Gift Cards –

I caught this on TV yesterday – one of these Sunday finance shows…

They speculated that anyone who has a gift card from a retail merchant needs to spend them. The crux that was for a lot of the smaller stores, they may have trouble staying open after the Christmas season.

I thought it was a bunch of baloney until they pointed out that Sharper Image filed for bankruptcy and left a lot of people with worthless gift cards. I was stunned.

So if you have friend or family that send you gift cards for the holidays, I’d spend them just as fast as humanly possible. I would never have thought this was a big deal, but apparently the companies have the right to just say no! Unbelievable right?

Hopefully if you have a gift card to Wal*Mart or Target there’s little chance those companies are gong to go bankrupt– but Sharper Image was a pretty big store – Caveat Emptor!