Need some input on what to pay a babysitter

[Marilyn82]

Hi There,

I currently work FT in an office which is attached to my home. I have an EBF (does not take a bottle) 7 month old DD and a 7.5 year old DS. Hubby is a FT student and works 15 hrs a week, spreading his work time out among weekends, and sporadic nap time hours etc. He is also juggling a lot right now with some other things he has going on that require a lot of appts. etc and work is REALLY busy for me right now, so having DD in the office is extremely difficult. Ok I realize I'm being very unnecessarily long-winded so I'll cut to the chase 

After some discussion, Hubby and I would like to find a babysitter to watch DD and DS (as he will be out of school soon) for 2 days a week, 3 hours each day. We'd also like to develop a relationship where we could use her services for occasional extra days or date nights out etc. I know it is going to vary based on location, but do you think it is unreasonable to offer around $7 per hour? I'm not expecting help with housework and DS would only be there part of the time and can fix his own snacks etc. I would expect her to be engaged with my children while she was there, but am not expecting anything special. What do you mamas think?

TIA!

[springbride]

I think it really depends on the minimum wage/going rate for babysitting etc in your town.

We were in a situation similar to yours this past year, but with only 1 child.  We paid our babysitter $6/hour.  She was thrilled with it.  We did tell her she was welcome to eat/drink whatever she wanted to while she was at our house also.  I found out recently that there was another family in town paying her the same wage for 4 kids!  

I felt like I was underpaying her (it was all we could afford and she couldn't find much else) but to her we were her best paying babysitting family.  

Keep in mind that $7 in cash is way better than working retail/coffee/customer service for minimum wage!

 

[Marilyn82]

Thanks for replying!

Well, minimum wage is actually $8.50 here, but I've looked around on Craigslist and it doesn't seem like that is necessarily the going rate for childcare. It's so hard to really tell, but I've seen people paying full Nannies $8-10 per hour for 1-2 children and light household chores...which is obviously more than I'm asking for. It's so hard to tell what the 'going rate' really is. Most people seem to want to discuss the wages over email so they can negotiate, rather than posting something specific.I don't have any friends that are working moms (errr...besides the extremely difficult job of mommy extraordinaire/household goddess) of course!

[tccandlsccmom]

You do need to ask around locally.  The going rate for 2 kiddos in our area is $10/hour...but where we used to live it was $8.00/hour.