If you got a gift card this holiday – hurry up and use it!

Got gift cards?

Forget about saving them for a rainy day – get out there and use them – the sooner, the better. According to a recent Consumer Reports poll, about 113 million adults received gift cards last year – and a lot of them were never redeemed. Here are some good reasons NOT to hang on to them:

• The new rules that prevent some gift cards from expiring within five years don’t apply to reloadable cards and vouchers from sites such as Groupon, Living Social and BuyWithMe.

• Bank issued cards are convenient – but some of them carry inactivity fees if you don’t use them within a certain amount of time.

• In the event a retailer goes bankrupt – all bets are off. There could be fewer places to redeem them or less time to do so.

Of course you could always lose or forget about that gift card you so carefully tucked away. Lost and forgotten cards account for the majority of those unused.