I babysit for my sister a lot, and I think I’m getting ripped off. So I’d like to know what the average pay is for babysitting.
a) how much do you pay the babysitter per hour?
b) how many kids does the babysitter watch?
c) what’s the minimum wage in your area, if you know it?
Some people might say I’m a bitch for charging my sister for babysitting, but she’ll wake me up 15 minutes before she has to go to work and say “Marisa’s too sick to go to day care today, can you watch her?” And then it takes me nagging for a week to get any money at all. And she pays me less than the minumum wage. And it sucks really bad having to spend a day with a sick, cranky kid. Plus, since I’m a student, I have a job where I set my own schedule, so when I do my sister a favor, I could be working and making twice what she pays me. I just babysat for her on Wednesday, and she’s finally paying me today, and she’s trying to give me $3.50 an hour. The minimum wage here is $5.50.
I just want to know what other babysitters get paid, so I can show it to her. I doubt she’d be able to find a babysitter she can call with less than 30 minutes notice, who only wants 5 bucks an hour, and who she doesn’t have to pay immediately after the babysitting job.
I don’t use a babysitter with my children but I did recently babysit for a neighbor. She gave me $2 an hour. Another neighbor asked me to watch her children from 5 in the morning til 6 at night 5 days a week and only wanted to pay me $50 a week. I stopped babysitting, it’s too much trouble.
I’d say your sister is taking advantage of you, big time. That said:
In college, I earned $5/hour for one infant (who was btw my cousin), and $10/hour for two infants with different moms who I watched together. That, however, was in 1993-95.
I now pay young teens about $5 or more per hour for my two kids, age 3 and 11 months. But they are looking for experience and so on, and also my kids are pretty easy to care for. I would pay an older person more, and I would also pay more for sick-baby care. Were I asking someone 18+ to care for my sick baby, I would probably feel that $7/hour was a good deal for me.
You ought to help your sister out when you can. She ought to be very, very grateful for that help, and if she can’t afford to pay you more, then she should try to do you some other service.
My friend baby sits. She’s mid twenties and currently earns about 17k a year working for a couple with 3 kids (4 months, 10, and 6 I believe) which amounts to around 7.50 an hour.
I have to respectfully disagree with **dangermom ** about helping your sister out. Yes, you can be a good sibling, but if you had wanted to be home with sick kids all day, you would have had children yourself. Your sister should not expect that you are her free help; you need to say, “look, sis, I am glad to help out but keep in mind that I have my own life and I cannot always rearrange it because you ask me to. In the future, please give me 24 hours notice if you need my help. And the going rate for babysitters is $5/hour.” If she asks you to sit with less than 24 hours notice, say no. If she doesn’t pay you on time, say no the second time. If she doesn’t learn to be respectful herself, how will she teach it to her children?
Sounds like your sister is a single mom and I don’t mean to be a bitch about it; I can only imagine how hard that is. However, she is taking advantage of you in a big way and until you stop letting her do this, she will continue.
Note that I said “you ought to help your sister out when you can.” Family ought to help each other out. Being a doormat for someone who is taking advantage of you is too much, though.
I’m starting a temporary job on Monday. I hired a teeneager to watch my kids. He charges $5.00 an hour, I’m only making $5.50 an hour. If I had to pay him full time, I wouldn’t do it.
Back in the mid 90s I watched the two most perfect kids on the planet and got paid $2 an hour for it. I would have never stuck with it if they weren’t little angels, though, and usually went to bed an hour before I got there, leaving me alone with the TV for another 4 hours before the parents got home.
A babysitter you can trust is worth their weight in gold. $5 an hour isn’t unreasonable, it’s a mitzvah!
Can she afford to pay you more? If she’s got plenty of money and is jerking you around, you should have a sit down. If she’s struggling, you may just want to be a good sister and sow some good karma.
My niece is a 12-year old girl who has taking a Red Cross babysitting class. She lives in a Phoenix suburb. She makes $10/hour babysitting one child, more if there are more children. She babysits at her convenience and never lacks for jobs.
I used to get $5 an hour for babysitting 3 boys. The minimum wage was $7 at the time, but because I was only a kid, I thought I was making tons of money. How much I’ve learned since then!
I often babysit free for my friends, IF I’m available. But I don’t let them call me up on a few minutes’ notice (emergencies excepted, of course), and I don’t ever cancel my plans to babysit.
From what my friends tell me, the average babysitter costs about $6-7 an hour, but you can probably find a younger kid to do it for $5 an hour, if you’re ok with that. Some kids with Red Cross training will charge more, up to $10 an hour.
I pay 6 dollars an hour for three kids. And I round up since I usually find a babysitter at the last minute so I usually end up paying 20-40 when I go out.
I try to not use a babysitter too much, so I dont go out very often.
Just out of curiosity, but does anyone have a preference towards the gender of the babysitter and why?
I have a male friend who told me he did some babysitting when he was younger, but he had to jump through all sorts of hoops female babysitters his age didn’t have to. Apparently some people didn’t trust him as much because he was male (their exact words).
Personally if I had kids, I wouldn’t have any problem with a boy babysitting them as opposed to a girl. Just like I wouldn’t have any problem with a girl washing my car for me as opposed to a boy.
Back when I was a young teen in the early 90s I got paid $10/day for watching 2 elementary school aged children during the summer. I thought I was RICH.
I’ve only used a sitter twice since my daughter was born and I think she charged me $4/hour.
I can understand doing a flat rate per day thing if it’s a long term job and you’re going to be there most days. If you’re watching kids from, say, 7am to 5pm, it would bust most parents to pay decently by the hour. $15 a day, though, with a guarantee to be working 5 days a week (the whole summer) ends up a pretty sweet deal for a teenager.
Especially if you throw in cable TV and a well stocked refrigerator
I asked DH if he’d ever allow a boy to watch LilSnoopy and he said no. I wonder if fathers are more likely to nix a boy babysitter?
To expand on what SnoopyFan said, I pay less per hour for daily childcare, more for going out in the evenings/weekends. A night out is easily going to be $40 or more, depending on how late I get home, usually somewhere in the neighborhood of $5 hourly. Minimum wages have taxes taken out of them, no? It’s not really a fair comparison.
$175 weekly for my eleven yo, from 5:30 am to 4:30 pm. Thirty-five a day for eleven hour days isn’t a great hourly wage, but consider that he’s in school for a good deal of each day and it becomes a bit better. Of course, she really earns the money in the summertime/vacation days, but it all works out somewhat fairly in the end.
FWIW, the same gf that watches my son for $35 per day, occasionally watches her three school-aged neices and gets paid $20 per day for all three of them. Family’s different.
I’d refuse to babysit altogether, if I were you. I see no pros, only cons:
she doesn’t pay on time
she pays less than she should
you could have been making more
you are not enjoying it
Of course, your sister may hang a lovely guilt trip on you that you shouldn’t charge your relatives money, which is where you say, “You don’t charge money when you volunteer, and it wasn’t my idea to babysit,” and leave.
At a very well run preschool daycare I use their rate for daycare the first child/per hour is $3.25
I pay my sitter $5.00/hr to watch two little boys, in the evening. she feeds them and herself dinner cleans up gets em in jammies and in to bed, tv is off early and then she sits around, studying or more likely usually watching a loud tube till I get home.
kwitcher complainin’ and be a good caregiver to your niece!
