How to become a gift card guerilla

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With the holidays just behind us, the odds are good that you've received a gift card. The odds are good that you gave a few, too.But as some recent studies have shown, the odds are definitely not in the consumer's favor.It's estimated that the average gift card giver purchased more than $120 dollars in cards in 2007. And it's estimated that $7.8 billion (yes, billion) gift card dollars will go unspent in 2008.So when you think about it, you bought a nice present for Starbucks this year.Gift cards have become the go-to gift for last minute shoppers, out-of-touch relatives, and casual coworkers seeking something to stuff a stocking. Giving cash is gauche. Twelve lattes are difficult to carry. And nothing says you care like a negligible amount of money that is only redeemable with one retailer.Hardly anyone gets through the holidays without a gift card these days. According to Consumer Reports, nearly 30 percent of gift card getters carry a balance on their cards after a year, and more than 50 percent of card owners have two cards or more.To retailers, this means two words: easy money. Every unspent dollar is revenue in pocket, and retailers have clever ways of keeping those pockets full.Some gift cards depreciate over time. Like a bachelor's degree in print journalism, the card becomes less valuable as time goes by, until eventually it's worthless. Other cards add maintenance fees, chipping away at your wallet like an overdue DVD.But no matter how tricky these tactics may be, nothing pulls in more money that good old human error.Retailers have learned to count on lost or discarded cards. They're small, they're plastic, and they fit conveniently behind dressers and into heating registers. A twenty dollar bill might be treated with more respect, but a twenty dollar gift card is likely to be tossed into the trash with the wrapping paper and ribbon.And nothing accrues more money than an unspent balance. Four unspent dollars on a fifty dollar gift card means little to us, but an eight percent markup on regular prices is gravy to a great big corporation.But this isn't going to keep anyone from picking up a deck of gift cards when the holidays roll around again. They're too simple, too available, and too quick to pass up even if we know the balance will fall in the coffee chain's favor.So the only reasonable response is to become an informed, knowledgeable, and responsible gift card guerilla.First, know your terms and conditions. If it loses value or requires maintenance spend it quickly. And even if it never expires, don't keep it sitting around -- the odds are that it'll find a heating register before you find a sale on Smartwool socks.And second, don't leave a cent unspent. It's bad enough that the balance belongs to only one retailer, but worse still when the full balance isn't collected. Ask for 23 cents in whole-milk foam if you have to. Or pay the remainder in cash.Or, if it gets to be late in the year, and you get to be exceptionally desperate, there's always a final option for those unspent funds. See if they can be transferred to a new gift card. Tis' the season for regifting, after all.(Ben Grabow writes for the young, the urban, and the easily amused. Contact him at thinlyread(at)gmail.com.)(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com)