They’re the hardest person on your list. They lack nothing, buy what they want without waiting, and answer “nothing, I promise” when you ask. Every year it’s the same puzzle: you circle the shops, settle for “something nice”, and you can feel it at unwrapping time — this gift won’t be remembered.
Good news: nobody truly has everything. You just have to stop looking for one more object, and start looking for something else.
Why “they have everything” is a false problem
When someone “has everything”, it’s almost always one of these three situations:
- They can afford their own wishes. Whatever they want, they buy. Trying to beat them to a purchase is a lost cause — you need to play on different ground.
- Their wishes aren’t objects. Time, experiences, attention: things no shop shelf carries.
- Their wishes exist, but you don’t know them. The most common case — and the easiest to solve, as we’ll see below.
In all three cases, the “I’ll find THE original gadget” reflex leads straight to the drawer of never-used objects. Here’s what works instead.
Angle 1: the experience instead of the object
An experience has one unbeatable advantage over an object: it can’t already be owned. Some safe bets, from simplest to most ambitious:
- A table at the restaurant they’ve mentioned for months — booked, dated, with you or for two.
- A class or workshop: ceramics, wine tasting, Japanese cooking, photography. A dormant passion often just needs a trigger.
- Tickets: a concert, a show, a match. Golden rule: their taste, not yours.
- A night or weekend away: no need for the Maldives — a beautiful guesthouse two hours away does the job perfectly.
The experience gets even better if you organise it end to end: date set, logistics handled, nothing to manage. For someone who has everything, one less thing to plan is a luxury in itself.
Angle 2: the perfect version of something ordinary
Look at what the person uses every day, and give the exceptional version. It’s the most underrated gift strategy there is:
- They drink coffee? The serious grinder, the subscription to a great roaster, the handmade cup.
- She cooks? The Japanese knife she’d never buy herself, the single-estate olive oil.
- He runs? Top-tier technical socks, a proper head torch — runners never buy these for themselves.
- She reads at night? The premium e-reader, the perfect reading light, the bound edition of her favourite book.
The principle: on a daily-use item, the difference between “fine” and “perfect” is felt every single day — and every day, they’ll think of you.
Angle 3: what money can’t buy
For the person who really has everything — often a parent or grandparent — the most memorable gifts cost almost nothing:
- The photo album of the last twenty years, printed, captioned by hand.
- The letter — the one nobody ever writes because “we’ll see each other at Christmas anyway”.
- The fully planned day: you drive, you booked, you thought of everything — they just enjoy it.
- The passing-down: the family recipe finally written out and illustrated, the video of grandpa’s stories, the completed family tree.
The best gift for someone who has everything is the thing they mentioned once, six months ago, and forgot themselves.
The real secret: listen all year round
Read that quote again, because this is where it’s all decided. People who “have everything” drop hints constantly: a “that’s beautiful” in front of a window, a broken thing never replaced, a passion paused “for lack of time”, a friend whose specific something they envy. The problem isn’t that they have no wishes — it’s that nobody remembers them on the day.
Hence the one habit that changes everything: write hints down the moment they drop. A notebook, a phone note, whatever — six months later you’ll have a list of ideas the person themselves validated without knowing it.
What if you stopped guessing altogether?
The simplest fix is letting people write down their own wishes as they come — including the ones they’d never buy themselves. That’s exactly what Khadoo does: everyone keeps their list, the people they love pick from it in secret, and since nobody knows who reserved what, the surprise stays intact on the day. Even the person “who has everything” ends up noting three things that would make them smile — ask them once to set it up, and the puzzle disappears for every occasion after that.
Questions people also ask
Isn’t an immaterial gift “less” than an object? Research says the opposite: experiences produce more lasting happiness than possessions, because they become memories and stories. A disappointing dinner is forgotten; a beautiful useless object clutters a shelf for years.
Is a gift card acceptable? For someone who has everything, the generic card says “I didn’t know what to get you”. But the targeted card — their neighbourhood bookshop, their florist, their ceramics studio — with a note explaining the choice, says exactly the opposite.
What if I genuinely have no clue? Ask someone close to them (their partner, their sister) — not “any gift ideas?” but “what would truly make them happy right now?”. The phrasing changes the answers. And for next year: a shared wishlist solves the problem at the root.