It is that time of the year, and you know what that means, spending countless amounts of time and money shopping for gifts that will impress your loved ones. But how about after the holidays? When the gifts that you have received from your family and friends are not what you want. One of the busiest shopping days of the year is the day after Christmas, when everyone is returning their unwanted gifts, or using the gift cards they received for Christmas to purchase items they wanted.
I have always told my wife that if I get her a gift she does not like, I would much rather she returned it instead of holding onto it and never really enjoying it. Look, I’m a guy, I don’t know what is “cool” and “stylish” when it comes to purses and women’s shoes, but I don’t mind giving it a shot. This year I got my wife a purse from Coach, and I am 95% sure she will want to return it (we are actually going today to get a different color, I got the style right at least LOL). The point is, expect that there is a pretty good chance that the gift you are buying for someone may be returned and always try and give them a gift receipt. When shopping for your loved ones, understand that they may return your gift and only be able to receive store credit, so try to buy the gift from a store that they generally enjoy to shop at.
I don’t receive as many gift cards as I used to in the past, but at one point in my life, I would get 3-5 gift cards per holiday season, and some were for stores that I did not shop at. There are so many great websites out there that offer to buy your unwanted gift cards at a discount. A website that I have used a few times is Plasticjungle.com. Justin@ Moneyistheroot.com has written an article about this site a while back titled “No Gift Cards Left Behind”. This site makes it very easy to sell and buy gift cards that are unused or have been used but still have balance on the cards.
The way it works is these sites will normally offer you 20% less for the gift card than it is worth. So for a $100 gift card for home depot you will receive $80 cash. In return, they will turn around and sell the same gift card to me for maybe a 7-10% discount depending on the store (home depot and Lowes tend to be some of the more popular, so expect a smaller discount). There are tons of websites out there that do this now, just make sure you do your research on the site before making a purchase. Different sites will have different discount rates on various stores gift cards so be sure to do some research to find the best possible deal.
