FiLife

Hello out there in radioland…

If you’re one of the millions of people who heard the FiLife commentary on American Public Media’s Marketplace show tonight, thanks so much for coming to find us. If you didn’t hear it, you can listen in here.

The Marketplace piece was a riff off of a post we did a few weeks back ticking off seven reasons why it’s rude to give gift cards. We do list posts every Wednesday; last week’s was about a bunch of things we wish student-loan lenders would do better. We’ll have more to say about how universities handle student loans tomorrow, in fact.

For more about FiLife, read the About Us. Or check out the mini-manifesto we penned on the first day this blog went live. Our full site will launch soon. Until then, please set your internet dial here or sign up for an RSS feed.

– Ron Lieber

With the usual batch of holiday-shopping roundups this month comes an emerging subcategory: The Drawbacks-to-Gift-Cards story.

USA Today’s is a typical example, dutifully noting gift-card fees, expiration dates and other fine print. Consumer Reports has a bang-up feature. They even bought an ad (at right) in the New York Times to tout their scribblings on the subject.

In the category of tax dollars well spent, meanwhile, is the annual survey of the gift-card landscape that the Montgomery County, Md. Office of Consumer Protection puts out this time each year.

Here’s the question that no one’s asking, though: If gift cards cause so many problems, why are we still giving them at all? And what does it say about us givers that we just blithely ignore all of the drawbacks?

So let’s just put it out there, shall we? It’s rude to give gift cards.

Here’s why: (more…)