Did you get a gift card for Christmas last month? Do you know where it is?

National Use Your Gift Card Day, January 16, is a day to remind us that those gift cards are made to be spent and this is the perfect day to do that.

It is celebrated on the third Saturday of January

“According to an annual survey by Paytronix, approximately half of all gift cards are redeemed within two months, while the remaining spending time levels off.” (https://cutt.ly/0jvxwFO) The Finder.com article goes on to say that about 80% of gift cards are spent within a year, and perhaps 3% are never redeemed.

“Almost $3 billion in gift card cash went unused in 2019 alone,” said the website. Well over $100 billion is spent on gift cards every Christmas.

If you forget about your gift card, but find it later, as long as the store exists and is under the same ownership, it can still be spent. If you don’t use the whole amount, some stores let you keep the money on the card while others will give you the difference.

If you have multiple gift cards for a store, they will usually let you put all of the money onto one card so you don’t have to carry multiple cards, or you can spend them one at a time.

So, what if today, on National Use Your Gift Card Day, you realize that you have no use for a particular gift card? You can still benefit from it with companies like https://www.cardcash.com/sell-gift-cards/ which allow you to sell them for actual money. Another option is to find a site that allows sales and post your gift card. Someone else might just be looking for that item to pass on as a gift.