My input is show the child how much he is worth, give him full value for that as it goes to his self worth.
In my own experience, I was dating a single mom many moons ago. I had a job that required a assistant and her (late teen) son seemed to have that ability so I took him on for this and paid for his service the industry standard. There was no set pay rate established ahead of time for this, and they assumed something similar to minimum wage. When I handed them the check for many times that they were shocked, my g/f wanted me to take that back at first. But it was the real value of his service and then she understood and I do feel it made her son’s sense of self worth increase.
It’s $80 in my neighborhood for the same amount of time. Off the cuff, I’d say something like $10 for a wash, and maybe $25 for a basic detail from your kid.
Pay him by the hour. I used to work for a car wash, and you’d be surprised how many people neglected their filthmobiles for months or years, then expected us to get it showroom clean in 5 minutes. Your car may not have trash in it, but if you haven’t cleaned it in a while I guarantee all the crevices on the dash, doors, and console are filled with dust/dirt. The carpets/upholstery might need scrubbed (foaming cleaners like Tuff Stuff or Scrubbing Bubbles work better than most carpet cleaners). Vacuuming pet hair out of cars takes forever because it sticks to the upholstery and carpets. If you smoke I guarantee your ashtray and console need thoroughly scrubbed out with a good cleaner and a small brush.
And that’s just the inside. Is he washing and waxing the outside too? Cleaning the wheels? Windows inside and out?
I don’t know how dirty your car actually is or how clean you want it to be, but that just makes more sense to pay him according to how long the cleaning takes/how much work he actually does. I would consider paying him $10 an hour, he can spend 2-3 hours on it, or less if it’s not that bad.
I’d say $20 would be fine, given he’s a good kid and sounds responsible. That isn’t necessarily “how much a car wash/cleaning” should cost, but if he’s doing a decent but quick job, seems fair.
If you do somewhat care about the job he does, extend the idea of a bonus, then throw in another $5-10, depending on just how bad your car is.
I live in the DC metro area, and when I pay to get both the inside and outside of my car cleaned, I pay $30. Keep in mind that the cost of living is rather expensive here, but there’s a data point for you.
If anyone is interested we settled on $20 to start. He did such a great job. I only needed to point a few things he missed on the outside like cleaning around the inside of the headlights and the license plate.
I had to leave before he finished the inside, and it was dark when I got home so I didn’t check until the next day. I was stunned by such a good job, especially getting the dog hair out of the seats. He actually went through after vacuuming and used duct tape to “lint roll” the seats for the dog hair. He used a toothbrush to get into the crevices in the center console where dust and hair and stuff gather.
Well, if he was old enough to drive, he might try that. Though I’m thinking, maybe washing the car is a good trade off for being able to borrow it, when the time comes.
He was thrilled. He was hoping for $30. It was really dirty and there was a lot of dog hair. I was impressed that he came to me when he thought he was done and asked me to point out what he’d missed.
Ha! We have several old ones in the laundry room for cleaning. Hopefully it was one of those.
Well, and that’s what I was doing - hiring him to clean my car. That’s the whole reason I started this thread was to see what people thought a fair wage was. In retrospect, maybe I should have said I was hiring the neighbor kid instead of my own son. Maybe some of the responses would have been different.
