushi-Sticky-Notes/ct/...

If Christmas weren't a thing, I'd've bought some new cycling gloves a month or two ago, but as it is, I'll keep riding with my very-torn-up pair until Christmas so my family can continue to partake in the gift giving ritual we enjoy without having to resort to finding random stuff the recipient probably doesn't actually want.

The curse of having enough money and not wanting a lot of things. :-)

Gift cards are the worst of both worlds - just as impersonal as cash, but even more limiting.

I have rather a small kitchen, and I like cooking. In the same way that a carpenter prefers to choose his own tools, I prefer to choose my own kitchen implements. I'd prefer to receive consumable ingredients that can last a year or two on the shelf (no, not stem ginger in brandy, thanks all the same).

I hate buying birthday and christmas gifts, and I don't expect to receive them either. I don't have space in my small flat for stuff that doesn't earn the space it occupies, and I assume my relatives don't either.

My policy is to buy presents for people when I find something that I think they'd want. I usually check with them first, so that I'm getting the correct style or model. This process isn't synchronised with any anniversaries, except that if it's near an anniversary, a date-adjustment might occur. For an occasion for which some kind of gift would be expected (e.g. 21st, birth, retirement), if I don't find the right thing, they get cash.

I prefer not to give cash ("it's the thought that counts", and giving cash doesn't involve a lot of thought), and in practice I only give cash to my grown-up kids, who understand how I operate. The hardest target is small kids, who enjoy unwrapping things and enjoying them immediately. I've given cash to my toddler granddaughters too, though (via the investment fund their parents operate); but not on their birthdays.

My late father didn't want people to give him "hard" gifts - stuff that he had to keep somewhere, or worse: put on display to prove he appreciated it. He preferred gifts of food, or other stuff that could be consumed fairly quickly. I'm the same, and I treat others as I would like to be treated myself. I have enough stuff (but I'm running low on caviar).

I think a random, well-targeted, gift on a non-anniversary, coming out of blue sky, is much more exciting than yet another plastic birthday present, arriving on the same day as all the other anniversary presents, that will last a couple of weeks before going to landfill.

I often forget my own birthday. I'm fine with a Happy Birthday phone-call - or none. If someone needs an anniversary gift, for whatever reason, I visit a few card shops, and choose a really snazzy, expensive one. Some of my rels are still displaying fancy commercial cards I sent them ten years ago; I'm still displaying a hand-made card drawn by my 2-year-old granddaughter.

My christmas-card list is zero lines long.

But the idea is that a gift is personal, and that cash is impersonal. The universality is exactly what makes it impersonal.

The ideal gift (again, in US cultural context) is one that reflects something unique about the giver, or recipient, or the relationship between them. An exchange of cash is something that happens between strangers on a regular basis.

"Please treat yourself to a meal at my favourite restaurant, X."

"I think you can buy some plants for the garden."

I think "solved" here should be "mitigated". Certainly culturally it seems lots of people don't consider this equivalent although logically it could be seen as "better".

If you do something like that, you are making your gift conditional.

I do not want to carry a stupid gift card around with me, or have to remember to use it, or how much more is left on it. And the principle of it is that the cash they could have given you is now earning the retailer interest?

A gift card (at least if it isn't something generic like Amazon or Starbucks) at least says "I wasn't sure what to get you, but I know you like X-type things, and store Y is all about X-type things, so here's a gift card for store Y". I think this sort of thing can work well for hobbies where a gift-giver might not be able to reasonably choose what to get. Like, for example, I wouldn't mind a gift card to a hobbyist electronics store like Adafruit, but, given the nature of the things I buy there, I would never expect any of my friends (or even my girlfriend) to know what I'd find useful from there without asking me for a specific thing to get for me, which would ruin any amount of surprise. But on receiving that gift card, I'd think it was a nice surprise, and very thoughtful that they remembered that time I was talking about how I bought an ESP32 dev board and was playing around with some electronics projects.

But yeah, if someone gave me an Amazon gift card, I would find that as thoughtless as cash (fortunately still easy to use, since I buy things from Amazon all the time, and I can easily just add the gift card to my account and then not worry about it anymore). And if someone gave me a Starbucks gift card, they clearly do not know me at all, as I don't drink coffee.

Again, totally agree that gift cards are worse than cash from a usability perspective, but I think they're less crass. You might be unhappy to receive a gift card, but there are many people who would fell warmer and fuzzier receiving a (thoughtfully-selected) gift card, rather than cash.

> And the principle of it is that the cash they could have given you is now earning the retailer interest?

As the article says, vanishingly few retailers make interest or investment returns off gift card money. Nearly all of them consider it working capital and use it to help run their businesses.

Either way, I find this to be a weird objection. A gift is about the giver and the receiver. If a third party makes interest off some unrelated side transaction, it's kinda petty to be worked up about it.

If you really do not know what the other person would like as a gift, and do not want to do cash, a regular phone calls I think is more meaningful. I want for almost nothing except home cooked food that would be given as a gift, but just calling and spending a few min to say hello and update on happenings in your life is much preferred.

I've never purchased a gift card. I've received them (for participating in a COVID survey actually - but I'd have participated for nothing), and I gave them to people. If they'd given me cash, I'd probably have kept it.

(Also could get awkward if it was the same amount.)

My family has been moving away from gift giving, in favor of spending time together instead. Show people you care for them all year long and don't buy in to these over-commercialized traditions.

Yass. If I'm giving a gift, as often as not it expresses me, rather than the giftee. E.g. I don't know what the giftee likes to read; so I buy them a book that I'd like to be given. Even if they don't like the book, they have the opportunity to know me better. Signed editions are cool, because they may have resale value.

And it's absolutely OK to ebay my gifts; once it's given, it's not mine any more, and it's yours to dispose of as you see fit. I'd prefer if you kept it and used it, of course; but gifting is intrisically haphazard. For me, it's essential that you completely let go of what you've given.

I'm terrible at gifts, but I'd never give cash/gift cards (cash that expires and you can only spend in one shop)

The point of a gift is to show that you understand your friend/family member and have spent your own time to try to make them happy

For a co-worker you should probably think a bit harder

In some places, gift cards cannot legally expire. Other objections still apply, but fortunately not always that one, which I agree is gross.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_envelope

I jokingly complained that I was getting a bad deal: I didn’t get red packets as a child, but I had to give them away as an adult. But my aunt-in-law put it most amusingly:

“Giving red packets is even luckier than receiving them.”

How so?

“Do you have money to put in the packet and still eat? That’s pretty lucky."

"Red envelopes are gifts presented at social and family gatherings such as weddings or holidays such as Chinese New Year. The red color of the envelope symbolizes good luck and is a symbol to ward off evil spirits. It is also gifted when a person is visiting as a gesture of kindness for visiting. The act of requesting red packets is normally called tao hongbao or yao lishi, and in the south of China, dou li shi. Red envelopes are usually given out to the younger generation who are normally still in school or unemployed."

I loved Sacred Economics and I'm all about figuring out how to reintegrate potlatching and other gift economy ideas into the western world. We desperately need mechanisms other than inheritance for transferring wealth to the younger generations. So I'd love to hear that these practices are occurring outside extended families, but that's not been my impression.

Traditionally, there's some nuances to it, e.g. it's often a tradition associated with visiting someone, and it is meant to have symbolic intent, meaning that it doesn't fit settings like secret santas.

I know they do it in South Africa (along with a "13th month" of pay), and I'm assuming the US too.

Outside of those two, I don't really know of any other Western cultures where tipping is much of a thing at all - let alone big tips at the end of the year.

When my dad sent me to the barbers for a haircut, he gave me a coin to tip the barber. I think the idea was that the barber might remember me (9 year-old kid)! I don't have much hair now, so I don't have to tip barbers. But I tip taxi-drivers, evern though I know I'll probably never see them again, and if I do, they csrtainly won't remember me.

I tip waiters, because I believe they depend on tips to get decent pay. I hate it that this is necessary. I also HATE that tips for waiters go into the tip-jar, and are shared by kitchen staff and management.

People should get proper pay. How hard is that to understand?

Maybe nowadays this is the Amazon and Deliveroo zero-hours-contract drivers.

https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/bills/article-2524513/En...

The "sanitary operatives" in the UK used to ring your doorbell in the run-up to Christmas, more-or-less demanding a tip. If you didn't tip, then you risked having your Christmas rubbish languishing for a couple of weeks, or even strewed over your garden path. Happily, that practice is now ILLEGAL.

Edit: In fact, in India it is common for folks to keep track of how much who gave, so that that a similar/slightly larger amount can be returned when the time comes.

Edit2: Another cultural tidbit, in India generally you give an odd number ending in 1. Common gifts are 11, 21, 51, 101, 501, 1001 ...

I'm not sure why cash is taboo in US - I suspect it's derived from corporations trying to drive customers to purchase items, even gift cards. After all, $1 saved is $1 not spent and that's bad for profits /s.

Was appreciated by all. Cash as a gift can be fun if you are creative with it.

I see commenters here on HN talking about how 'thoughtful' a gift card is... no, a gift card is selfishly deciding how someone else should spend money that was supposed to be a gift.

Note, however, that I'm assuming that the gift card is well selected. In practice, I find that this is usually not the case--probably because the giver was simply looking for an alternative to giving cash. Under these circumstances I agree that cash is actually better. There are few gifts worse than a gift card to a restaurant you don't like, for products you aren't interested in, or to a totally generic store.

I think the gold standard remains a thoughtful, nonmonetary gift. But that's often just not realistic.

Edit: A sibling comment points out that this is all cultural. And they're exactly right. So I suppose I should specify that I'm a Christmas-celebrating American. YMMV for gift-giving holidays and rituals from other traditions.

I also looked up apps that can be gift card aggregators and will include that next time too.

—-

I did a similar thing when I gifted Alexa Echo Show devices (the ones with a screen). These instructions included how to use a separate Amazon account so the device won’t get your contacts etc, if the person wants that privacy. Along with two 3 minute videos setting up the device and going over a few basic aspects of it. This would be a ton of work for one gift. I have now done this gift 5x and primarily to average technical people.

Basically what I’m saying is. Gift giving is hard. It makes me super anxious and stressed. I think I’ve found my own niche/trick of including personalized instructions and information. I’ve never tried this on an equally techy person though!

Some people believe that cash is an impersonal gift and that you should spend more effort to find a personal gift that the recipient would enjoy. I would find it weird if a friend came to my birthday party and gave me cash, but a gift of a nice whiskey or gin, or a silly joke gift, would feel normal. (Also no gift at all would be fine!)

I've given cash as wedding gifts with the suggestion/hope that the couple spends it on something fun during their honeymoon (but of course they're free to spend it on whatever they like). Plenty of friends who I've talked to have agreed that cash is a fine wedding gift (and sometimes preferred). Most people set up gift registries for weddings, so it's not like the non-monetary gifts from the registry are a big surprise that required a lot of thought and personal attention on the giver's part.

> Anyone who tries to put me down for doing so will simply not be receiving a gift from me next year

Hell, anyone who complains in any way about a gift they've received should fall off the gift-giving list, regardless of what the gift was. Even if someone gives you a gift you don't like or won't use, the gracious thing is to accept it and give thanks. It really is the thought that counts. If you can re-purpose or re-gift it to someone who would actually appreciate it, and do it in a way that won't end up offending the gift-giver, all the better.

I've heard the argument that you should tell the gift giver, because you don't want them to waste their money on something you don't like, but I'm not really persuaded by that. Maybe in some situations, but probably not most. Again, depends on the relationship between the people involved.

When I was twelve, my (much richer) friend came to my birthday party; but he didn't know it was my birthday. It was very impressive that on learing the facts, he immediately whipped out his wallet and gave me a tenner (I had never owned a tenner, and I didn't own a wallet).

It shows you put some thought into the gift, while leaving them free to spend the money where and however they want. And carefully unfolding it all is a bit of payback for the creative wrapping some siblings like to do :)

People’s tastes can be very specific and so it may be very difficult to buy them a gift they’ll truly appreciate and enjoy unless you’re very close. It’s much easier to buy a gift card for a retailer (coffee, books, video games, makeup, fashion) in their area of interest than to try to buy something truly suited to their tastes. This is especially the case for casual acquaintances such as coworkers.

I’ve never actually heard of anyone getting burned by this in modern times though. For sufficiently valuable gift cards (e.g. Amazon), the same hazard exists.

Maybe it is in the US. Here in Russia it's kinda common to gift cash. There are even special cards for that. Many stores do sell gift cards, but I've yet to see someone buy or redeem one.

For gamers, Steam cards are not too bad.

Personal financial columnists and comedians do not understand the jobs that gift cards do. They are not cash-but-worse-in-every-way. Closed loop cards allow a giver to personalize a gift to the recipient. A Barnes and Noble gift card to a favorite niece tells that niece that you remember she is a reader, unlike those uncreative family members who would just give her cash.

If anyone’s psychology is being manipulated, it is likely the recipient, on a theory very similar to the one that causes many readers’ employers to offer a gym stipend instead of the equivalent amount of salary. You appreciate the money more, not less, because of the story about your relationship it comes with.

—Mitch Hedberg, 1968 - 2005

The past four Christmas I've sent bank transfers on the 25th.

Shopping malls, ATMs and banks get just too crowded those days.