For Christmas or birthday, do you prefer to give/receive gift card, cash, something cheap and thoughtful?

graysmom · Yahoo User

One of my fave gifts ever was a mug my aunt got for me at the Dollar Tree. I collect elephants & it had a beautiful drawing of an elephant on it. She only paid a buck for it, & I treasure it because it shows that she really thought about what I like & found something nice & functional to suit my tastes.Here's a weird one. For years I had a dead fly in a plastic box that I kept in my car. It was one of those colorful green ones that looks like it has a metal shell. My mother had given it to me as a gag gift for my b-day because I had given her a flyswatter with a sunflower on it for hers. She loves sunflowers & that was the only one I could find at the time.To me, cash says, "Not only do I not know you well enough to buy you a gift, but I don't want to expend the energy to think about where you might like to shop." A gift card says, "I know what you like, but I don't know enough about you to know what you don't already have." Both of them say, "So, go buy it yourself."The worst is probably a gift card for the wrong store. Last year I sold a Sears gift card for the cash equivalent because I hate shopping at Sears. The one exception to the cash rule would be significant amounts. One time, my mother gave each of us five kids $1,000 cash for Christmas. She made a joke by keeping it in the freezer the night before and telling us it was cold case, and it was so neat to see how excited she was to have that much money to give away considering I can remember a time when she had holes in her last pair of shoes but she spent what money she had on boots for me so I wouldn't get wet feet walking to class in college.So, who really prefers cash or a card to a thoughtful, even sentimental gift?OOPS. TYPO. COLD CASH.