Ever felt a bit down and went straight for foods and other items that are old favourites? And on holidays when you were raring to go you were in the mood to try something something new?

US psychologists have confirmed that people  prefer items which are tried-and-true that they’re already familiar with (this is not the same thing as items that are regifted, though!) when they’re feeling depressed and that they seek novelty and excitement when they’re happy. In fact, familiar experiences and products are boring when people are in a fantastic mood…

University of California, San Diego psychology professor Piotr Winkielman found that the value of familiarity depends on the context. Familiarity infers safety which is ideal when people feel upset (”comfort” foods like chocolate for break-ups, anyone?) but the same-old, same-old becomes borning when all is going well.

In terms of gifts, this means you need to pay careful attention to the mood and the circumstances of the person receiving the gift.

Anniversary gifts - generally a wedding anniversary is a happy time - give them something unusual to spark some excitement!

Bereavement gifts - this is when you turn up with soup, food, a favourite CD or book - no surprises are appreciated.

Birthday gifts - ooooh…. This depends if it’s a birthday they’re looking forward to (which is generally every birthday for people aged under 21) in which case give ‘em some novelty, but if it’s a “milestone”, they might be a bit upset about the perceived passing of time - give them something familiar…

Christmas gifts - even if it never turns out the way you expect, nearly everyone looks forward to Christmas. Novelty works when people are happy which is why Kris Kringles can be a hit (finding all those weird things under $20).

Engagement gifts - again, give them something fun and new to look forward to.

New baby gifts - this depends… Is it a long-awaited first child? Baby gifts that are really unique are ideal. But what about a couple who’ve just discovered they’re about to have twins (and they already have a child or two)? If they’re feeling stressed about the expense and extra responsibility, perhaps you should choose something they already know and like. Like money.

Valentine’s Day gifts - get fresh by keeping it fresh. Nothing makes a romance get boring faster than the same-old flower and chocolate routine.

Wedding gifts - this is traditionally a  very happy time so gifts that are out of the ordinary would be great. Then again if you’re Liz Taylor and you’re marrying yet again, you can add to your place settings.

If you spend more than a few hours a week online, your time could earn you free gift cards that could cover someone’s anniversary, baby, birthday, Christmas, Mother’s Day or housewarming gift.

If you live in Canada, the UK or US (sadly it’s restricted to those three countries so far or I would sign up in a flash), you can sign up for free with Swagbucks.

You earn gift cards - and plenty of other merchandise which could be good to cross off certain gift-giving obligations (such as those endless children’s birthday parties for example!) - simply for surfing the net.

After registering, you install a Swagbucks toolbar at the top of your screen. It will give you results from Google and Ask.com which will periodically allocate you a certain digital dollar value per search. You can also earn SwagBucks by referring friends to join, filling out polls, shopping in the Swagbucks mall and recycling mobile phones.

What do you give your wife for Christmas and her 30th birthday who you’ve scorned publicly and worldwide?

If you’re Tiger Woods, you give your deeply unimpressed wife Elin Nordegren a cool $300 million in cash so she can buy hereself a little something. Hell - you could buy an entire department store chain with that.

By Valentine’s Day he would have been emptying his bank account faster than his little Capricorn Sun could have handled thanks to his dwindling sponsorships, so he “economised” with a $3 million customised sport boat for Elin, called um, Solitude so she could go diving, which is her favourite sport.

Mother’s Day is just around the corner. I’d love to see what he comes up with then. I honestly don’t think he can buy his way (or his wife back) out of this one…

Now that Valentine’s Day has passed, the roadside rose vendors have disappeared, the black velvet jewellery boxes have been stashed away in the vaults and those ENORMOUS white teddy bears have been put away somewhere (where on earth do they fit - and more importantly why on earth would anyone buy one?), some couples may be reassessing their relationships.

One cheery little infidelity expert from New York, Ruth Houston, has come out to suggest a number of ways to tell if your partner cheated on Valentine’s Day. I think in fact this could also include Christmas Day based on what she says.

1. “Discovered” gifts disappear
Remember the awful scene in Love, Actually when Emma Thompson opens the little white box containing the gold heart necklace, thinking that’s what her husband Alan Rickman has bought for her for Christmas? And then she gets a pathetic Joni Mitchell CD while the flirty skank at work gets the expensive necklace? If you find something “gift-y” before Valentine’s Day and then don’t get it, ask some questions…

2. Receipts for same, identical, or non-received gifts
Paper trails undo presidents, criminals and cheating partners alike. If you find a receipt for say TWO identical lingerie sets but receive only one, someone has the other set (and at best, your husband likes dressing up).

Got chocolate? But the receipt was for a bracelet? Uh-oh.

Does the hotel or restaurant receipt say 13 February but you KNOW you were in bed alone with a cold and your partner had a business meeting interstate? Right. On a Saturday night. Did you know that Ruth nicknames 13 February as Mistress Day???

3. Thank note, email or text
If your spouse or partner has received or sent a thank-you message for a gift you know nothing about, them’s warning bells…And hey, especially if they’re normally an ungrateful sod.

4.  Oh honey, I’ve had this for years
Many women (and some men) avoid discussions about their spending habits but protesting, “”Oh, this old thing? I’ve had it for years!” and rely on their partner being oblivious so they can get away with maxing out their credit card. But if it’s a particularly nice piece of jewellery, beautiful underwear or even flowers that are waaaay more elaborate than what he/she normally buys turn up just after Valentine’s Day, look out.

It might be innocent (like, you’re such a bad gift-giver that they decided to indulge themselves - and if they did, that’s a clue they’re at least disappointed with your effort this Valentine’s Day/Christmas) or not. Check.

5. Who you gonna call?
If you’re really suspicious check your phone bill or your partner’s outgoing calls/texts on Valentine’s Day. Those made very early in the morning or last thing at night are possible signs.

If you have two or more of these infidelity clues, well, as Ruth’s clients might say, “Houston, we have a problem.”

Too many people complain that manners have gone out the window but one crafty (and seemingly thoughtful) way to get them to send you (and others) a thank you card for their anniversary, birthday, christening, Christmas, engagement, housewarming, new baby or wedding gift is creating personalised stamps with their faces on them! 

Get a sweet shot of their littlest member to join the family, of the couple looking super glamorous or maybe it’s your favourite one of yourself that was taken years ago when you weighed less and had more hair. Who cares!

You can order them from Royal Mail in the UK from just GBP7.58 for 10 stamps, from Australia Post for $AUD24.00 for 20 stamps and from Zazzle for the United States Postal Services from $US18.95 for 20 stamps.

You can now even put your logo in there so a sheet of these could be a great gift idea for a friend or family member who’s just begun their own company!

Thinking of giving money to a charity? You might be better off donating directly.

The sheer cost of administering a gift card program means very few charities produce their own specific gift card. Many of them do have an online facility for you to donate straight to their website and even produce  an electronic receipt and thank you message that you can enclose in your birthday Christmas/ engagement/ wedding card for whomever you’re buying it.

America’s largest non-profit organisation, United Way sells gift cards, while Goodwill has stores across the states, but no national gift card program.

There are four major organisations in the US which let you pick your own charity - Charity Choice, JustGive.org, Network for Good and Tisbest. If you decide to use one of these Big Four, keep in mind that:

* some of your donation gets chipped away in administration and transaction fees

* not all organisations transfer the monies to their charities right away; some pay quarterly

* they don’t last indefinitely: Network for Good’s gift cards expire within 6 months.

* only you, as the gift-card-giver, get the tax break - not the recipient who actually selects the charity

Gift card prices range from $1.49 for Tisbest to $5 for the three others. Charity Choice has 100 charities while Network for Good lists an astonishing 1.8 million charities (who knew there were that many?). Network for Good includes its handling fee within its $5 purchase fee but admin costs range from 3% for card-processing for JustGive to Charity Choice’s $1.85 transaction fee per card, 5% admin fee and 3% credit card transaction fee.

A post-Christmas spending survey confirms what most of us already know by looking at our credit card balances: we overspent on Christmas gifts.

The US Consumer Reports survey found that consumers planned to spend an average $699 on Christmas gifts but this was blown out to $811, with about one in five spending over $1,000 on gifts.

Almost half (47%) of the consumers were very naughty, using their credit cards to buy some or all of their gifts. And since credit cards feel like magic money(!), they spent more, too, with an average Christmas gift expenditure of $896. Those who lived in households earning over $100K spent a whopping $1,570 on their credit cards.

While 40% plan to settle their Christmas gift credit card debt by the end of January, one in five won’t pay it off until March with 9% expecting to pay it off in full by June.

As you can probably guess, I didn’t spend $1,000 on gifts - probably closer to about $350 - but then I like buying Christmas and birthday gifts all year long as it’s fun AND it lessens the expense in December.

If you plan to spend $1,000 on Christmas (and/or birthday) gifts this year, remember that you need to put away about $83.33 a month every month until December (or buy gifts to that value every month when you see something great on sale).

If you’re one of the 19% of consumers who received a dud Christmas present (and you’ve managed to get hold of the receipt), you’d better get cracking if you want to return them for a refund!

While some stores will allow refunds up to a year later, many will refund goods brought in their original packaging (hmmm - how often does that happen!?) and tags up to the end of January.

Other stores won’t give you a refund at all but merely an exchange or credit for something else in their store. According to the US National Retail Federation, American retailers took back an estimated $17 billion of unwanted gifts. What’s more, 17% of retailers have tightened their return policies.

If you can’t get cash and you really don’t like the item nor feel you could regift it to another, think carefully how you could use the credit note to “purchase” another gift which will save you spending your own money. You could always select one of the items there for Valentines Day, your anniversary, birthday, Mothers Day or even for Christmas 2010.

According to a new survey, Britons have wasted £657 million on dreadful and pointless Christmas gifts - which is about £10.70 pounds wasted on bad Chrissie gifts for every man, woman and child on that little island.

 Two thousand Brits were polled by the TV channel Home to promote the launch of  new de-cluttering program called Gutted. (I think this is a fantastic name as “gutted” not only means a complete clear-out of junk to start afresh, but in English slang means terribly upset. Which is what you are when you get a rubbish present.)

So we get to watch people who have loyally kept presents they hate and never use toss them out.

The worst offending gifts were novelty jumpers (a la Mark Darcy’s one in Bridget Jones), rice cookers, fondue sets, comedy books(?), pasta makers, exercise DVDs, ice-cream makers,  liquor chocolates (oh, come on, I’d eat those!), novelty slippers and jigsaw puzzles.

What’s worse is that one in five people got themselves into debt buying gifts, overspending by £340. Men racked up more debt than women (£400 vs £310) but women took longer to pay it off.

Thirteen percent admitted regifting the badly-chosen gifts to some other sucker while 16% sold them on eBay.

Now that our credit card bills are about to arrive(!), January is a great month to have that discussion about money, spending, saving and issues such as gift-giving with your partner. On Friday 22 January there will be a very helpful Venus trine Saturn aspect.

Venus rules love, money and possessions aka gifts, while Saturn rules responsibility, thriftiness, planning and caution. When these guys make a beautiful trine, it is the PERFECT time to discuss gift-giving and a workaround that will please both parties.

Saturn is the Headmaster of the zodiac on a good day and so he treats everything as a lesson or exam to be mastered.

“Gift-giving is incredibly important to me as it lets me show my love and appreciation for others. You would rather save the money for our future.” Discuss.

Alrighty then. On 22 January, why not tackle the gift-giving issue in alphabetical order.

1. Anniversary gifts. Unless you’re a newlywed, most couples stop giving each other traditional anniversary gifts after the first three years and then prefer to go away for the weekend (which, ironically, is more expensive). If it’s not your first, second or third, and it’s not a big milestone like a 10th, 15th, 20th or whatever, perhaps you can agree to have a nice dinner instead. (Obviously you want to agree on this so you can be around to discuss anniversary gift-giving all over again next year.)

2. Birthday gifts. I realised that I’ll be buying a minimum of 19 birthday gifts per year which frankly horrified even me so if you have a partner (and he makes you buy all the gifts for his family, too), you could be up for a lot of gifts.  First make a list of each person you like to give at least one birthday gift to. Multiply that by a modest $50 to get your total. Once you’ve picked yourself off the floor, you may want to put a couple of rules in place. Perhaps you give only gifts to those friends you see at least once a month, and send cards to those you see less often. Or you replace gifts for friends with dinner at your home? Keep in mind that birthdays are the gift occasion where people are most likely to give personalised gifts so it’s worth planning ahead when there’s a special promotion on and to put away ahead of their birthday.

3. Christening gifts. These won’t happen every year thank goodness but you might decide to give gifts only if you live in the same city or base it on your closeness to the child.

4.  Christmas gifts. The Big Kahuna. For your own family you might discuss replacing what you spend on Christmas gifts with the equivalent on a family holiday, or lots of little things for one big-ticket item. Buying gifts only when they’re on sale. Or doing a Kris Kringle. Or setting up a Chrisco account. Or perhaps having a garage sale or selling stuff on eBay to finance Christmas gifts ie you don’t use your savings.

5. Engagement gifts. Again, these won’t happen every year but the woman will get engaged faster if she’s Generation X.

6. Fathers Day gifts. Can you take both Dads out to lunch on the same day to make a family affair and make that the gift? If you have to cut back on gifts somewhere, Father’s Day is the gift-giving occasion least likely to upset your father.

7. Mothers Day gifts. Hmmm, a lot more fuss is necessary here… She is your mum, after all.

8. New baby gifts. Work colleagues spend less per person when they contribute to a group gift whereas family and friends spend more on new baby gifts! Perhaps what gifts the new mother really needs are not cute hanging mobiles…

9. Valentines Day gifts. Will you feel upset if he overlooks it? What was your favourite Valentines Day gift? Did you get what you really wanted? Would you want it again? What about taking a raincheck for the following weekend when the flowers and chocolates/jewellery/lingerie/perfume boxed sets are reduced?

10. Wedding gifts. Again, weddings don’t necessarily happen every year although I did have three in six weeks one year. Are you going to faithfully stick to their registry or will you give them something that is very “them” but not listed? You do have up to one year to give them a wedding gift - at which point you can start the discussion all over again.