Last-minute Christmas gift shoppers are no longer being penalised for being so disorganised!

The second Free Shipping Day has been set for Thursday 17 December 2009, so that online retailers can guarantee pre-Christmas delivery by 24 December and provide free shipping for those willing to trade nail-biting closeness to Christmas Day for saving more than a few bucks on postage. 

Traditionally, after 12 December online shopping drops dramatically as shoppers panic that they won’t receive their gifts in time. 

In 2007 online shopping peaked on 10 December, 15 days before Christmas. So Luke Knowles of the money-saving website FreeShipping.org created a day late in December when merchants would offer free shipping to shoppers with guaranteed delivery by Christmas Eve to reassure customers that their orders would arrive in time for the big day. The first annual Free Shipping Day was Thursday, 18 December 2008.

The FreeShippingDay.com website was launched on 8 December 2008 with 25 participating merchants. Over the next 10 days, more than 250 merchants joined and  FreeShippingDay.com had more than 250,000 visitors including 105,000 on Free Shipping Day itself.

More than 500 online retailers are expected to participate in Free Shipping Day for 17 December (see their holiday deadlines for standard, express and fastest). If you love a bargain and don’t mind waiting until the last minute to receive your gifts (although keep in mind that it won’t apply to personalised gifts coming from overseas), circle that date!

A new survey by It’s In The Stars about Father’s Day attitudes has found that seven in ten Dads don’t really celebrate Father’s Day, but it’s women (not men) who are upset that their children don’t make an effort.

Of those men who celebrate Father’s Day, they are most likely to want - and receive - personalised gifts relevant to their families. Here’s some of the Father’s Day survey findings:

More women than men are likely to make an effort celebrating Father’s Day 

• 56.4% of women but only 30.0% of men celebrated last Father’s Day with their Dad by giving him a gift and/or sharing a family meal at a restaurant or at home.
• Men are three times as likely as women to overlook or ignore Father’s Day, believing that their father ‘is fine with that’ (17.5% vs 5.1%)

More women than men upset that their kids make little effort on Father’s Day 

• More women than men (52.6% vs 44.4%) say that their kids made a fuss of their father/them on Father’s Day
• Men are twice as likely as women to report that they don’t care about Father’s Day (33.3% vs 15.7%)
• More women than men are disappointed that their children don’t make a fuss of their Dad on Father’s Day (31.5% vs 22.2%).

Most people spend very little on Father’s Day gifts

• Nearly one-quarter (23%) spent nothing on their Dad for Father’s Day while the same proportion spent $25-$50
• Most people (28%) spent $50-$100 on a gift and/or on going out with their Dad for Father’s Day
• One-third (37%) spent nothing at all or less than $25 on a Father’s Day gift
• One in 25 (4%) spend more than $150 on Father’s Day gifts

Women more likely than men to see celebrating occasions with family as important 

• Women outrank men in considering it’s important to celebrate anniversaries, birthdays, Christmas, christenings, engagements, Father’s Day, Mother’s Day and weddings
• Both men and women rank birthdays, weddings and Christmas as the top three occasions – although not in the same order
• Of the eight occasions, men rank Father’s Day in seventh place, with christenings coming in last. Women rank Father’s Day in fifth place, after Mother’s Day.
• Women are far more likely than men to view celebrating/recognising Fathers Day as important (77% vs 46%).

Men most likely to want – and receive – personalised gifts for Father’s Day 

• The best two gift category “matches” in terms of what men wish to receive as a Father’s Day gift and what women intend to give are personalised gifts (17.9% vs 16.6%) which suggests that men are more sentimental about their families than we give them credit for, and a weekend away (5.1% vs 5.5%)
• One in four men (25.6%) want books, CDs or DVDs for this Father’s Day, but only 8.3% of women intend to give them.
• Similarly, 12.8% of men want a special dinner out, but only 5.1% of women plan to give them), electronic gadgets (10.4% vs 5.5%), pampering (10.4% of men want them, but no women plan to give them), clothes (5.1% vs 0%) and sports equipment (7.6% vs 5.5%).
• Very few men (2.5%) want BBQ equipment but 8.3% of women intend to give it, with similar results for sports equipment (2.5% vs 5.5%).

Of all the weddings you’ve been to, can you honestly say that after a year, you remember what wedding gift you gave the bride and groom? Of the few wedding gifts that I do remember, it usually had a story to do with the couple (and it wasn’t usually on their gift registry).

For example, when my flatmate Jane and her boyfriend started going out, they got locked out of our flat and had to break in through our flatmate Stephanie’s window. In the process of clambering drunkenly through, they broke her tall, wide Krosno vase, which had been a wedding gift. Jane searched and searched for a replacement to appease the furious Stephanie and the Vase Incident led to Stephanie moving out. Needless to say, when I spotted one of these in a shop, it was the perfect gift for them!

I can’t remember what I bought my friend Carolyn, but I do know I baulked at buying her a Brabantia rubbish bin. It wasn’t the cost, but I just didn’t want to be associated with food scraps.

Some people are renowned for giving the same gift. For example, Sherri, of Sewanee, Tennessee said, “I had an elderly friend who always gave couples the same wedding presents.  She said it was all the reading you needed for a happy marriage - The Joy of Cooking and The Joy of Sex.”

Others are (let’s give the benefit of the doubt), practical souls who buy Something Useful. Rebecca of Purchase, New York said, “Hands down, the strangest gift we received was a faucet. Our guest was staying near Home Depot so I assume it was a last-minute afterthought kind of thing since his wife didn’t come with him. A few years later, we actually used it in a small basement powder room.”

Jason of Lewis PR reports this strange array of gifts: “Electrical toothbrushes x 2 - kind of weird considering that these are very replaceable, electronic gifts. What if I just bought one? Would the bride or the groom get it or would they have to buy separate replaceable heads? I can’t imagine them using them five years from now and thinking, “thank god for these toothbrushes, my teeth are so white now!’ Samsonite luggage - I think this might be common, but it might come in handy for the groom if he ever gets kicked out of the house. A kitchen aid pasta maker accessory - I think this is really odd considering that they did not have a Kitchen Aid mixer on their list. I hope that they already have one, otherwise they will be sorely disappointed to find out that they need to buy the mixer separately.” 

Jenny of The Sugar Mommy said, “My husband and I once gave a friend a bunch of little items that were remaining on their registry.  When we order off the registry, we usually try to stick to a theme.  Well, for this couple, we went with a cleaning theme.  From Bed, Bath & Beyond, they registered for an under-the-sink metal storage unit, sponges, cleaning tools, and actual cleaning products, such as Orange Glo.  Yes, you got it, we purchased soap for our friends.”

Poor Kylie of La Bella Creations! “My mother in law gave me her second hand (yes used by her previously) pink frilly crotchless knickers!”

Jodie of  Love Mum, said, “I absolutely hated the toilet seat cover and I also hated the fans people gave us. How many household fans does a person need? We got 5 of them?”

Strange wedding gifts seem to run in the family for Emma of Brindabelly Baby! She said, “Our wedding gift list was all native plants and garden tools so we could landscape our garden. I think guests liked the idea of a living, growing present like a whopping big rock or gum tree. My mum gave my dad an oxy-welder for his wedding gift from her, and a gun for the engagement present. Farmer. ’nuff said. I gave my man a Wallabies jersey as my wedding gift to him, as we got married on the night of a Bledisloe Cup game and the poor guy had to miss watching it on TV.”

Catherine of Imba said, “The weirdest one definitely has to be an incredibly naff sculpture of a couple linking hands and kissing. Made from soapstone, I think. Argh!”

Amelia of Bambooty said, “Our weirdest was a broach of the emblem of my school! V strange.”

What’s a weird wedding gift that you’ve seen on someone’s gift registry - or perhaps that you’ve requested for yourself?

This is one of the most novel things I’ve seen for a wedding registry so far!

Forget bedlinen and silver cutlery! An enterprising young American couple who are getting married in Stanford, California on Saturday 29 August have requested a fantastic list of ultra-useful wedding gifts to help them establish their own start-up website business, Aboomba.

You can feed an outsourced engineer for the day (boy, they eat a lot at $US150!), provide 5 x large Starbucks Caffe Lattes daily ($US122.50), pay for an hour’s worth of accountancy advice, select Windows XP SP2 Home Edition OEM for the very specific price of $US95.64, help them rent their friend’s garage for a month ($US250) or pay their utility bills.

Brilliant! And these guys are getting married during Sun in Virgo - what an appropriate Sun sign to get married under for this practical, hardworking pair of entrepreneurs!

If your favourite Virgo is celebrating his or her birthday, I hope you’ve marked it in your diary/Outlook calendar, have left enough time to get their present there on time AND call them on the day. Well, they would do it for you! Most Virgos have an amazing memory and mentally file away everyone’s birthdays, anniversaries etc so they can deliver a gift on YOUR day. You might be surprised to know that they’re secretly wounded by people forgetting their birthday and quietly, desperately need you to prove that they’re special.

So, what to get them? One of the nicest things you can give them is a break from the housework that they tend to feel overwhelmed by. When too much is going on in their lives - and it has been thanks to Saturn in Virgo putting immense pressure on them since August 2007 not to mention Uranus in Pisces freaking them right out with undependable partners - they tend to clean, polish, sweep, vacuum, scrub, and wash etc to get some sense of order back. So as you might imagine, they have been cleaning up a storm for a couple of years…Give them a well-deserved break.

They also love a good de-cluttering. They have Pisces on the seventh house of relationships which can make them hate to throw things away that their loved ones have given them and have Sagittarius on the fourth house of home and family which suggests they live with complete grots (sorry, disorganised people). Call in the professional organisers - it will make them silly with happiness!

Saturn in your own sign is, shall we say, a little heavy-going on one’s self-esteem and attitudes towards one’s looks. Is it time for a professional stylist to freshen up their look with more flattering clothes, a haircut or better make-up choices? They just lurrve those makeover shows!

Pluto in Capricorn entered their solar fifth house of love and creativity in January 2009 and will be there until 2024. Pluto rules Scorpio so anything that promotes a bit of lovin’ and kissin’ - can you babysit the kids for the weekend? - is ideal. Virgos love step-by-step manuals and since there are all sorts of interesting how-to books to do with lovemaking, this could be a a naughty thrill!

Jupiter is in Aquarius is their sixth house of work and health until January 2010. Jupiter is what you find fun. Personally I’d like to steer away the emphasis from work for Virgo - it’s waaaay too easy for them to be workaholics - so please don’t give them leather-bound diaries or desk organisers - yuck! Springing for some new bookshelves for their home office - the Expedit ones from IKEA are very popular - might be OK, as might picking up a cute little handbag-sized laptop for them.

Or let’s consider the health side of things. Perhaps you could spring for a personal trainer, a new gym membership, some cute workout clothes, the Low GI Diet book, a delivery of fresh fruit and vegies, or at least a good, deep Swedish massage. The sixth house also rules pets. Have they been pressing their nose up against the puppies’ window at the local pet store or RSPCA? If a little doggie or kitty-kat could fit into their lifestyle, a pet could make a wonderful surprise gift.

Books are also pretty well-received. Since they love to know how things work and what makes people tick, why not check out the latest round of self-help/inspirational books?

Have you ever belonged to a frequent flyer program that allocated you points or miles for spending time locked in their flying sardine can?  And you kept enthusiastically, foolishly and hopefully booking flights only through their affiliated airlines so you’d accumulate even more miles?

After a big 3-month trip around the world in 2006 I was Very Disappointed(!) - best said aloud in Kevin Kline’s A Fish Called Wanda psychotic character’s voice - to discover that a portion of my miles disappeared the following year that I did not fly with them and again the following year - I mean seriously, how often can you nick off overseas for  3 months? So by 2009 I was Incredibly Outraged to realise that my tidy little sum of 80,000 miles did NOT mount up to a free trip overseas, but that it had fallen to about 20,000 miles (not happy, United).

So here’s five reasons to use your frequent flyer points for gifts, accommodation etc.

1. They run out. Faster than Usain Bolt. See above.

2. You’ve spent real money attaining them and if you don’t use them at all (forget having enough to redeem for an overseas flight!), you won’t get any joy from them whatsoever. Crazy, I know.

3. Flights these days - I saw a one way Sydney-Bangkok flight for an unheard-of $399 - are actually much cheaper than standard accommodation for your trip and therefore are not worth wasting your points on (I am not, of course, counting dossing on a lilo on your cousin’s floor but actually you spend the equivalent in seeing a chiropractor getting your back put back into shape afterwards)

4. You can sometimes benefit from “two-fers”. That is, you get bonus points for buying something with your points. Velocity - the one with Virgin Blue and Emirates - has one where if you purchase 2 magazine subscriptions from partner iSubscribe (think one for you, a 4×4/Golf Digest/Australian Property Investor etc) for your Dad for Father’s Day (or as an early Christmas present) you’ll also earn a bonus 200 points.

5. You can sometimes get wonderful not-available-to-the-common-lot offers. Years ago I worked on a Diners Club special offer where you could get flown to the Barossa Valley on a DC3 plane for lunch for two AND collect a case of the region’s finest plonk for about $800 which sold out in hours.  I can’t remember how many points you needed but gosh, what a fantastic experience to share with someone for an anniversary!

“The very rich are different from you and I”, F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote. “Yes, they have more more money,” said Ernest Hemingway.

Yes, indeed. Apparently Kourtney (she is one of the bazillion Kardashian celebrity children with a “K” name) and her boyfriend, entrepreneur Scott Disick are getting ready for the impending birth of their first child by buying some much-needed baby essentials. A pram? Don’t be silly. A collapsible cot? No way. Surely they’re stocking up on baby clothes.

Well yes, they’ve bought a very practical cashmere baby hat ’cause, you know, it gets so cold in LA…

I’ve been to a few baby showers where it’s for the first child but it’s not so common to have a formal baby shower for the second, third or fourth child. Can you imagine going to Octomom’s?!

When your favourite mother is having her second/third/fourth etc child, what she really needs is a break! If her kids have been born close enough, she’ll still have the pram, cot, baby bath and a range of teeny tiny clothing (for the baby, not her, unless she’s Victoria Beckham). So to get inside her head for a moment, she just really needs another pair of hands to help her get things done, or ideally, less to do and more time to enjoy her new baby.

Why not consider giving her a gift certificate for home-delivered gourmet meals, or for a cleaning service to give her a break from doing the bathroom and vacuuming? Perhaps you can give her and her partner a couple of tickets to the movies along with a gift voucher for a babysitter so they can have time as a couple together. Or if she’s exhausted and needs some pampering, you might give her a gift voucher for hair, beauty or massage treatments.

While 8 in 10 people have taken part in a group gift - most commonly for baby gifts - it can be a hard ask organising the money if you don’t all live in the same city. Someone usually has to shell out the full amount on their credit card (or pay for it from their savings account via Paypal if they get the option) and then have to contact all the people concerned to get reimbursed in slow dribs and drabs.

A new website called eDivvy is making it easy for far-flung friends and family to put in for a group gift that’s really special. It suggests baby showers, back-to-school (you never know, some families might need help buying a laptop for junior), housewarmings, birthdays and weddings but of course you could also use it to organise a farewell gift for an office colleague, money for a honeymoon or long-awaited anniversary mini-break, or maybe even as a whiparound for someone who’s really down on their luck.

You simply enter the eDivvy number - that is, the number of people going in on the gift - and see what your share is. No need to break out the scientific calculator! You don’t actually have to contribute the set amount but it does make it fairer. It seems to have a default of “10″ but it is amazing how affordable someone’s gift can be when 10 people (or at least more than 2) are sharing the cost. And if your fellow gift-givers don’t quite cough up the amount needed, the recipient receives a Visa gift card for that amount.

Do you earn reward points for using your credit card? You probably do if you belong to a frequent flyer program.

While most people earn them to splash out on flights and hotel accommodation, if you don’t have a six-inch wallet like Donald Trump, it will take you literally years to earn yourself an interstate - let alone overseas - flight.

One US money expert says that people typically receive one point per dollar spent (or mile flown, in the case of frequent flyer programs). But that point is valued by the credit card and airline companies as worth only one cent! So while you may have racked up 25,000 miles or blown $25,000 to get 25,000 points, your “haul” is actually worth only $250. And despite the current economic crisis, that still doesn’t get you to the Caribbean sipping on a caprioska.

Most products - such as toasters, iPods and so on - that they list in their rewards programs are incredibly overpriced.  According to Australian consumer group Choice, you would have to spend $6,600 to earn enough points just to buy a $50 toaster.

But many of them DO offer gift certificates and gift cards. Virgin Blue’s Velocity program offers a $100 gift certificate for BBQs Galore (ideal for Father’s Day) for 14,800 points, or for the same number of points you could cash them in for BabyBuds, Officeworks, eFragrance, Dymocks, or Rebel Sport, for example.