A Creative Way to Give a Cash Gift

A lot of times it makes sense to give cash or a gift card as a present for someone’s birthday. Either they have something in particular they are saving up for, or then they can pick out their own item to ensure it is the right size, style, etc.

In this case, it was my sister’s birthday. I had asked what she wanted, and she said that she would love to go thrift shopping or that she would like a statement necklace. I looked at a few stores for a necklace but didn’t find anything that seemed quite right. I would love to go thrifting with her, but she lives in NYC, and I live in Minneapolis. Cash was the best gift idea so that she could go thrifting and hopefully find the perfect necklace. I didn’t want to just stick a wad of cash into an envelope, though. Then, I remembered something.

A friend gave me a really fun gift where she took a few different envelopes, wrote a little instruction on the front, and then put some money or a gift card inside. For me, she had picked out a few of my favorite things to do for a relaxing day—grabbing Starbucks, reading a magazine, and then picking out a treasure at a local vintage store. It was so fun to see what she came up with, and it made getting the cash a lot more exciting.

I wanted to do something similar for my sister so she had something to open on her birthday. It’s sort of like a treasure hunt. For her, I had 3 stages of the gift—a new scent, breakfast/coffee money and one of her favorite magazines to fuel up for her day, and money to go thrifting. It was fun to have 2 packages to go along with the envelopes.

First, I picked up a birthday card from Target to explain the concept.

When I got home, I went through my stash of tissue paper, envelopes, and ribbons to find some coordinating options so that the magazine was in a paper that went with its envelope and the perfume wrapping could be tied with ribbons to go with its envelope.

Then, I wrote on blank note cards to stick into each envelope and tucked the cash into the corresponding ones.

To finish it off, I decorated the front of each one.

There you have it! I’m really happy with how it turned out, and my sister loved it!