Be a good holiday tipper, not a Scrooge
By Leslie Hunt • Bankrate.com

They've been good to you all year. They cut your hair, opened your doors, baby-sat your kids.

In the spirit of giving during the holidays, maybe it's time to be an extra generous Santa and amp up gratuities for your helpers. The question becomes how much is appropriate to tip these elves, these year-round lifesavers and smoothers.

Leah Ingram, a certified etiquette and protocol consultant and author of "The Everything Etiquette Book: A Modern Day Guide to Good Manners" recommends generously tipping the people who you deal with on a regular basis.

Tip them at double their daily or weekly rate, she says, so they'll take your calls and slip you in.

"If you remember them at the holidays then they'll likely remember you throughout the year."

In an unscientific poll, we asked our newsletter subscribers each day for a week to tell us who they planned to tip during the holidays and how much. More than 370 readers responded. We compiled the results to find the median tip for the various important people in our lives. The median is the middle -- half said they would tip more, half less.

Of course, there were generous tips of $100 and above from some of our readers and tips of $5 all the way to nothing for some service providers. The most-commonly tipped people in our survey are hairdressers and barbers, followed by restaurant and bar wait staff, and mail carriers. Who do our readers tip most generously? The people who care for our children -- the median tip for child care workers is $25.

The following dollar amounts rank in the middle of the gratuity range, with the exclusion of zero. There's always the option of not tipping at all.

A last tip
To guard against bad tips when you're low on cash, Ingram suggests purchasing gift cards to convenience stores, gas stations, coffee shops or office supply stores, where appropriate. If you see your service providers in public, pay attention to where you see them, as location can clue you in to where you should buy your gift card from. For instance, if you've seen your hairdresser around town holding a Starbucks coffee cup, a gift card to Starbucks might be appropriate.

To keep the gift cards handy at all times, Ingram has a basket full of them next to her front door. That way she's always ready to tip whomever she deems worthy. "It's easy to keep them at the ready, and then I'm not going to forget to give them out."

When the holidays arrive, use whatever you didn't give out as gifts for other people or use them yourself, she says.