How Much to Spend? Teacher & Daycare Gift Giving Survey

It's holiday time and I'm in my gift buying frenzy. Each year I tangle with the question of how much to spend on the AMAZING and wonderful teachers and daycare providers that care for our children.  These people are priceless in our lives. If I was growing a money tree in the back yard I wouldn't hesitate to spend bushels of cash on them. Unfortunately, until I get the money tree genes spliced properly (now that's a GMO I would actually condone..) our family budget does set a limit on holiday gift purchases across the board. So I'm stuck with the conundrum of putting a price tag on their gift.

I figured I couldn't be alone in my gift-giving plight, so I  put together an anonymous survey to find out what real parents in Charlotte, NC were planning to spend. I've tallied the results below to offer an overview of what parents are spending on gifts for teachers and daycare providers. 

Gift giving is a personal decision, but my geeky science mind likes graphs and data - so here you go ;) We had about 80 responses to the survey. This graph shows all data for all salary ranges, the y-axis is the percentage of respondents.

Teacher Gift Giving Data for all Salary Ranges

• Pre-K 1-2 days a week had a gift giving mode of $21-$30. 
• Pre-K 3-5 days a week had a gift giving mode of $11-$20. 
• K-6 had a gift giving mode of $21-$30. 
• Daycare Full-time had a gift giving mode of $21-$30. 
• Daycare Part-time had a gift giving mode of $11-$20. 

Respondents had annual salaries ranging from $0  to more than $200K, however the largest number of respondents had an annual household salary of $100,000 - $124,999 (22%) with an annual household salary of $75,000 - $99,999 being the second largest number of respondents (18%). Interestingly, I found that there was not a large correlation with average household income and the amount of money parents reported they planned to spend for households making over $75,000 per year.

A huge holiday thank you to all of the wonderful men and women who educate and care for our children all year round. A survey can tell us what people are spending on gifts - but you are truly priceless!