Hellobee Boards

@MrsH: the going rate in our area is $6-$12/hour. I hired a college girl (eta: she was a recent HS grad) who watched our (then) 6 month old in our home while I worked from home. I offered food & told her anything we had was available to her, and said we'd buy anything she asked for! She declined and brought her own snacks and meals.

We paid $8/hour. If she had been older or weren't at home, I'd have paid $12.

That said, my guidelines for her were "keep my kid alive and happy". I didn't want her to do any housework. I happily paid her to channel surf if my kid took a nap. I just needed to work!

Depends on where you live...we live in a Seattle suburb and pay our nanny a salary equivalent to $17 an hour with two weeks of paid vacation (one week of her choice and one week of our choice), .33 hours of sick time accrued every two weeks, etc.

It depends where you are located. Here I would say around $15 - $20 an hour.

Seattle, $14.75 an hour, food if she wants it, no vacation pay. I have 1.5 year old twins.

@MrsH: $128 a week?

@MrsH: Would you want her to work the same hours? Or less?

@MrsH: Since you are midwest, I think you can get away with less than $15 - $20 an hour. Maybe $12?

@MrsH: then I am still confused.

I paid S $8/hr to watch my kid for 4 hours at a time, while I worked for home. We paid her the same rate if we did a date night, which wasn't very often. At 6 months, Chloe was napping at least once while she was here. I was completely fine with S hanging out and watching tv. I still paid her full rate.

I didn't want her to do dishes, vacuum, or anything other than play with my kid. They took walks or played out back.

Really, keep my kid happy and alive.

@MrsH: yeah, I asked S to do the same. When Chloe was older, I asked S to encourage Chloe to help pick up her toys -- we've been trying to teach Chloe the importance of picking up and taking care of our toys for a long time. But I didn't expect S to pick up after me or do any kind of household chores.

I was a nanny for awhile. I was paid a little over $11 an hour but it was a salary paid out 2x a month! I was able to help myself to any of their food, too. No paid vacation. This was in the Pacific Northwest.

@MrsH: When you do the math on the daycare rate you mentioned for 24 hours/week of care (6am-6pm) it comes to a little more than $5/hr which is extremely low. I would think $10-12/hr would be the minimum to pay a nanny/babysitter if there are expectations about cleaning up, structured activities, etc. We pay our nanny $15/hr under the table (her choice) and expect her to make meals, take LO to activities, clean up after him, and occasionally put away his laundry. We always pay her a set amount each week, even if we use her less.

@MrsH: absolutely. There are definite dis/advantages to going either route. We actually had planned to do an in home daycare with my son but I got laid off while on maternity leave. When I did go back to work, the daycare's weren't flexible with my hours (6a-6p) or part-time status, but it sounds like the one you are looking at would be. That's a tough decision! Are you leaning towards one more than the other?

I think $12 for someone without a lot of childcare experience is reasonable. In Seattle though it would be more like $15.

@MrsH: I'm Midwest as well. I usually pay $7-8 for an older teen- and would expect about $10 for someone college age/20's. A seasoned caregiver could expect $12-$15 but I think you'd be fine offering $10.

@MrsH: I'm in the Midwest, we pay our in home daycare 115/week which I know is on the low end, but that would be $23/day.

Edit: hourly I would do 8 for a HS student, and 9-10 for a college aged.

IMO, unless you're in a major metropolitan area, the rates on HB are waaay out of range compared to the rest of the country. I'd probably pay a sitter like you're describing between $8-10/hr under the table (equivalent to like 10-15 above the table) in Central PA. Maybe more if she had a long drive to your house.