How much to pay a sitter

jlml2008 · January 2014

Question for those working moms...if you use an in home daycare or friend to watch little one while you are at work how much do you pay? I got an amazing job offer that has a kid-friendly office and a lot of work from home work. But, I will need to leave LO with a sitter 1-2 days a week for 3-4 hours at a time to meet with clients. It would be on one of DD's preschool days so it would be just him. I'm hoping a friend of mine who is a SAHM would be interested because she had mentioned wanting to earn a little extra money and she is AMAZING with Levi. I don't want to underpay so figured I would get some input as to what others pay so I can offer her a good amount!

ASmallWonder · January 2014

Well, full time care is always cheaper than a few hours here and there. A true babysitter gets paid $10-$12 an hour but when we used an in home provider full time, 5 days a week, we paid $200 a week.

Beaslejl · January 2014

$35 a day. No matter how long or how early we pick up. Typically 8-4. But everyone keeps telling me we've got a great deal. LO goes to nanny's house, but she is the only kid being watched.

natalie115 · January 2014

We pay our in home daycare $34 a day, but that's on the more expensive side for our area (totally worth it though b/c DS loves it there). Like others have said an actual sitter rate is $10-12 an hour.

ETA: the $34 is for 8+ hours

kelly422 · January 2014

We take J to a lady's house. She homeschools her teenage kids and takes care of one other child (2 years old). We pay her $35 a day. I live in a low cost of living area.

numbersgirl08 · January 2014

Sheesh yall have it good. We pay $13.50/hour when our nanny watches just our baby. She often watches another baby at the same time, and when she does that we both pay her $10/hr so she gets $20/hr total for 2 babies. She works about 40 hrs a week and typically gets paid about $670 gross. We handle all the taxes for her so she's netting less than that. She comes to our condo for everything.

We live in a high COL area.

ETA: Oh, and we provide a set number of paid sick days and paid vacation days for her as well. I think she has a nice gig

Monkeybutt80 · January 2014

Mine is in Primrose but when I did some interviewing for a full time nanny, the going rate was $15-20 per hour. Ones that came with good references and long term experiences with families were all $20 per hour with 2 weeks paid vacation days; hence we opted for Primrose. We now pay $15 per hour for occasional baby sitting.

However, at home day services are priced better; my friend pays $180 per week and another friend pays $250 ish per week.

needanustart · January 2014

We live and work in the Boston area so it's HCOL. I watch a friends kid on my SAH days and I charge them $50 and that is a good deal around here! It's $86/ day for infant daycare and would be minimum $120/ day for someone to come nanny.