Wealthy New Yorkers are spending up to $50,000 on holiday tips

Jingle bells? Wassailers? Account yule crackle in inglenok? No, that’s the sound of a thousand hungry fingers rubbing against a thousand index fingers.

The holidays are a time of drowning guilt, tipping fatigue, and blowing snowballs. Who should receive a tip for which services and how much that tip should be is less clear and more frustrating than ever.

But for the city’s luckiest people, gift and tip obligations are as long as Santa’s nice list — and can cost as much as $50,000, one well-connected Upper West Sider told The Post.

“A solid tip from a rich person is $1,000,” said the source, who asked to remain anonymous. “You’d tip your trainer a full month’s bonus. You’d tip your dog walker a full month’s bonus. And that goes to the mailman, the postman, your manicurist, your hairdresser, the driver your, your bodyguard, your secretaries, your staff … anyone who provides you with any kind of service.”

For Monica Elias, CEO of her popular media and branding company in New York, “The list grows every year.”

Elias says this season she’ll be tipping and donating to “over 100 people” — that includes everyone from customers to the man at her club who makes sure she always has something to take away if she needs to. run to a meeting before. dessert. Plus, she adds the age-old step of hand-writing a personalized card to each person to show her gratitude.

“Some people feel the pain in their pocket,” she says. “I feel pain in my fingers because I am writing all these letters and notes.”

Socialite and philanthropist Jean Shafiroff estimates she currently has at least five dozen people on her ever-growing holiday tip list. In addition to the 10-person staff at her Park Avenue building, there are housekeepers and cleaners at her homes in South Florida and the Hamptons. Living among those locals, as many wealthy New Yorkers now do, means tipping in triplicate.

“If someone has helped you throughout the year – like your hairdressers, plural; because I work with different in [different] places — it’s a way to give back,” says Shafiroff, who usually donates money, champagne or Hermès scarves.

Then there are the stylists, make-up artists and fashion sales assistants who help her glove and dress for the charity gala.

“For charities and boutiques where I buy clothes, I send a box of 72 chocolates,” says Shafiroff. “But for the salespeople I’ve worked with all year at Carolina Herrera and Oscar de la Renta, I give them a gift of money.”

While her children are now grown, Shafiroff says nannies, private school teachers and an army of tutors also expect a gift and/or tip during the holidays. These days, however, caregivers for her family’s two cuddly pooches fill those roles.

But even Shafiroff admits that if you tipped everyone who gave you service in a year, you’d be broke.

“They sat down [interest] rates, but I think for most people the economy is terrible,” says Shafiroff. “You walk into a restaurant and a piece of fish costs $70. I’m not just talking about Dover either. We’re talking about Branzino.”

A 60-year-old banker living in Chelsea lamented the feeling of having to keep up with an ever-changing tipping standard.

“When I went to my favorite restaurant, I would give him the $100 and say Merry Christmas. I thought it was standard fare until I learned that one of my colleagues asked his office for the size of the key maitre d’s sweaters in town after Thanksgiving – and during Christmas week, he asked the driver to drop off the Loro Piana cashmere sweaters , “said the banker. .

And everyone is feeling the pinch year-round, adds New York attorney Arthur Aidala.

“Not too long ago, I was carrying a bunch of $5 bills, then it went to $10 bills, then it went to $20 bills,” he said. “And in terms of people you see regularly, like a parking attendant or a doorman, I think if you give them less than $50 it’s almost insulting.”

During the holidays, Aidala goes beyond his daily advice, handing out generous gifts to the working-class heroes in his life: cleaners, auto mechanics, parking garages, deliverymen and sanitation workers.

But saying “thank you” is a two-way street—and dropping G-notes all over Manhattan is the richest guarantee of another year of laid-back luxury.

“The more detailed the tip the better service you get for the next year,” said the Upper West Sider. “A thousand dollar tip for the maitre’d at Casa Cipriani, for Sergio at Cipriani on 59th Street, for your man at Bilboquet in Sag Harbor, for the captain of the yacht that takes you to St. Louis. Barts, the VIP service person in St. Regis in Aspen – these people remember these things. That’s why these people get the first reservations and the best tables.”

Oh, oh, oh

Additional reporting by Lydia Moynihan