What exactly is “gift certificate-paresis”?
Maybe there is an actual word for this condition, but for now, I will use “gift certificate-paresis”. “Paresis” is the medical suffix for “slight paralysis” which I found at Study Shack.
It occurs when you receive a gift certificate as a gift. You are excited to get the gift and are grateful, but when it comes time to spend it…you freeze. You don’t know what to buy!!
Here you have in your hand essentially free money, and you don’t know what to get. I once spent 1/2 hour in Walmart trying to find something to buy with at $10.00 gift certificate. But, if I go in there normally, I can easily spend $50.00 on essentials.
Why does that happen? Are some of us so uncomfortable with spending “free money” that we just do not know what to spend it on? Maybe for some of us the thought of spending the money on whatever you want just is too much to comprehend.
Sometimes, the human mind is very interesting 
Article included in the Nineteenth Festival of Frugality over at Punny Money.
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Posted: April 15th, 2006 at 11:23 pm
I am so suffering from this little “disease.” I will often get a Barnes and Noble gc from one of my relatives for a gift at Christmas. Now, I have about 100 books on my Amazon wish list, and if you let me wander in a used book store, I could find 100 bucks worth of stuff without breaking a sweat. But put that gc in my hand, and I have no idea what to do!