AOL's WalletPop writes about Lottay.com

WalletPop is AOL's personal finance blog, and today they posted a piece about Lottay.com. See it here -- Give 'em what they really want: Online dollars to use as they please

The article describes one of our Lottay customers, a doting uncle in San Francisco who's going to use Lottay.com to send gifts to his 11 nieces and nephews this year.

Spreading happiness -- that's what we want :-)

Gift Cards Will Never Trump Cash

I actually stole that headline from the Wall Street Journal. (The photo above, too.) Their Cheapskate column has this wonderful diatribe today. The subhead of the article is "Gift Cards Are Useful; Give Me Cash".

That's exactly what we believe here at Lottay.com. The article points out that recipients of cash as a gift are happy with the money. I mean, really, who doesn't want to be given MONEY? Cash is fantastic. Even moreso nowadays, right? The article says that the givers of cash as a gift are the ones who don't feel so great about it.

So use Lottay.com to give cash as a gift. You won't feel crass or thoughtless. You create the gift with your message, images, an e-card, even have other people contribute money to the total (so, a group gift). And it's totally safe and secure because the actual money transaction from you to your recipient happens through PayPal.

As the Wall Street Journal article says:

Somebody already invented that go-anywhere gift card. It's called cash.

Gift cards are the new fruitcake

In the olden days of yore during ye merry ol' holiday times, people used to give fruitcakes as gifts. Lots of people gave fruitcakes as gifts. Yet, very few of the recipients of said cake o' fruit wanted that gift. So it became a joke ("the fruitcake").

I think maybe gift cards are the new fruitcake.

Check out this article in Yahoo!Shine: Five Reasons to Avoid Gift Cards This Holiday Season

Still want to gift the equivalent of cash? We suggest [quite self-promotingly] that you try a Lottay.com online gift of cash, complete with e-card and other nifty gift-y wrapping. A Lottay gift (money sent from your PayPal account into your recipient's PayPal account) has none of the pitfalls of gift cards.

Just say no to gift cards, er, fruitcake this holiday season!

Cash is king this holiday shopping season

Are you going to buy gifts this holiday season with greenbacks or with plastic? A new report that just came out predicts that more of us will pay with cash than with credit this shopping season. The report is here at Credit.com.

The prediction is that shoppers will use cash and debit cards instead of going into more debt. Apparently we as a society in the United States got the memo: We've been paying down our staggering amount of credit card debt. And we don't want to go backwards.

No slam against the credit card industry, but, heck yeah, it's about time we stopped piling on the debt and started digging out from under it.

A perfect, and perfectly manageable, way to set and stick to a holiday-shopping budget is to pay only with cash. Personally, I stopped using credit cards years ago. I only pay with cash, debit, or checks (checks! call me old-school!). This no-credit cards rule has made managing my money more straightforward. Don't have enough to buy it? Well then, don't buy it!

This holiday-shopping budget management is something that works well on Lottay.com. How? Simple. You send gifts of cash using Lottay.com. That cash sits in your PayPal account (you must use PayPal on Lottay). So decide how much you want to spend on gifts, put that amount into your PayPal account, and send your cash gifts with Lottay. You won't over-spend or go into debt. Sweet.

Are you going to regift this season?

Making the news rounds on the Interweb today is a poll showing that more Americans plan to regift this year compared to last year.

The Consumer Reports poll says that 36% of American adults plan on recycling their gifts this season compared to 31% last year.

Are you a regifter?

Far be it from me to cast aspersions on regifting ... but wouldn't it be nice to get a gift you actually wanted to use?

That's why we started Lottay.com. Give money - it's the best. Create and share a wish list - tell 'em what you'd really like. Everyone's happy. And that boxed set of scented candles shaped like snowmen stops making the rounds.

The gift of cash, hard times, and The Shawshank Redemption

I saw this press release headline the other day:

"Nearly seven out of ten Americans plan to give cash or gift cards this holiday season". Press release here.

Whoa. Almost 70% of us will give money and plastic money this holiday? Wow, if that isn't a reflection of the tough times we're struggling through, I don't know what is.

Wait, you say - why does X mean Y? (X = the giving of money as a gift; Y = we're struggling financially)

Here's why:

We all know someone, sometimes many someones, who are really truly struggling with money these days. I have friends who are super well-educated and experienced and have been unemployed for months. In one case, a dear friend has been hunting for a job for more than a year. I have friends who are under-employed too. Their hours were cut back [involuntarily] or they took a salary cut [involuntarily] but are working the same hours - either way, their household incomes have dropped. I have friends who are having to sell their houses because they can't afford their mortgages. I have friends who are moving across state lines to seek work.

You know these people too, I'm sure. The recession is so wide-spread and fundamental that very few folks are unaffected.

But I don't mean to be a Debbie Downer about this. In fact, my attitude toward what we're slogging through is just the opposite. And I'm not saying that just because my Zoloft has kicked in.

I am heartened by the re-assessments people are making in light of reduced household income. I am brightened by the attitude shifts people are making in the face of on-going belt-tightening. When you have less money and you can't get more credit, your priorities change. Your sense of value sharpens. Your empathy opens up just that much wider to others in need ... because you're beginning to walk a mile in their shoes....

Or maybe I'm just a hopeful kind of fella :-)

I think people are planning to give cash and plastic cash this holiday season because they know that the best gift in these hard times is money. Your brother who lost his job doesn't really want another sweater for Christmas. Your girlfriend whose salary was cut by 15% really doesn't want another iPhone case. And your dad never wanted another necktie, ever, really :-)

So we're planning to give what they want - cash. I say, go!

And, self-servingly, I say, try Lottay.com for cash-giving! We enable you to give your cash gift "wrapped" like a real present, with an e-card and a message and pictures, all done through PayPal (so it's safe and secure).

However you do it, when you give money this holiday, you're along with the rest of us.