By skyforbes Americans spend hundreds of billions on gift cards ($300B in 2024), and 2-4% of them end up never used, and 2 in 5 adults have an unused gift card, voucher or store credit.
And a gift card provides no incremental value over the cash purchase price of the card. And people convince themselves it's more thoughtful to give a gift card, but giving cash is somehow crass or doesn't represent the gift giving spirit the same way.
But all gift cards do is provide a boost for retailers, like Starbucks claiming $140M in revenue in gift card "breakage."
If you gift cash, it can be used everywhere, can pay bills or debt, or can be saved or invested for future use. Do that instead of turning it into yet another piece of plastic destined for a landfill or lost. Maybe your cousin needs to pay rent more than he needs Starbucks.
I started this mostly annoyed about billions of plastic cards going into landfills, but 10 minutes of googling convinced me the problem is so much worse. Buy a greeting card and write in some genuine thoughts on why the recipient is important to you and put in a crisp 20 dollar bill or two.