The Perfect Gift

According to Consumer Reports this is not it.

“Our survey has the lowdown on best gifts, hot shopping spots, and gift cards that don’t give.

Believe it or not, there’s a worse gift than a mashed-potato-scented candle. One unfortunate Consumer Reports survey respondent received such a present last holiday season. But consider this: Giving a gift card can be a bigger waste of money. That’s one of the findings in our recent Holiday Shopping poll. The Consumer Reports National Research Center surveyed 1,000 adults about holiday shopping habits. Here are our major findings:

• Unused gift cards are the new billion-dollar business. According to our survey, the second-most-popular gift for 2006, favored by 60 percent of shoppers, is gift cards. (Clothing came in first at 73 percent.) While gift cards seem like a fail-proof present, they may be as useful as an animatronic singing trophy fish. About 23.3 million Americans have unused gift cards from last year’s holidays–that’s at least $972 million in unredeemed cards. Indeed, 54 percent of respondents received gift cards for the 2005 holidays. Nearly a year later, 19 percent of the gift-card recipients have not used one or more of the cards received.”

I am one of those people who has a card or two lying around. But, that is not because I am unhappy with these gifts. The reason is that I am being very particular about how I spend it. I am quite appreciative of this, but there is no reason just to spend the money to spend it.

I have my eye on a couple of things. Just biding my time and then I’ll go ahead and snap it up.