For some, tipping is an extremely touchy topic. We’ve all been out to restaurants with friends only to learn that they tip like Ebenezer Scrooge or put our tipping practices to shame.

I routinely tipped 15 percent until I worked at a restaurant. I’m a faithful 20 percent tipper today, unless my kids have ground rice into the rug and thrown crayons (25 percent) or the server is rude or terribly incompetent (15 percent).

I was surprised to learn this morning that more than two-thirds of Americans recently surveyed said they will leave no tip when service is bad. I wouldn’t dare.

A survey out today by market research firm Synovate found 98 percent of Americans regularly tip and more than half tip wait staff between 15 and 20 percent.

The extensive survey asked more than 6,800 people in 10 countries (Brazil Canada Hong Kong Indonesia Russia Serbia France Spain UK US) about tipping behavior. I think understanding tipping behavior while visiting another country is as important as carrying a map.
Globally, about a third of all consumers leave a 10 to 15 percent tip. Fifteen percent of all consumers will usually leave less than 10 percent of the bill, 14% will leave between 15 to 20 percent of the bill, and 36% don’t base the amount of their tip on the final bill.

Americans are the highest tippers according to the survey. Russians were the least generous, generally leaving less than 10 percent of a bill.
Here’s who Americans tip: Waiters (97%), bell hops (97%), haristylists (79%).

In Indonesia, citizens are more likely to tip a handyman than a waiter. The majority of consumers in Serbia and Brazil would tip handymen too. Only 7 percent of Americans would tip a handyman, survey says.

I must admit to feeling like we are becoming a society that tips too much. Does the barista handing me a black coffee deserve my change more than a drive through worker at McDonalds? I don’t know. How to tip? Who to tip?

Synovate found more than half of Americans often feel pressured to leave a tip when they don’t want to. Relate?

Last week I wrote a column about “Generation P.” The P is for plastic. The jist is that young people tend to use credit or debit more than cash, even for purchases less than $2.

While researching the story, I also learned that older people are less comfortable buying a pop with plastic. I’ll say I was in that camp until a year or so ago when I started noticing that many places don’t require signing for such small payments.

The column didn’t get into check writing. I used to write checks for small purchases, but check-writing is time consuming and harder to track in Quicken. According to Visa, it takes 75.2 seconds for a check transaction versus 26.1 seconds for a signature-based debit card.

With the time you waste behind a someone writing out a check, here’s what Visa says you could do:

49 seconds/day

Three observations from the weekend:

1. Cheap wine can be good, but then again, the phrase “you get what you pay for” has some merit.

2. My kids are much richer after I cleaned the house this morning, depositing any loose change except for quarters in their piggy banks. I use the quarters for parking meters.

This really isn’t fair to Matt, since the coins are most likely change from his pocket.

Sometimes I think I should start us adults a piggy bank and bust it open after a year for a splurge. If I had the coins right now I’d buy sushi and beer (or better wine).

Coinstar says there’s $10 billion in loose change in American homes. Their latest pr campaign wants consumers to go on a hunt for hidden treasure in their homes. Then high tail it to a Coinstar machine to count your loot. The machine usually charges a fee, but you can get the fee waived in some instances. Some Banks will do it for free too.

3. I stopped my 401(k) contribution on Friday after agreeing with many readers that my financial focus should be on beefing up my emergency savings account.

This move is not for everyone. Here’s why it was for me:

• I know I’ll start it up again as soon as the dust settles and I’m not just saying that.
• I’ve been contributing to a retirement plan since age 22 and have more saved than most near-retirees.
• I do not get a matching contribution from my employer.
• My husband is still contributing to his 457 account.
• I continue to max out my Roth IRA.

Believe me, it’s not a decision I take lightly. But it feels like the right one considering we have a pretty thin cash cushion.

Matt and I have been living on cash for two weeks. Experts always say if you feel cash leaving your hands you tend to spend less. I wanted to try that advice.
We took out a lump of cash every Saturday based on how much we planned on needing throughout the weeks. Last week it was $260; this week it was $180.
Both times we ended up with some leftover at the end. I guess technically the week doesn’t start again until tomorrow at noon, but I don’t expect to spend $60 tonight, unless I get stuck in a ditch.
Here are three things I learned about myself using cash:
#1: Cash at the grocery store, while daunting, can work if you tally how much you’re spending. Make a mark for each dollar you spend and then marks for every amount more than 50 cents. I came within a dollar or two of what I wanted to spend both times. Using cash made it much easier to pass up impulse items and stick to the list.
#2: I am so used to charging everything and then paying it off at the end of the month that cash felt foreign to me. In fact, I felt an urge to spend all of my money by week’s end, exactly opposite the wisdom I often hear.
I think that has something to do with Quicken. When a charge appears in Quicken, I watch its impact on our budget. Cash in Quicken is a black hole. We take little cash out and are terrible at marking how it’s spent. So it ends up in a miscellaneous pot. That means it doesn’t impact our “watch” categories like food or entertainment. Basically, cash makes it easier for us to fool ourselves.
#3: We don’t spend a lot of money. We both work. We take care of kids at night. It’s snowy and cold. Where would we spend money?