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Infant childcare cost - mild vent.


Murphy101
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In our area, a price of $100 a week for full time infant care is probably low end of average so that works out to about $25 a day, for a good 8hr plus day. $150 would be the high end of average. Now, in a high end center one could easily pay way more than $200 a week.

 

 An in-home center around here is $140/week for a kid who is potty trained.

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At least in our area the parents are often only making minimum wage or maybe up to $10-11/hour.......wages are low and jobs are scarce even if you have skills or a college degree.  

 

Just for perspective, the job my husband did 25 years ago with full benefits, 2 weeks paid vacation, and bonuses now pays LESS per hour (not even adjusted, just purely LESS per hour) now than it did back then.

 

As a special ed teacher with a 5 year degree, I am getting $12.50/hour for teaching the most severely disabled students in the county.....which included all personal care, feeding, monitoring oxygen, suctioning, etc.

 

Foster care rates in our area are $17.24 per DAY for a child ages 0-12 which must cover their care and needs.

 

I would love to see more being paid and certainly in more affluent areas it can be but there are so many people struggling to survive on full time jobs that pay far less than you are quoting.  They don't love their children any less.

 

See that is a regional thing.  I make $17.25/hr as my base pay in a daycare/out of school care PLUS I get an hourly top up from the gov't because we are an accredited centre (it is an incentive for centers to go the extra mile to get accredited, which is over and above the expectations of just being licensed).  So as a childcare worker my hourly wage works out to $23.87/hour.  If I worked as a teacher's assistant in the schools here I would be making close to the same as my current base pay (based on having the 1 yr college certificate, not a degree).  This is in a rural setting where most are low to middle class incomes.  BUT my province's minimum wage is currently $12.20/hour, going up to $13.80 in October and to $15 in October 2018, because my province is a HCOL one.  Jobs are scarce right now across the province unless you are looking at fast food type gigs, when the economy dropped due to the oil patch downturn our province was hit so hard and unemployment was high. I am lucky to have not just this job but the 2nd one I picked up even though the 2nd one is only 4-5 shifts per month.  

 

I don't know what the foster care rates are out here to compare that. I just know childcare rates, COL and current min wage.

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I just have to pipe up and say I am in awe that y'all remember what you were paid to babysit when you were a teen!

 

I only remember because I had one family stiff me...imagine $20 for a 16 hour day. Also because I went from a moderate area (about $5/hour) to a great payment area ($10+/hour) in college.

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I suspect I may be from the same place as Butler, because when I was a young teen babysitter, the rate was $.25/hour. Yes, you read that right. 25 cents an hour. I once babysat for a family with six kids and when I asked for 35 cents an hour, I was told that the college kids only got 25 cents. I am old, so there is that.

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$40/6 hours is less than minimum wage. $20/6 hours is just ridiculous. I'm sure that has to be ridiculous anywhere in the country.

 

For occasional sitting it would be $10-$12/hour where I live.

 

I suppose if it were a standing daytime gig one might negotiate less say $50 for the six hours. However because it was a standing gig, if the family missed a week they'd still have to pay.

 

However there some popular sitters in my area that charge $15/hour no matter what.

 

Also anyone asking your DD to watch at your house is really just expecting you to care for the child.

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In our area, a price of $100 a week for full time infant care is probably low end of average so that works out to about $25 a day, for a good 8hr plus day. $150 would be the high end of average. Now, in a high end center one could easily pay way more than $200 a week.

This is about normal where I come from also. Under 6 mos would be more.  Occasional for 6 hours for under 1 would be $20-25. 

 

Where we're at now I think 6 hours would be closer to $30-35. I keep trying to talk DD into it but she wants nothing to do with children (she'd rather get a job stocking at the local Publix).

 

I made $2/hour for the first kid plus $1 per hour for each additional kid... late 80's early 90's but minimum wage was still $4.25 /hour back then.

Edited by foxbridgeacademy
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I made $1/kid/hour in the late 80's/early 90's.  It was always at their house and I could have whatever snacks, allowed to talk on the phone(all the perks!lol)

 

When I get a babysitter, I pay $8/hour for 3 kids who are not that needy.  I don't want her to clean up after kids, she can do homework or whatever.  Meals and snacks are planned and prepared. Sorry, that's not any harder than a McDonald's job.  Basically, make sure they don't run away or hurt themselves or each other.

 

I live in a Low COL.

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If we're going out and not bringing the kids we usually pay $22 per hour but we do have more than one child and we have paid more than that in certain situations. When our 17 year old daughter babysits for someone other than us she gets $18-20 per hour from reasonable people. There was a family that we knew from Co-op that wanted her to watch four kids under ten for $3 per hour. We/ she would have said no even for $30 per hour because to be kind their kids are a bit spirited, and their home is a bit of a disaster zone but I presume that some people may turn them down just because they are cheap.

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The daycare (or learning center, rather) here provides meals (I think breakfast, snack, lunch) and averages out to less than $20/day but I don't think you can exactly compare a daycare price structure to an individual since we basically had this conversation a while back in another thread. I realized that the daycares are getting money from mult. families so I guess that's how they can manage on so little per child. But go to another town with a higher COL and probably more resources and it's much, much more. I checked prices once. I remember I couldn't even get over the cost of Mothers Morning Out! It was like 2-3 hours and $65 I think. It's just easier for me to try to run errands with my kids or juggle them around dh's schedule than pay that kind of money. Anyway, I guess I could understand the expectations of either party... depending on where you live and what the going rate is. Maybe Mom was going to send food/diapers/wipes and thought it was comparable to daycares she looked into that may or may not provide that. Who knows.

 

I totally get declining. That sounds like a lot of work even for an adult with lots of baby experience. I think I made that much for a few hours of babysitting older kids when I was a teen.

 

As far as hourly wages, yeah I have never made as much as $15/hr. so it would be hard to come up with money to pay someone that much per hour. I'm going to work a few hours in a local store soon (temp work) and will be making min. wage. Not disagreeing with the OP. Just commenting on an earlier post about hourly wages.

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If we're going out and not bringing the kids we usually pay $22 per hour but we do have more than one child and we have paid more than that in certain situations. When our 17 year old daughter babysits for someone other than us she gets $18-20 per hour from reasonable people. There was a family that we knew from Co-op that wanted her to watch four kids under ten for $3 per hour. We/ she would have said no even for $30 per hour because to be kind their kids are a bit spirited, and their home is a bit of a disaster zone but I presume that some people may turn them down just because they are cheap.[/quote

 

Wow! $22/hr is premium pay! Around here $12-15/hr is standard unless going through a nanny agency. About $150/week for a 6 hour/day mom's day out drop off for infant-preschool is standard. The workers probably make around $12/hr.

 

As to OP: my friend thinks she's getting a bargain to take her new puppy to a dog sitter for $15/day. The dog sitter has 3 other dogs and isn't at home watching the dogs the whole time.

Edited by TX native
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As far as hourly wages, yeah I have never made as much as $15/hr. so it would be hard to come up with money to pay someone that much per hour. I'm going to work a few hours in a local store soon (temp work) and will be making min. wage. Not disagreeing with the OP. Just commenting on an earlier post about hourly wages.

Babysitting pay has changed a lot once the late 70s when I got $1/hour. Babysitting is not daycare. You pay a premium because it is supposed to be more personal care. For infants I think licensed facilities are permitted up to 4 or 5 infants to one caregiver.

 

Typical babysitting rates are well above minimum wage. That is why some women don't work. And some women leave children with neglectful providers. Poor people have horrible choices to make when it comes to these things.

 

I have child with disabilities so I will always need care. I schedule my work hours such that I need to get as few hours as possible covered by a sitter. I work weekends, nights and early mornings.

 

ETA I pay standard rates for babysitting for my ds. I currently do not need to pay more to find someone. I shouldn't really he takes care of his own needs but he doesn't know what to do in an emergency.

Edited by Diana P.
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In the 90s, I never set babysitting rates, and I don't think anyone ever asked me or proposed a rate, unless it was for a week or a summer.  But I never wound up leaving a house with less than $40 for an evening, which was usually about 4 hours.  I know I made less with family, but that's because sitting for family was supposed to be free, and they'd sometimes stick $20 in my purse here and there just to be nice.

 

Even then, it was hard to find a *good* sitter.  I was a prize in the neighborhood.  Everyone wanted to make sure I'd be willing to pick them over hanging out with my boyfriend. ;-)

 

I almost never hired a sitter for my own kids, because I just couldn't afford it.  Once we moved away from family (when they were 7, 3, and 2), we pretty much stayed home until they got older.  Somewhere in there, we could have afforded it once in a blue moon, but there weren't any reliable teens in the area.  The one I was warming up to blew it when she told me how excited her boyfriend would be, because he loves playing with kids.  :huh:

 

I did work daycare when my oldest was a toddler.  It only payed around minimum wage (circa 2001ish) but it was a solid 40 hours a week, versus picking up a few hours here and there.  Most of my coworkers did pick up additional hours from the daycare families at much higher rates for the irregular demand at premium hours.

 

 

 

 

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You are being perfectly reasonable and even generous.  I think it's good that you set a somewhat decent price, as it makes it very clear what your dd's time is worth and she's less likely to be abused by "friends" who need a sitter.  

 

As much as possible, my friends and I try to trade of free sitting when one of us has an appointment or something, so that keeps costs low.  But when it's a full day or half day, I pay a sitter $25/hr for 3-4 kids and I consider that to be a bargain!  Thankfully I've never had to pay a sitter for a newborn, but if I did, I would probably pay $25/hr for the newborn plus an additional $10/hr for the older kids.  I will say that my babysitter is awesome, she cooks and brings art projects and game ideas for the kids to do.  She doesn't clean, but at least neatly stacks up the dishes for me.  lol.

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I made $1/kid/hour in the late 80's/early 90's.  It was always at their house and I could have whatever snacks, allowed to talk on the phone(all the perks!lol)

 

When I get a babysitter, I pay $8/hour for 3 kids who are not that needy.  I don't want her to clean up after kids, she can do homework or whatever.  Meals and snacks are planned and prepared. Sorry, that's not any harder than a McDonald's job.  Basically, make sure they don't run away or hurt themselves or each other.

 

I live in a Low COL.

 

Have you ever worked at McDonald's?

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This is interesting!

 

So when I was a pre-teen back in the 80s I got paid $2/hr for one kid or $1/hr per kid.  Now, most sitters (even teens) expect $10/hour or more. When we had a nanny in our house eight hours a week *eight years ago* I paid her $12/hour because she was an adult and it was partially her job. When we had a group of kids being watched by two teens during a meeting at our house we collected $3/kid for about 1.5 hours. They ended up making about $15/hour average.

 

All this to say, our numbers are lining up with everyone else's pretty much. 

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Other than the rich people my kids have baby-sat for, 6 hours for $20 would be about right...

That's about what I got as a THIRTEEN YEAR OLD back in the early 1990s. And it's a small fraction of what I was paid as a college student in 1998.

 

Where I live, 6 hours of older teen babysitting would run $60 at the very lowest. The $40 Martha offered was still a deal IMHO.

Edited by LucyStoner
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About this minimum wage thing - I think there are reasonable reasons child care in the home often pays less.

 

I get less than minimum wage.  It lets me stay home with my kids, and really the child I care for is largely thrown in with my own and so it isn't more work. 

 

I also think in the case of teens, particularly younger ones, child care work is playing a really different role than it is for older people.  (And probably 12 to 16 are the best babysitting ages in my experience.)  It isn't that they "need" to learn so much about childcare, but it's an opportunity to learn about working and earning money.  In many places, jobs open to kids in that age group aren't all that plentiful.

 

My dd12 is planning next summer to spend one or two weeks doing my childcare job  while I'm away, for about $125 a week - which she is thrilled about.  It's a good chunk of money at 13! 

.

 

 

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I made $1/kid/hour in the late 80's/early 90's.  It was always at their house and I could have whatever snacks, allowed to talk on the phone(all the perks!lol)

 

When I get a babysitter, I pay $8/hour for 3 kids who are not that needy.  I don't want her to clean up after kids, she can do homework or whatever.  Meals and snacks are planned and prepared. Sorry, that's not any harder than a McDonald's job.  Basically, make sure they don't run away or hurt themselves or each other.

 

I live in a Low COL.

 

We didn't pay more than $6/hr when the kids were little. I didn't expect all that much of them. We told them to watch all the Disney cartoons they could with the kids, and I didn't care how many snacks they had. They also didn't have to clean up. And, our kids went to bed at 7pm. 

 

My kids don't charge more than $6 per hour to babysit. We also don't let them take on any hard to please parents. There was a family we knew looking for date night babysitters that I would never let my kids sit for. They had a long list of wants and needs. Along with "pay commensurate with abilities". That seemed over the top for a date night babysitter. 

 

As long as my kids were happy and alive when the night was over we were good :)

 

I made anywhere from $1-$5/hr as a kid. The $1/hr was my hardest babysitting job. I quit after she threatened to tell her mom a lie about me because I sent her to her room. 

 

OP- I think going at least $40 is fine. I had an in-home daycare, and I charged $25/day for multiple kids. I still wasn't making min. wage, though. Depending on where you live $40/day might be right on. I think you got yourself out of a sticky situation. If you charged less, and she took you up on it frequently it might be hard on the friendship.

 

Kelly

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It's what *everyone* got paid, so, no, I wasn't getting screwed.  It was simply the going rate in the area.  $2/hour for up to 2 kids and then 50 cents an hour for each additional kid.

It definitely depends on area. I was babysitting in the 70's and started out at 50 - 75 cents an hour and that was not unusual. (This was in eastern NC) The generous people paid $1 an hour. By the early 80s I was paid a couple of bucks an hour and that was still good. I stopped babysitting in 1981 when I graduated.

 

That said, today, anything less than than 7 or 8 dollars an hour is unheard of. It's probably more than that now, too. That's what I paid when my kids were little 10 years ago. It's why we only hired a babysitter 4 or 5 times total, and I pretty much took my kids with me everywhere.

 

I'm amazed that anyone anywhere in the country would think that $20 for 6 hours of infant care is reasonable, in someone else's home, no less, with an experienced mother around for back-up and emergencies.

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I was paying at least $6-7/hr fifteen years ago. We didn't go out much and when we did, we wanted our babysitters to want to come back!

 

So did we, the whole two times we got a non-family baby-sitter.  But we also had more than one kid.  My kids get paid more when there are multiple kids being watched, but it's still generally in the $5-8 an hour range.  Cameron watched one kid earlier this week for 5 hours and they gave him $60.  He kind of felt bad that they paid him so much.  He figured it would be $20, maybe $30.

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Here is would depend on whether this is babysitting or daily childcare.  $40 for the former would be cheap for that time.  For daily childcare it would be expensive, between $25 and $30 would be more usual.

 

I look at it this way too.  You have to make it worth someone's while when it's occasional. 

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I look at it this way too.  You have to make it worth someone's while when it's occasional. 

 

Yup, it's a different thing.

 

For a teen at home, say once a week in the day, I think the standard home care rate for the area would make sense.  That would be up to about $30 here.  To be "on call" would be more though, say, $40.

 

But that would assume that the teen had the time, and it wasn't going to affect the mom negatively.  In either case, I'd just say that isn't workable.

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So friend asked if I'd be okay with my teen daughter watching her 2 month old grandbaby at my house.

 

I said we'd talk about it and after taking to dh and the teens, we decided to say yes on condition of $40 payment. I think $40 for 6 hours is cheap childcare.

 

Friend seems shocked. She offered $20.

 

$20 is WAY too cheap. Not worth the hassle.  $40 for 6 hours is probably more expensive than a daycare center -- but quite reasonable for every once in a while baby sitting.  Our teenager charges $5/hr/kid for older kids (and I find her really cheap and make sure to pay her extra every time)

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Interesting discussion about what people got paid to babysit.  I started babysitting regularly at 13 in 1980.  I got $1/hr generally (most had 2-3 kids), but I had one regular family that paid me $1.50/hr for 2-3 kids.  I thought that was quite generous.  :P  In college I was hired by a family with 2-3 kids for $2/hr.  I hated saying no to those people, even when I was super busy with other jobs / school.  I mean, $2/hour!?  Such easy money!

 

These generally included 1-3 babies/tots in diapers.  No big deal to me.  I did have experience from helping with my younger siblings.

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I pay $25 a day for my sitter for dd2, her duties are to make sure She is fed, doesn't get hurt and mess control. Some days it's only 4 hours and others could be 10 hrs. But she has access to my internet, free use of the TV and she can do her laundry here or whatever. Some days she also has dd1 either after school or for the day (if on break) but once again it's more making sure she is fed, injury free and mess control. Oh and let the dog in and out.

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Pro tip: you really don't want a person willing to watch your newborn for twenty dollars a day to actually do it!

 

It's also not a comparison to what we did when we were little, either. I was watching two kids all summer the year I was nine years old. I'm looking at a 9 year old right now and Soooo much naw to the NOPE.

 

Plus yes I ate ALL their Doritos, Lucky charms and little Debbie oatmeal cream cookies, drank all their Coke cola and watched Passions soap opera while their kids napped.

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I'm always shocked at how little people want to pay childcare workers. Sure, $10 for a burger but $10 to care for my offspring, the helpless human infant I would take a bullet for?!? Robbery!! 🙄

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So basically the message is that a young woman's time is worth $3.33 an hour.

 

No thanks. Not a message I would want my (imaginary) daughter to absorb.

 

That's about what I and most other people make here for in-home childcare.  The minimum wage here is just over $10 an hour.

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That's about what I and most other people make here for in-home childcare. The minimum wage here is just over $10 an hour.

But in home child care is different. Often there is more than one child for whom to be paid. The sitter is in her own home and often caring for her own children. People pay less per hour for group settings either in home or in a center.

 

When someone comes to your house on a babysitting gig, she's giving up her full time and all the other things she could be doing. If it's a regularly scheduled, dependable commitment by both parties, sometimes one will do that for less.

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That's about what I and most other people make here for in-home childcare. The minimum wage here is just over $10 an hour.

And yet when there are discussions on this and other forums about how important instituting a living wage is, everyone says no bc it's not expected for those jobs to support families anyways... and yet. That's exactly what huge numbers of our population are trying to do and this is how it trickles down - the people who have the primary care of our most vulnerable ages being paid less than the cost of a cheap cheeseburger.

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But in home child care is different. Often there is more than one child for whom to be paid. The sitter is in her own home and often caring for her own children. People pay less per hour for group settings either in home or in a center.

 

When someone comes to your house on a babysitting gig, she's giving up her full time and all the other things she could be doing. If it's a regularly scheduled, dependable commitment by both parties, sometimes one will do that for less.

Idk. There's pros and cons. In my state, it is illegal to offer unlicensed in home childcare. And licensing is a pita that many don't do. For example, I would not be licensed. Because by law, my own kids count towards the limit of home many children I can provide care for. And getting licensed is expensive. For example, I'd have to pay for everyone in my home over 17 to be background checked. Which while I understand why, that's not cheap x 6. I'd have to do stupid crap. Like I'm not allowed to served leftovers. I can open a fresh can of spaghetti-os, but I can't reheat the pork roast dinner from last night if I'm serving kids I'm licensed to provide care for. And though I could in theory take the babysat children with me on errands, I have to report the car seat use and have special coverage on my vehicle. Again. Another expense.

 

Technically the state gives subsidies for daycare, but only a portion of the total cost and only to approved licensed providers. Even the remaining amount after the subsidy is often more than someone working minimum wage can afford. So there's this huge don't ask don't tell aspect to finding cheap childcare. A lot of suddenly we are long time best friends just doing a favor scenarios, bc that's legal.

 

And keep in mind most low wage jobs do not have 8-6 childcare needs. There's a lot of little kids going to sleep in a different house every night or in drop in centers bc stable affordable childcare for a midnight shift just doesn't exist.

 

So while there are plenty of reasons to take less pay for a regular gig, there's a whole healing lot of reasons not to too.

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But in home child care is different. Often there is more than one child for whom to be paid. The sitter is in her own home and often caring for her own children. People pay less per hour for group settings either in home or in a center.

 

When someone comes to your house on a babysitting gig, she's giving up her full time and all the other things she could be doing. If it's a regularly scheduled, dependable commitment by both parties, sometimes one will do that for less.

But the OP isn't supposed to be the sitter. This gets back to my point which is the person requesting the teen to babysit in her home is really asking the OP to babysit.

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But the OP isn't supposed to be the sitter. This gets back to my point which is the person requesting the teen to babysit in her home is really asking the OP to babysit.

Yeah. Which makes me a little annoyed.

 

It's like someone giving anyone else in my house a puppy.

 

Let's get real here. The resident legal adult in charge of all the other people is the one that's going to end up cleaning puppy crap.

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Regardless of pay, wouldn't they be expecting your 16yr old DD to be busy with school work a big chunk of the day? How she supposed to study and care for a 2 month old. 

 

As a parent, I can sort of care for an infant and teach, but I'm experienced and not trying to learn anything new. I can't see a teen being able to juggle that well unless the teen had her own babysitter for the baby when she was doing her school work. 

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I pay my babysitter $150 for 8 hours. Now keep in mind I have two infants and she is an adult that comes to my home. But I would never ever ever expect someone to do it for $40 ($20/kid). We have an occasional sitter who we give $15:hr. Around here I'm getting off cheap.

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Have you ever worked at McDonald's?

 

Actually, no.  My dh and bff did all through high school.  I was not allowed to have a "real job". I was super jealous of the McD job!!  So, I babysat A LOT!  lol  I was asked every Friday and Saturday.  I had one after school job, too. One family scheduled me every other week and would find something to do to just to keep their slot. lol

 

I did work at Arby's and Little Caesar's in college though.  

 

Because I did so much babysitting, I make it super easy on my sitters.  I hire one about 3-4 times per year.  I buy special things for them for snacking.  I also charge the ipad and Leap Pad.  So, the kids have as much electronic time as she wants them to have.  You can imagine how much the kids look forward to us getting a babysitter!

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So while there are plenty of reasons to take less pay for a regular gig, there's a whole healing lot of reasons not to too.

Sure. I would never want to do in-home childcare for many reasons, including low pay and the headaches you described. My point was just that figuring out the hourly rate for regular daycare is not an appropriate guide for what to pay a babysitter, in my opinion.

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