Shopping for the kids on your list is definitely more fun, but you can’t put it off any longer: it’s time to figure out what to buy for all those hard-to-buy-for people on your holiday shopping list. Well, lucky you, I have some tips on what to buy—and perhaps more importantly—what not to buy.

I know that it’s tempting to give up and resort to gag gifts after several years of buying bad gifts despite your good intentions. Resist. Let’s start there with the list of what not to buy for hard-to-buy-for people:

Do not buy

• Wind-up boxing nuns,
• Racing grandma and grandpa,
• Reindeer that poop candy, or
• Singing bass plaque.
• Do not buy gift certificates for elderly relatives; they don’t need anything from the mall, don’t want to go shopping, don’t have anyplace to put it and really shouldn’t be driving anyhow.

The list of what to buy for hard-to-buy-for people is shorter.

• Send all or part of a holiday meal. There are dozens of stores that deliver wonderful hams, turkeys or smoked fish. (I love the oven-roasted turkey breast from HoneyBaked Ham™ and the smoked salmon from Williams-Sonoma™.) If your particular hard-to-buy-for gift recipients are elderly, they’ll appreciate not having to do so much holiday cooking, or being able to contribute something special to a holiday meal at someone else’s house. Even if they’re younger, your gift will take off some of the pressure.
• Buy them an ID theft service. It’s another one of those things that makes life a little easier for the hard-to-buy-for people. For instance, everyone knows they should check their credit reports for fraudulent activity and errors at least annually, but only 1 in 3 actually does it. LifeLock, for instance, contacts the credit bureaus for them and requests the reports are sent to their members.

In 2008, nearly 10 million Americans were ID theft victims and roughly 285 million records were exposed in data breaches, so it’s not like it’s a gift that nobody needs.

And, maybe best of all, you don’t have to fight shopping crowds to get it and you don’t have to wrap it or ship it.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

We all have hard to buy for people on our Christmas shopping lists, but choosing gifts for elderly relatives may be the hardest. When the gift is for a relative you love, you want the gift to be an expression of love … and a fruitcake just doesn’t send that message.

This year I’m buying LifeLock for my parents. Life Lock identity theft services are comprehensive. They do all the basic stuff: fraud alerts (if you need them), credit reports, junk mail reduction … But they also have a service called WalletLock™.

My dad is 88, and my mom is 85. My mom has Alzheimer Disease and they live 200 miles away. In the past year my mom has lost her wallet twice. Both times my dad was overwhelmed with trying to cancel and replace everything she’d lost. My mother was ashamed and afraid.

The next time Mom loses her wallet (and she will) my dad can call a LifeLock Identity Theft Specialist. He’ll already have given them an inventory of my mom’s wallet—ID, credit cards, checkbook, etc. LifeLock reviews the list and then they’ll immediately begin him make the calls to cancel her credit cards and replace them. They’ll help fill out the forms to report her driver’s license as stolen and get it replaced.

God forbid she carries her Social Security card or passport in her purse, but if they were in there when she lost her purse, LifeLock would take care of that, too.

Having WalletLock™ isn’t going to keep Mom from losing her wallet (or her jewelry, or her address book, or her memory). But it’ll keep her from becoming an identity theft victim, and it’ll make taking care of my mom a lot easier for my dad.

My husband and I can’t afford to quit our jobs and move closer to my parents. But we can afford the $9 a month it costs to help protect them from identity theft.

If you’re looking for gift ideas for hard to buy for people, consider LifeLock. Go to the website at LifeLock.com to find out more. If you want to enroll you can do it online, or you can get a customer service rep to help you by calling 1-800-LifeLock. Either way, use the LifeLock promo code Defense to get that $9 a month price.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites