- If you buy a gift card that isn’t worth enough for what you actually buy, the store “wins” because you will probably make up the difference with cash and they then sell you something you either would not have bought at all, or bought somewhere else.
- If you buy a gift card that is worth more than whatever you end up buying, the store “wins” again because they have received the full value and you did not.
- If you buy a gift card and by some miracle it is exactly matching the cost of what you buy, the store “wins” yet again because (a) you were still only able to purchase items from that store, and (b) the entire time you were holding the card, it was slowly losing value because only bad things could have happened: the store might have stopped offering what you wanted, the price could have changed, or heck the store could have simply gone out of business. Meanwhile, the store was already paid by you for the card (in yesterday’s dollars) so they could do almost anything with that CASH, including putting it in a saving account, and end up better off than you.
Simply put, it is never, ever, ever to your advantage to have a gift card. Ever!! Cash is better in every possible way.