The game is set up for you to reach 125% culture on your own. After that, you are supposed to get higher cultural bonuses from neighborly help. If you have more than 125% culture before any help is given, you may have too much culture and could benefit more by deleting some of it and replacing it with either residences or workshops so you can actually produce more than you are now. All your culture bonus does is increase coin/supply production. But if you keep your culture at a minimum and replace what you can with workshops, you will produce a lot more supplies than you are now. To make up the coin difference, just ask for main hall help and you will get more coins than you would from a culture bonus.