So this is incredibly stupid on my part, but I've been heading out to our favorite local mom and pop toy store for presents every time their is a birthday part for one of the kids to attend. It never has been my thing to give gift cards. Well Ri just had her party last weekend with 23 kids or so, and man did she get a ton of gift cards! She banked more than $50 for Target and is incredibly stoked. So today she gets to have a fun shopping day with mom and bro for her day off school.

I just thought I would point out how I've been re-educated on the coolness of gift cards. I usually hate them. I hate giving them, hate getting them, just hate them. But I'm coming around today.

That should be "there is a birthday". I hate it when I do that by mistake while typing too fast to think it through!

Best of all, keep a stash of like, 10 dollar barnes and noble gift cards in the car and you never have to worry about not having a present.

Just be careful not to buy gift cards from companies that might be on the ropes economically. Witness the Circuit City bankruptcy. If you hold a gift card from Circuit City, you might not be able to redeem it for a few reasons. First, the company might close its doors and not reopen them. Second, you might be treated as an unsecured creditor of the company, who is likely to be wiped out when the company reemerges from bankruptcy.

That said, we learned this week that buying certain gift cards through our school's PTO results in a percentage of the face value of the gift card being donated by the company to the school. You pay no more than you would otherwise pay, but the school benefits. Bonus!

Awesome JTC. We should do that here - clearly a lot of gift cards are purchased in my neck of the woods.

I mentioned this the other day on the fundraising thread - our school earned more that $20,000 last year selling gift cards at face value - and that was AFTER splitting the proceeds with the families (half goes towards next year's tuition at our Catholic school) - it would have been better than $40,000 if we were a public school!

If you're giving gift cards to kids, though, at lest put it into a box and wrap it. They need the whole rending of the paper things to feel complete on their birthday.

I've given gift cards in a box that is also a gift. It's always been to females, so I've bought decorative hat/photo boxes and stuck a gift card in there. If you find them on sale, it's not much more than wrapping materials.