Ideally you know the person well enough that you at least know "fun" stores they'll be shopping at anyway. Or give something like an Amazon gift card which rea

Ideally you know the person well enough that you at least know "fun" stores they'll be shopping at anyway. Or give something like an Amazon gift card which really is more or less like cash for most people. (Though Amazon knows this and their conversion rate is generally worse than most retailers who are more specialized.) That said, I'm not a huge fan of gift cards. It's one more thing to keep track of but, hey, they're probably better than some gift you don't want and cash just isn't really acceptable in all cases.