Get out those gift cards

If Santa dropped gift cards down your chimney, there's a one in four chance your card is getting cold.

A survey by Corporate Research International suggests we're waiting longer to redeem those cards for, uh, things we really want. More than 40 percent of shoppers said they redeemed the total amount of the cards they received during the 2005 holiday season by February of 2006. But 25 percent said they waited until December 2006 to turn their plastic into prezzies.

Procrastinating doesn't make much sense to me because it increases the odds we'll forget about the cards -- or lose them and decide not to go thru the laborious process to reclaim them.

Or perhaps the folks who are waiting to redeem have a plan? Maybe they are saving their cards to splurge on vacation? Spring holidays? Graduation?

So what kind of gift cards did we get? For the second year in a row restaurant gift cards were tops with 27 percent, followed by department stores (14 percent), discounters (10 percent), apparel stores (9 percent), and online retailers (7 percent).