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Personal Finance from the Broke Perspective

9 Common Items for Guilt Free Regifting

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Inevitably it happens.  You open a gift from a well-meaning relative or coworker, only to discover it’s a gift card for a store you never frequent.  Or it’s the third scarf you’ve gotten this season.  Or it’s a pricey bottle of bourbon, and you don’t drink.  Rather than be disappointed by the gifts that you receive, consider regifting them and saving yourself money.  There are 9 common items for guilt free regifting that you should consider happily passing along to someone on your to-buy gift list.

9 Common Items for Guilt-Free Regifting

Gift Cards

Sure, you could sell the gift card, but an easier solution is to regift it.  If you never shop at a certain department store but you know that your mother-in-law does, why not regift the gift card to her?

Before regifting, make sure the card hasn’t been used, that you know its exact value, and that your own name isn’t written on it.

Homemade Desserts

9 Common Items for Guilt Free Regifting
Photo by Mae Mu on Unsplash

‘Tis the season to receive homemade desserts, again, and again.  You received peanut brittle and you hate peanuts?  Simply take the brittle and create your own homemade goodie plate to give to someone else.

Gourmet Food

Gift baskets with gourmet food abound during the holiday season.  These make excellent gifts, especially if you regift a meat and cheese basket to a man you know is on the Keto diet or a chocolate basket to your chocoholic office mate.

Personal Care Sets

You can easily regift personal care sets such as body lotions and lip glosses to any woman in your life, especially if you don’t know them well.  The same goes for men’s gift sets such as cologne or hair gel.

Soap

Most people don’t buy or make fancy soaps for themselves, so these make a perfect gift for the person in your life who loves personal care items with a flair.  This is also a great regift for those on your list that you don’t know well such as your child’s teacher.

Alcohol

Of all the regifts, this is likely one of the best ones to give.  Plenty of people would appreciate receiving a bottle of alcohol, especially high-quality alcohol, for a gift.

Books

As long as you haven’t read it and the book still looks brand new, consider regifting it to your favorite bibliophile.

Pen Sets

A fancy pen set is on my list of the most boring gifts ever, but some people really like having a fancy pen that writes smoothly.  Consider regifting this to the academic or business person in your life.

New Clothing

If you receive gloves, scarves, hats, etc., these make the perfect gifts to regift because they’re fairly generic.  Just make sure the price tag is still on and the item is in pristine condition.

Regifting, when done well, i.e. carefully considering if the other person would actually like the regift rather than just giving it to her because you have to give her a gift, can offer several benefits.  First, you get rid of a gift you don’t want or need.  Second, you save money by not buying an additional gift.  Third, you help the environment by consuming a bit less because you’re passing on your unwanted gift rather than buying a new one.

The holiday season is the time when most people regift.  However, don’t forget, you can also regift for birthdays and housewarming parties.  Perhaps save one bottle of alcohol as a gift when you’re invited to a dinner party.

Three Ways to Unload Unwanted Gift Cards

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‘Tis the season to receive gift cards from well-meaning relatives and acquaintances who don’t know what else to give you.  If you receive one you don’t like, your first thought may be to sell the gift cards on gift card selling/buying sites or eBay.  However, these sites sometimes require a hefty fee for selling, often upwards of 15 to 25% of the value of the gift card.  While these sites seemingly make selling a gift card easy and rewarding, there are three ways to unload unwanted gift cards that are more convenient and cost less money.

Three Ways to Unload Unwanted Gift Cards

Sell to Family and Friends

The company my son volunteers with gave him a $25 gift card to Olive Garden.  While the gesture was nice, we’re gluten free and almost never go to Olive Garden.  To a 15-year old kid, that gift card was just a source of frustration—it was money he couldn’t use.

My mom was visiting, and I know she likes to go to Olive Garden.  She happily bought the gift card from my son for $22.  He got immediate cash, and she got a discount on her future meal.  The transaction was a win for both of them, and he lost less of the value of the gift card than if he had gone through a gift card selling/buying site.

Sell on a Local Facebook Group

If you’ve already tried family and friends, why not see if you can sell it on a local Facebook group?  My husband had $75 in gift cards for a certain grocery store in our area.  I don’t like, nor frequent, that grocery store often.  We have a specialized diet, and the items at that grocery store are not specialized.  My husband tried to convince me to go buy shampoos and soap there, but the mark up was so high, I didn’t want to purchase them.

Instead, I sold the gift card on our local homeschool group’s Facebook site.  I sold the $75 worth of gift cards for $70.  Sure, I lost $5. Honestly, though, shopping at that store would have cost me more because every item had such a high mark up.  I can use the cash now to buy things much cheaper than I could have at that store.

Regift Them

Three Ways to Unload Unwanted Gift Cards
Photo by chuttersnap on Unsplash

If you don’t have family and friends interested in buying the gift cards and you can’t find anyone to buy them on Facebook, you can always regift them.  I just make sure to check the balance and that there is no expiration diet. The gift recipient is none the wiser, and you’ve just saved yourself the cost of a gift.

Most people who are trying to sell gift cards automatically think of selling them on eBay or on gift selling/buying sites.  But, as you can see, there are three ways to unload unwanted gift cards that don’t require you to lose 15 to 25% of the gift card’s value in fees.

What is your favorite way to get rid of gift cards you’ll never use?

 

5 Benefits and Drawbacks of Keeping a Change Jar

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5 Benefits and Drawbacks of Keeping a Change Jar

Do you keep a change jar?  My mom keeps all of her change and has been saving it for the last two years for a vacation.  She is not alone as many people hoard their change as a way to save money, especially if  they feel they’d otherwise be unable to.  However, just as many (or more) argue that keeping change is a waste of time and space.  Both sides have valid points; I find there are 5 benefits and drawbacks of keeping a change jar.

Benefits to Keeping a Change Jar

There are benefits to keeping a change jar, which is why so many people do so, even in this age of prevalent credit card usage.

Save for Something Special

5 Benefits and Drawbacks of Keeping a Change Jar
Photo by Deanna Ritchie on Unsplash

Have you ever seen the big five-gallon jugs that people use to collect their change?  One man saved for 10 years, and when he cashed it in, he had over $3,000, which he used for a trip to Europe.  Would he have saved that money without keeping his change?  He says no.  If you don’t have the discipline to save, keeping your change is a good, mindless way to save.

Cash Emergency Fund

Another woman saves her change for a rainy day.  She and her husband had an expensive car repair that they hadn’t planned for, and they robbed all of their budget categories to pay in cash for the expense.  That left her with no grocery money for her family of four for the month, so she raided her change jar.  She had $224 in there, which she used to feed her family.  It was still a tight month, but she didn’t go into debt, and her family didn’t go hungry.

Drawbacks to Keeping a Change Jar

Unfortunately, there are risks and expenses with saving this way.

Could Earn Interest

One of the major drawbacks to keeping all of your change in a jar for years is that you miss out on the interest you could be receiving.  Take the man who had $3,000 in change.  He could have invested his money as he saved and been earning interest.  He would have made more money than he did just leaving it in his closet.

May Lose It All

An even bigger drawback is that you have the potential to lose all of the change.  A friend of mine had about $120 in change she’d been saving, and, unfortunately, her house was robbed.  All of that money was gone.  Even if your house isn’t broken into, you could lose the money if you have a fire.  Even teens have been known to dig into their parents’ change jar for a little extra money.

You May Pay a Fee

A select few banks still offer coin counting machines for free, but many won’t take coin rolls.  If you have to rely on CoinStar, you’ll pay an 11.9% fee, so if you turn in $300 in change, you’ll pay $36 in processing fees.  If you need to pay a fee this high, is it still worthwhile to save your change?

Saving change has been a fun way to save money, but as these 5 benefits and drawbacks of keeping a change jar demonstrate,  it’s becoming increasingly costly.  If you can have enough self-discipline to save the money on your own in a bank or invest it, that is the better way to save.

Do you save your change? What benefits and drawbacks do you see?