Not Using Gift Cards, Money wasted: nearly $1 billion
Simultaneously the most maligned and requested of holiday gifts, gift cards can either simplify shopping or make money simply disappear. About $1 billion of the money packed away in gift cards goes unspent every year, reports of a CEB TowerGroup study said last year. All those minuscule sums people either forget about or are too proud to use really do add up, but there's a thriving market in buying, selling, and trading "used" gift cards on sites such as Raise and Cardpool, and 11 states mandate stores pay back a remaining balance below a certain threshold.