If you live in St Tammany or New Orleans, a great gift card to buy is for a Professional Organizer. Think how happy they will be with this thoughtful gift? Now, I wanted to share a viral e-mail with you that might just save you some headaches. Snopes verified it and so did Truth or Fiction (so it has to be true).

I wanted to give everyone a heads up that if you tend to give gift cards around the holidays, you need to be careful that the cards will be honored after the holidays. You might want to let your friends and family know about this.

Stores that are planning to close after Christmas are still selling the cards through the holidays even though the cards will be worthless January 1st. There is no law preventing them from doing this. On the contrary, it is referred to as ‘Bankruptcy Planning). Below is a partial list of stores that you need to be cautious about.

Ann Taylor 117 stores nationwide closing
Bombay closing remaining stores
Cache will close all stores
Circuit City (filed Chapter 11)
Dillard’s to close some stores
Disney closing 98 stores and will close more after January.
Eddie Bauer to close stores 27 stores and more after January
Ethan Allen closing down 12 stores.
Footlocker closing 140 stores more to close after January
GAP closing 85 stores
Home Depot closing 15 stores 1 in NJ ( New Brunswick )
JC Penney closing a number of stores after January
J. Jill closing all stores (owned by Talbots)
K B Toys closing 356 stores
Lane Bryant, Fashion Bug ,and Catherine’s to close 150 stores nationwide
Levitz closing down remaining stores
Linens and Things closing all stores
Loews to close down some stores
Macys to close 9 stores after January
Movie Galley Closing all stores correction – they are not closing their stores. Click here for their official statement.
Pacific Sunwear (also owned by Talbots)
Pep Boys Closing 33 stores
Piercing Pagoda closing all stores
Sharper Image closing down all stores
Sprint/Nextel closing 133 stores
Talbots closing down specialty stores
Wickes Furniture closing down
Wilson Leather closing down all stores
Whitehall closing all stores
Zales closing down 82 stores and 105 after January