I’m sure I frequent Starbucks far too often to truly call myself frugal. Over the last year, I have significantly cut back my coffee habit, but I’m still stopping in to my local shop a couple times a day. (To be fair, all but my first trip are free because I registered my Starbucks card and they give me free refills of drip coffee.)
Because my family knows of my habit, I will probably get a couple of gift cards for Christmas. What I’ve realized is that when I have gift cards that people have given me, I am more likely to buy something other than (and more expensive than) a drip coffee. I don’t believe I’m unique in this, so I figure this might be a good point to write about.
The first thing that comes to mind is that I should spend gift cards just the way I would spend my own money. I should continue to be thrifty so the gift card simply frees up the money I was spending on coffee for more noble purposes such as saving or paying off debt.
The argument against this is that the giver would probably want me to treat myself to something special with the card. I often would like a mocha or latte, but I take a drip coffee because it’s less expensive. In fact, a venti mocha costs more than twice as much as a venti drip. A twenty dollar gift card will buy either 10 days worth of drip or 4 mochas. My tendency is to lean toward going with the drip coffee because I like the idea of saving money over longer periods of time.
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I like the rationale that “the gift giver would WANT me to treat myself to something bigger.”