Gift Amounts
What to give, for the occasion you are actually going to
Every guide to this subject ends in a range. A range is not an answer when you are standing in a card aisle with a pen in your hand, so these tools end in a number — and then show you which bills that is.
Each one starts from a published average we name and link to, then moves it for the things that genuinely change the figure: how close you are, whether you are bringing someone, whether getting there cost you a flight. Every adjustment is labelled either sourced or house judgment, so you can see exactly where our opinion begins.
How much to give at a wedding. Starts from how well you know the couple, then adjusts for your plus-one, the wedding party, and the flights you are paying for.
Open tool →Baby Shower Gift CalculatorHow much to spend on a baby shower gift. First baby or a sprinkle, coworker or sibling, guest or the one throwing it — and whether your share of the group's big present is a fair ask for you.
Open tool →Kids’ Birthday Gift CalculatorWhat to spend on a child’s birthday gift. The only published figures date from 2023, so this brings them up to today’s prices — and checks the party against the one rule Emily Post does print, which is about how many guests to invite, not how many dollars to spend.
Open tool →Tooth Fairy CalculatorWhat the tooth fairy leaves. One insurer has polled parents on this every year since 1998, and publishes a separate figure for a first tooth and for each US region — then, because you cannot put $5.84 under a pillow, this works out the smallest amount you can actually make from what is in the house tonight.
Open tool →Bar & Bat Mitzvah Gift CalculatorHow much to give at a bar or bat mitzvah. The published range depends on who was invited — you alone, or your whole household — not on how close you are, and the answer lands on a multiple of 18, which is why it is almost never the $100 you were about to write.
Open tool →Host Gift CalculatorWhat to take to dinner at someone’s house, a housewarming, or a weekend at theirs. The $10–$20 bottle everybody quotes was published in 2013 — carried forward on the government’s own index it is $14–$29 — and on two occasions Emily Post says the honest answer is nothing at all.
Open tool →Gift Reciprocity CalculatorThey gave you $200 in 2016 — what is that worth now? Carries a past gift forward on the government's own inflation index, then adjusts for the occasion at each end, how many of you are giving, and how close you are these days.
Open tool →Teacher Gift CalculatorWhat to spend on a teacher gift, on your own or as your share of the class gift — then checked against the limit on what a teacher may accept, which is the part almost nobody looks up.
Open tool →Graduation Gift CalculatorWhat to give for a graduation — and how much of the answer anyone has actually published. College has a printed $100–$500 range; high school has a minimum and no maximum, so the tool says which of your dollars are our call. Plus where to put the money if they file a FAFSA.
Open tool →Sympathy Gift CalculatorWhat to give when someone has died. Nobody publishes an average, so this one uses the rule Emily Post and Chabad both give independently — what the flowers would have cost — and says where the money goes when the notice asks for donations instead.
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