<div class="block">It&#39;s the holiday season and there&#39;s no better time to show the people in your everyday life how much they mean to you. Kimberly Palmer, personal finance expert NerdWallet, joined &#39;Stretching Your Dollar&#39; to share some holiday tipping pointers.</div>

Stretching Your Dollar

Stretching Your Dollar: How to Tip for the Holidays

Holidays are the season of giving and from your hairdresser to your housekeeper. You may wanna thank some of the people in your life for their services throughout the year with a tip. But what is the rule on how much you should give? Joining me now to answer all of our questions is Kimberly Palmer, a personal finance expert from Noda Wallet. Kimberly Welcome. Thank you. We're happy to have you. I'm so glad to be here. How do we decide who to tip this holiday season? Well, tipping is really about showing our appreciation for what people have done to help us throughout the year. So we tip people who we see occasionally like a hair stylist and then also people we interact with every day, like teachers, for example, most people or a lot of people do feel like the pressure to tip has increased. And actually at nerdwallet, we found 29% of Americans do feel there is more pressure now to tip within the last year, but it is not always mandatory. Ok. So you gave us a few great examples there for people kind of racking their brain. Who do I interact with on a daily basis. Who should I be tipping? Is there any service provider for instance, to leave out that people wouldn't need to worry about tipping? Absolutely. So basically there are certain session, certain fields where it's not customary to tip and in some cases, it might even be prohibited. So for example, we don't wanna tip medical service providers, lawyers and even teachers. In some cases, you do wanna check with your school district or your school policy because sometimes there is a cap on what you can give and sometimes you can't give cash gifts, you can give other forms of appreciation. Ok. When should the tip be given? You know, any time in the lead up to the holiday season is a great time to tip for the holidays. So essentially any time throughout the month of December, you wanna think about that in advance, you have some cash on hand. So you're ready for this tipping season. What are some rules of thumb when it comes to cash versus maybe a Venmo payment, even a gift card or an actual gift? Well, in general, cash is usually preferred. But if you know that your service provider does use Venmo paypal, there are some easy ways to send money. And if you're not sure you can always ask to make sure it's something they can access easily. Let's run through a list here of service providers that we should tip this holiday season. How much we should tip them for instance. So we'll do kind of a rapid fire here. So first up, I'm gonna say a hairdresser, how much should we tip them? A hairdresser? You want to tip the cost of one visit to for that service? So of course, the actual cash amount can vary. It depends on the services you usually get, but the cost of one. Ok. What about a housekeeper? A similar situation where you either wanna pay one week's pay or if they come less frequently, you wanna tip the value or the cost of one visit, trash collector, typically about $20 per person that can be in the form of cash or gift card. Ok. Uber driver for an Uber driver, you're seeing that person maybe once only and so you wanna tip on that, uh, the value of that, of the trip usually 20% around the holidays. We can be a bit more generous, maybe 25%. Should people be tipping during the year on every Uber ride? Absolutely. So you want to consider that Uber is a little different than your traditional taxi cab, but in general, you wanna consider tipping 20% is essentially what is normally recommended. So if you can squeeze it into your budget, it is something nice to do to show your appreciation. Ok, good. What about a postal worker? I'm thinking upsu SPS, maybe even fedex. So this gets a little complicated because postal workers, for example, they have some rules they have to follow and they can't actually receive cash, gifts or gifts that are worth more than $20. So you want to be a little careful with that. You can still show your appreciation and you know, check the rules with fedex ups. They do have some company policies and fedex, for example, discourages giving tips at the holidays. But, you know, in some cases, you can find a way to still show your appreciation, maybe it's not giving cash but another token. Ok, really good kind of lay of the land here. Uh Kimberly for anyone who is tight on money these days, right? Inflation is is still elevated. Borrowing costs are very high. If you don't have it in your capacity, your budget to tip. What are some other ways to give back? Well, it's always nice to show your appreciation. You can really write a heartfelt card, you could give a handmade gift like cookies, for example, or something just to show your appreciation. However, it's important to know that in some types of services. For example, if you have an in home childcare provider, tipping is really part of the compensation. So if possible, you would really do want to try to prioritize giving a cash gift in that situation. So it's interesting we talked about um Uber drivers tip a little bit more about 25% you said on a holiday ride or at least one during this holiday season. What about wait staff if you eat out around the holidays, maybe even on a holiday itself. What should you be tipping in that case? Well, in general, we always say 20% is customary on a typical day around the holidays. You just want to try to be a little more generous and for 25%. Ok. Kimberly Palmer, I feel better now that we have this segment and this chat together. Thank you so much for joining you.