Holiday tipping and giving?

I've always like the stories of a guy who gets pancakes at IHOP and leaves the especially pleasant waitress a huge tip. Not exactly in my budget, but I do try to loosen the wallet this time of year. My barber drives a nicer car and lives in a nicer house than me so I only leave the usual tip. I suppose others leave some sort of bonus tip to their barber or hairdresser? My brother is in a smaller town and has always given the trash collector a couple of twenties this time of year. I have a restaurant dinner and will see if the service deserves a bonus tip, but I probably will not be overly generous. I have an envelope out with an unusually generous check to a favorite non-profit, although it's not necessarily anything related to the season other than the gift of sharing.

My hairdresser and massage therapist get extra large tips. I’ll give some to the local food bank and extra to my church, but that’s it.

I plan to give $100 to our pet sitter.


I plan to leave $100 tip plus whatever regular percentage on my restaurant tab when my garden club meets at a restaurant next week for lunch. It is a crazy group to serve since they move around at the table and while not demanding or rude, they just are a handful to serve.

I’m going to the annual fundraiser in my town. That’s a very nice evening and has lots of silent auction crap I don’t need. But I will certainly bid on some. I may even come home with some of them. I’ll focus on the food items.

I just got a catalogue in the mail from the Southwest Indian Foundation out of Santa Fe, which sells jewelry. They are also a foundation and you can donate money to either food packages or heating--they had an incredibly cool thing where they provide a family with a coal/wood stove--so I did that for Christmas with my donor fund. It was $539 and it provides a family with a beautiful new stove. I love my wood stove so much and I hate to think of children being cold so it was really satisfying to make the donation, and that will be my Christmas gift of the season in honor of my mom.

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Originally Posted by Tybee

I just got a catalogue in the mail from the Southwest Indian Foundation out of Santa Fe, which sells jewelry. They are also a foundation and you can donate money to either food packages or heating--they had an incredibly cool thing where they provide a family with a coal/wood stove--so I did that for Christmas with my donor fund. It was $539 and it provides a family with a beautiful new stove. I love my wood stove so much and I hate to think of children being cold so it was really satisfying to make the donation, and that will be my Christmas gift of the season in honor of my mom.

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That is a nice donation. There is a lot of poverty around there.

I really hate the unsolicited letters asking for donations. I have taken to returning in postage paid envelopes the message to take me off their list.

We have been giving a sizable donation to the local food bank. It is unconscionable to think of people going hungry IMO.

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Originally Posted by frugal-one

I really hate the unsolicited letters asking for donations. I have taken to returning in postage paid envelopes the message to take me off their list.

We have been giving a sizable donation to the local food bank. It is unconscionable to think of people going hungry IMO.

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I receive solicitation letters and emails from organizations I donate to anyway, so Indon’t mind their end of year solicitations.

I've emailed the organizations I do give to (Just a couple) and told them to stop sending me solicitation LETTERS. I don't mind emails, as that's a good update on what they're current projects are, but I don't want the mail!

I tip my hairdresser, and we tip the mail carrier and the trash collectors.

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Originally Posted by rosarugosa

I tip my hairdresser, and we tip the mail carrier and the trash collectors.

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That's exactly what we used to do in NJ. I still tip my hairdresser in VT. We used to have a really amazing trash collector called Bud who drove the truck himself and picked up everything himself. In our town, you could leave anything out there, and no matter how much or how heavy, Bud managed to get all that trash in the bucket loader himself. We always tipped him big.

We also had an amazing mail carrier named Jimmy. Being freelance, my checks were sporadic and there were times I really needed them. But we were one of the last streets on his route. I never asked him to do this, but Jimmy would pull out envelopes that he knew had a payment inside and bring them to the house in the morning so I could get it to the bank before 2pm.

Up here VT, we take our own trash to the transfer station and we have a post office box.

Catherine: So living in VT is saving you money on the holiday tips! Is it less expensive overall for you to live in VT compared to NJ?

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Originally Posted by rosarugosa

Catherine: So living in VT is saving you money on the holiday tips! Is it less expensive overall for you to live in VT compared to NJ?

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Hmm... let's see.

Housing, definitely!
My mortgage is half of my NJ mortgage--and the VT mortgage is a 15-year vs a 30 year so that makes it even cheaper.
My taxes in VT are less than half of my NJ taxes ( 4k vs 9k+)
Utilities are roughly the same. Heating the house is expensive (even considering we have an efficient heat pump and use wood as well) but that's partly because DH is cold a lot and he uses a space heater in his "workshop" which is an uninsulated shack. He's in there a lot because he smokes and obviously the house is off-limits for his smoking.

Shopping:
If we don't go into Burlington a couple of times a month to take advantage of the supermarkets, food can be more expensive.. it's hard to figure out, though, because inflation is a factor in food prices now.
All other shopping seems to be roughly the same

Home services like plumbers and electricians
VT is more expensive if the tradespeople know we're from NJ. Otherwise, VT is cheaper.

I think $4000 a year for taxes for your small house is a lot. But I’m glad you came from New Jersey where taxes are untenable, so Vermont seems to you like a better deal.

Our taxes for our renovated Hermann house are about $2000 a year. When we bought the house it was closer to $1000 a year and had we not renovated it would’ve remained that way.

Our taxes on our St. Louis house for similar square footage were approaching $5000 a year.

Here is a miracle: we got a snow yesterday of about 3 to 4 inches and the city’s snowplow came by at least twice that I saw. In the city of St. Louis our street was never plowed, ever. I remember when we moved to St. Louis from Iowa we naïvely asked neighbors “When will they plow our street?” The neighbors just said “ha ha ha… Ha ha ha ha ha. “

Our taxes are closing in on $5000/yr for a 900 SF house on a 6400 SF lot. We have a couple of those little electric faux woodstoves, but we use them judiciously because they are indeed expensive to run. I think I should schedule another one of those energy audits offered by National Grid to address our heat loss issues. When we had one conducted in 2018, we were really just focused on getting the substantial rebate and zero-interest loan for replacing our furnace.