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Babysitting: How much should I be paid?
I'm going to start babysitting pretty soon and I'm having trouble coming up with how much money I should ask the parents to pay me. Can someone tell me how I can decide what amount it should be? Thanks.
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Maybe give some free advice about: Babysitting?
Start looking around for ads of babysitting offered in your area. When I did in home childcare, I called the ads of others offering childcare to see what they asked for. You don't want to be more expensive than others. I have heard also that $5. per hour is common but I know that single parents of more than one child may find it hard to pay that. You might offer a dollar or two off if the length of time they need you is more than an hour or two. I am really not current as costs as I am grandmother age now but babysitting is how I earned money thru HS. and in my time it started at 75 cents an hr and went up to 1 buck and even at low prices which was common back then, everything else cost less too so I will able to purchase my entire warddroble all on my own and my own bike, once driving, to fill dads gas tank with gas, pay to go out to eat with friends, go to movies, pretty much, all my parents did was feed me and offer a home. Good luck with that.
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I believe it depends on where you live and the cost of living where you live. I live on the East Coast near a major city such as New York City or Washington, DC. Babysitters here charge as much as $5.00 an hour. The same would be true on the West Coast near cities such as San Diego and San Francisco. I have cousins that live in the Midwest in a rural community whose daughters charge $2.00 to $4.00 an hour depending on the night of the week.
I would suggest you come up with a varying scale based on the night of the week. Friday and Saturday would be more per hour than a Sunday through Thursday and your per hour charge would increase if you had to stay past 11 or 12 in the evening on Friday or Saturday and past 10 Sunday through Thursday.
I think this would be very reasonable, something those who hire you could calculate easily as well as insure they come home by the time they say they will. Your actual charge per hour is something you need to decide upon. The up charge for past a certain hour should be an extra $1.00 and hour.
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