Tip Tips
Divide By Six
This one is simple, but I’m surprised that not enough people know it. Â My tip secret to divide the bill total by six.
Others use shortcuts like “twice tax”, but that works out to over 18% now. Â Still a decent baseline to round up or down from. Â Another shortcut is “divide by ten then add half again”. Â Divide by six is equivalent to 16.6%. Â Let’s do a few tests to see what is easiest…
The bill is $24.52. Â Divide by six gives you $4 pretty quickly. Â Divide by ten and half again is $2.45 then what’s half of that … ok $1.20. Â $2.45 + $1.20 is $3.65. Â That was a lot more work!
The bill is $125. Â Divide by six gives you “Around $20 or $21”. Â Divide by ten and half again is $12.50 plus $6.25, that gets us close to $19. Â But how much more effort was that?
Credit Card Whole Dollars
WTF is up with people who do all this subtraction when calculating a tip so that the total charged to their credit card is a whole dollar amount? Â I mean really people – what are you trying to accomplish? Â Do you keep a running total in your head – to the nearest PENNY – of your credit card? Â Then the poor server has to do all kinds of penny-precise math and finding of small change on account of your obsession with zeroes. Â REALLY!