It’s been so long since I did any babysitting, I don’t know what the going rate is. Here’s the sitch:
I will be watching 2 girls in the afternoon for a couple hours each day, from the time they get home from school until one of their parents gets home from work. I’m not sure, but I may be asked to do some “light” housework too.
I’m not sure what I should charge. And if I should charge more because I have child-care training. I worked as a pre-k teacher for almost 2 years, and I took all the training courses they offered (lesson planning, room arrangement, first aid, guidance and discipline, teaching pre-k math and reading, among others), and I also got certified in child first aid and CPR (although the CPR has lapsed since it was only good for a year). I also took classes that were offered through work in conjunction with the local community college, to get my CDA (Child Development Associate) degree, although I never went ahead and got the degree.
Are there any dopers out there in this situation, either as someone providing child care in their home or in someone else’s home-how much do you charge; or if you have a child in a child care situation like this, what do you get charged? I’m curious to know, 'cause I haven’t the faintest idea! Thanks in advance!
My day care provider charges us a weekly rate, but I believe when she does hourly stuff she charges $15 per hour. Now, in her case, she’s fully licensed, with an up-to-date CPR certification and degrees in child development, which justifies a higher charge. However, she’s also watching multiple children instead of dedicating herself to just the one family’s child/children, so that suggests her charge might be discounted. To throw more confusion in the mix, I live in a town with a very high cost of living, and my day care provider is fairly expensive compared to others.
How is that for confusing?
I know a plain ol’ college student around here would charge at least $7 an hour to come sit. I’d expect to pay someone like with your qualifications more, however.
Geez, why do I bother? Could that have been any less helpful?
No, no, any reply is food for thought, it helps! Thankee, Cranky!
BTW, I love your name- I call my elderly cat “Grumpy Old Lady”, and my husband has taken to calling me that because I’m 2 years older than him and have a lot of white hair. When I’m sitting in bed with the cat, he’ll say, “oh, look, it’s two grumpy old ladies.”
I have my son in day-care at a woman’s home and, while this doesn’t so much help your hourly thing, pay her $150 a week. This is for 5 days a week, 8+ hours a day. Actually, $150 seems to be about the going rate around here from what I’ve noticed while looking for someone. Some charge more, but not too much more (well, some do but I don’t deal with them).
Mind you, the woman I deal with is extremely casual about the money. She expects to be paid of course, but doesn’t watch the hours or charge me extra if I’m late from work picking him up. Not licensed, and actually I pay her cash because she doesn’t declare the income, but she is the absolute best thing to happen to me and Simon. Loves him to pieces, has a child of her own right about his age (he’s 2 and a half, her youngest daughter is three) and has two other children (5 and 8) who adore him as well. She doesn’t seem to be in it for the money so much as she just loves kids and likes having someone for her daughter to play with (and they do play well together).
I’ve told people how much I pay before and they act shocked. Obviously, these are people who don’t have children in childcare. The “professional” places like KinderCare charge a frightening amount; much more than an individual and can be quite strict about hours. Anytime I hear of someone who pays less, it’s because a friend of the family or relative is doing the watching.
So you are paying this woman approximately $3.75/hour?
Wow.
I guess if it is undeclared she wins, but it seems like a very small salary.
I used to live on the border of Mexico and the US, and even though there were people desperate to work and the economy was relatively poor I think the going rate was higher.
Just a bit surprised. As a babysitter in college I charged $8/hour.
One daycare I had my kids at charged $2.00/hour for birth-18 months and $1.75/hour for 18 months - 3 years. I was paying $3.75/hour for both of my kids and this lady wrote down what time I dropped them off and what time I picked them up. I was paying about $350 every two weeks for my kids and she was giving me a discount because I was a single mother at the time and couldn’t afford the $800/month it was originally supposed to be!
The sitter that I have now charges $13/day per kid so I pay $260 every two weeks. She doesn’t watch the clock either so I don’t pay extra if I’m 10-15 minutes late picking them up. She’s also my SO’s aunt so I’m very comfortable leaving my kids with her.
I have a teenager come over and watch the kids while my SO and I go to our kickboxing class twice a week. She’s there for an hour and 15 minutes each time and both of the kids are already in bed asleep so she basically gets paid to sit around and watch tv. I pay her $5/day so $10 each week, roughly $2.50 per kid per hour. It would be more if it were during the day and she actually had to do something with the kids.
<<So you are paying this woman approximately $3.75/hour? >>
She didn’t say if the woman had any other children to watch. Day care workers here get minimum wage, which after taxes is about $4-4.50 an hour. They also don’t get to work in their own homes or with their own children, usually.
Since the woman in question would be either staying with her children at home anyway or paying someone else to care for them, then you could look at what she does as being tacitly paid to care for her own children, plus 3.75 extra for the extra child.
I’m all for paying people decently to care for children, but when you get to work at home, don’t have to pay for a vehicle to drive to work, insurance, work clothing, lunch at work, and so forth…I think a bit less salary is more than acceptable. I spend 45 minutes a day plus $5-10 on all of the above, so I could conceivably take $1 an hour less to do the same thing at home and still come out ahead.
We pay the very experienced lady that comes to our house a monthly rate that comes out to about $60.00/day. We provide meals and anything they need and I won’t comment on any taxable reporting. This is in the south and for 1 child. Hope that helps.
As I said, she does have other children and one of them is three years old, so she’s a stay-at-home mom all day long. I’m not implying that watching two children is just as easy as watching one (especially if they decide to take off in different directions) but rather that she’s not exactly making a career out of this but rather doing something she enjoys (you can tell she’s a kid-type person) and getting the benefits of $150/wk plus a playmate for her daughter. I, of course, get the benefit of someone I trust watching my son and him having a daily playmate as well.
I often tell the 3.75/hr line to people who act shocked that I’d pay $150 for childcare (I wonder how much they think childcare costs, anyway) and they usually agree that, yeah, it’s not that much.
I would imagine that even if you had a degree, license and whatever else around here you couldn’t charge over the $200 mark. At that point, there’s “professional” daycare places around here for the same rate. You might be able to market yourself as the personal touch, etc but there’d be no economic incentive to choose you over a pre-school type operation. Not that choosing childcare should be decided by price, but when you’re a single parent it has to be a consideration whether you like it or not. Of course, I’m getting mighty off topic here… sorry
In my experience “professional” daycare centers usually charge less, because their caregiver to child ratios are usually lower than home daycares. For example, we send our son to a licensed in-home daycare and it costs $130 a week. Our daughter goes to a preschool which costs about $110 a week.
In the classified ads I’ve seen, people usually offer about $8.00 an hour for less than full time babysitting.
Opposite from my experience, home daycare is much cheaper since there aren’t the building/insurance, etc. costs.
$200 a week for infants, $185 for toddlers $170 for preschoolers in my center. My center is pretty expensive, but very nice - and I’m in a high cost daycare city. And daycare is provided from 6:30 to 6:30. So thats $3.34 an hour for infants - of course I don’t take advantage of a 12 hour daycare day - my kids are in from 8 to 5.
The neighbor girl babysits for my next door neighbor - $5 a hour, which is cheap, but the kids are 4 and 6 - so it isn’t very difficult sitting. I’d expect to pay between $8 and $10 for watching my two toddlers.
Age makes a difference to. Beginning sitters (12 and 13 year olds) are cheaper than seniors in high school. Grandma sits for free.
Thanks for all the advice. I’m thinking of charging maybe $8- $10, since it’s two children, and I have considerably more qualifications than a high-schooler (see the OP). I’m going to talk to some of my friends, and chew it all over. Thanks again!
My only comment on this thread is be very careful about young sitters. In both the states I’ve lived in the minimum age that a child can be left home alone, babysitting or not, is/was 13 years old. I babysat my brother from the time I was 12-18(my parents were lucky, I guess, since no one checked up on it) but no one else’s kids until I was 14.
