PHOENIX — Gift cards traditionally have been a ticket to splurge.

Not so this year, when shoppers are worrying about employment and keeping their gas tanks full. This season, the No. 1 holiday gift will pay for gas or purchases at discount stores.

"I love getting gas cards — they are an awesome gift," said Darby Lowry, 17, of Phoenix. "You can carry them around. You never know when you will be out of cash and need a tank of gas."

Also desirable this year are cards for stores like Target and Wal-Mart, which carry merchandise ranging from groceries to fine jewelry. Cards for upscale clothing resale stores also are big.

What's out?

Cards for any store that has filed for bankruptcy protection. And small-denomination cards for stores with big-ticket stuff.

"Don't give me a gift card to an electronics store," Tempe, Ariz., retiree Diamond Wijesekera said. "That is just a way of pushing you to go out and spend more money."

Gift-card sales this season are predicted to total $25 billion, according to a report by research and business consulting firm Archstone Consulting.

That's about 5 percent less than was spent last year, said David Sievers, a principal and the operations leader at Archstone.

Gift cards will still be the No. 1 gift given — and requested —this year.

But the type of card being requested is different this year, Sievers said.

"Christmas typically is the time to splurge on luxury," he said.

"With rising debt and unemployment, you are going to see more people buying prepaid bank cards or mass-merchant cards. A grocery-store card is not much of a gift, but if you give someone a card to Target or Wal-Mart, they can buy groceries with it or spend it on a discretionary item."

Terri Llach, group vice president of Blackhawk Network Inc., a subsidiary of Safeway that sells about 300 brands of gift cards on racks in grocery stores, concurs that practical cards will be this year's best-sellers.

"We have done some research and found people are saying, 'I am going to spend $25 or $50 on a gift that is practical and useful,' " she said. She noted that people who buy gift cards do so because "they want the person to have what they really want."

Another study, commissioned by Deloitte LLP, said 17 percent of gift-card buyers this year will give cards that people can use at gas stations.

"I would love to get a gas card. Wouldn't you?" Mesa retiree Marilyn Kaltynski said.

Resale and consignment stores also are expecting their cards to be big business this year because of the down economy.

Goodwill of Central Arizona will end its paper certificates and start selling gift cards at the nonprofit's 35 thrift stores.

High school student Jenny Wolf, 17, said there is no stigma to receiving such cards. She said she has gotten deals on designer items with gift cards for designer resale store A Second Look in north Phoenix.

"Once I got a Coach purse for $20," she said.

Eco Chic Consignments Inc., the Paradise Valley-based company that owns consignment stores My Sister's Closet, Well Suited, My Sister's Attic and Small Change, also expects gift cards to be big sellers this season.

The company had $10.7 million in total sales last year and Chief Executive Officer Ann Siner said her cash registers keep ringing despite, or perhaps because of, the economic slowdown.

A $25 gift certificate at My Sister's Closet will buy a woman's suit or a leather skirt — items that might sell for more than $200 new, Siner said.