Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - A new survey finds that fewer Americans plan on giving a holiday tip this season.
According to the survey by Bankrate, the number of people planning to give a holiday tip is down, but tip amounts remain mostly flat or up year over year. They also found that giving bigger tips for better service increases with age, while feeling the obligation to tip decreases.
"When we're talking about holiday tipping, it's not so much the restaurant or the rideshare, those are places we should be tipping throughout the year," Bankrate Senior Industry Analyst Ted Rossman told WBEN. "The holiday tip is really the one-off for the housekeeper, the childcare provider, landscaper, snowplow service, teachers, mail carriers."
Rossman said that generally, we tend to tip better when we have a personal relationship with people.
"We tend to tip them better than people that we don't really know," Rossman said. "Take something like the mail carrier. Some people get to know them. Other times mail's delivered when you're at work and you don't see these people, and that's some of the reason why we're less likely to tip."
Even if you have an idea on who to tip, how much is another question.
A flat tip can work fine, and $20 is never going to make someone unhappy, but is there a formula to make that decision easier?
"Another take on this is to perhaps tip equivalent to the cost of a service," Rossman said. "Whatever you pay the weekly dog walker or babysitter maybe you consider doubling that last payment of the year."
Or, yet another take: do what you can afford.