Daily Dose of BS May 17

Lots of people give gift cards for gifts, I used to always be against them, but as I have gotten older I have had less a need than a want.  When you are first starting off in life there are things that you need to live like food, shelter etc, those needs don’t change when you get older but if you played your cards right those should be available to you.  Then you add the next tier of things like cable, internet, cell phone and home phone.  Bringing me back to the gift card idea, when I get a card now I will go out and buy something that I wouldn’t normally buy.  So it does in fact become a special gift, one of the bad things about them though is that you are forced to buy from a store maybe you wouldn’t normally shop at or maybe you may have to add your own money for the gift.  I have received a few of the Visa or Mastercard $50 or $100 cards over the years.  And saved them for a special day, like this past weekend when I went to the Mall of America.  I pulled out the cards so that I would be able to get something special.  One of the cards was from Christmas a few years ago and when I went to use it, it had about 36 dollars less than I expected it to have, well I looked at the back of the card and to my surprise after 12 months the card started charging you $2.95 per month.  Don’t you pay 5 dollars for the card to begin with, and don’t lots of people not use or forget about having the gift cards so that way the credit card company is making money that way anyway.  I am all for a 5 year expiration date but to charge me for not using it that is silly.