Holiday tipping calculator

Methodology

This tool runs the Kindhow Scale, version 1.0, in its list form. The wedding calculator starts from one baseline and argues with it; this one has no single baseline, because the question does not have one. What it has is a row per person, and each row is tagged sourced when a publication backs that exact figure and house judgment when the reasoning is ours.

The formula

for each person on your list:

  published range      Emily Post's own $ range for that role
    ± where you live   BEA price parity, as a nudge inside the range
    ± how the year went first year / regular / years with you
                       → a figure still inside their range        sourced

  published ceiling    "up to one week's pay", "up to one haircut"
    × 50 / 75 / 100%   how the year went                          judgment
                       → 100% is their ceiling exactly            sourced

  no-cash roles        mail carrier, package driver
                       → $20 as a gift, fixed, USPS policy        sourced

  ─────────────
  = cash total   + gift total   = the whole list
  each line rounded to a bill you can put in a card (lib/giveable.js)

Published ranges — sourced

The Emily Post Institute’s Holiday Tipping Guide prices these roles three different ways, and this tool keeps all three rather than flattening them into one percentage. Some roles have a published dollar range. Some are pegged to something you already pay — a week’s wages, one haircut. Two are not tipped in money at all. The middle column is their wording; the last is what this tool computes at the middle setting, in an average-cost part of the country.

Where the judgment is

One control moves the whole list, and it does two different jobs depending on how the role is priced. For a role with a published range it picks a point inside that range, so the figure is always one Emily Post publishes — those lines stay tagged sourced. For a role priced as up to something you pay, only the ceiling is theirs; taking a fraction of it is our inference, so those lines are tagged house judgment at anything below the top setting. That distinction is the whole reason the two tags exist.

Where you live

The bands come from the Bureau of Economic Analysis’ Regional Price Parities for 2024, and shift you up or down within each published range — never outside it. A state ten points above the US average moves you a fifth of the way up. This is our inference, not BEA’s: no publication has studied whether holiday tips track regional price levels.

It deliberately does not touch the roles pegged to what you already pay. A salon visit in San Francisco is already a San Francisco price, and applying a regional index on top of it would count the same thing twice.

The mail carrier is not a judgment call

Every other line on this page is guidance you may argue with. This one is federal policy, and the person it constrains is not you. USPS policy is that carriers “are permitted to accept a gift worth $20 or less from a customer per occasion, such as Christmas,” that “no employee may accept more than $50 worth of gifts from any one customer in any one calendar year period,” and that “cash and cash equivalents, such as checks or gift cards that can be exchanged for cash, must never be accepted in any amount.”

So that line does not move when you change the settings, and it is counted separately from your cash total. A gift card that can only be spent at one shop is a gift; a Visa gift card is cash and has to be refused. Private couriers are not covered by the same rule, but most of them have their own policy against cash, which is why this tool treats them the same way.

What this tool will not do

• It will not tell you that any of this is required. Emily Post’s own guide says these are not rules, and that tipping is optional unless it is written into a contract. Untick anyone. The list is yours.
• It has no opinion about your budget. There is no nudge here toward being more generous and no comparison to what your neighbours give. If this year is tight, give less, or give a note.
• It does not cover teachers. Teachers and other public employees are a separate question with a different answer — cash is usually inappropriate and many districts publish a hard cap on what a teacher may accept. That needs its own tool, not a row on this one.
• It is US-only. The ranges are American and the carrier rule is federal. End-of-year tipping customs elsewhere are frequently different and sometimes absent entirely.
• It does not know your building. A staff fund everyone contributes to, a super who fixed your boiler on Christmas Eve, or a doorman you have known for fifteen years all beat anything a model can compute.

Sources

• The Emily Post Institute — Holiday Tipping Guide — the published range or ceiling for every role on the list.
• The Emily Post Institute — Holiday Tips vs. Holiday Gifts — that a holiday tip is cash for regular, direct service; that teachers and government employees get a gift instead; and that the whole thing is optional.
• USPS Postal Bulletin — Employee Tipping and Gift-Receiving Policy — the $20 per-occasion limit, the $50 annual limit, and the ban on cash and cash equivalents.
• USPS — Ethics FAQs, Gifts from Outside Sources — the same limits restated in the Postal Service’s current ethics FAQ.
• U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis — Regional Price Parities, 2024 — the regional price bands.

Informational only, not professional advice. The Kindhow Scale is a published model, not a standard, and the lines marked house judgment are our reasoning and nothing more. The USPS limits are the one exception on this page: those are policy, and they are quoted rather than interpreted. Last reviewed: August 2026. Scale version 1.0. Figures that come from a publication are re-checked against their source on a monthly cycle; when one moves, the version number moves with it.