Saturday, March 20, 2010

i need a little help from my friends

We're going away for one night in a couple of weeks (woo hoo!). Our sitter has agreed to an overnight but we haven't talked about payment yet. If you've gone away overnight how do you pay your sitter...by the hour or flat fee?


We're going away on a Thursday so we're already covered for Friday babysitting. Technically, we'll owe her from 5:30pm (Thursday) until 8:30am (Friday). I'm inclined to pay a flat fee but not sure what it should be. Any thoughts?

8 comments:

  1. I'd go with a flat fee if you are expecting that she will sleep a certain portion of the time. If you want her to stay awake, that would be different and I would go hourly with that. The amount would depend on how many kids (1?), if you are leaving out dinner/ breakfast, if she has to drive anyone to school etc.
    Good luck and HAVE FUN!

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  2. Yes, a flat rate sounds good to me. I would say at least $50.

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  3. I say 10 dollars.
    Then when she looks at you like you're crazy, you look right back at her and say, "What? You're lucky you're getting paid at all! You should be paying US for gracing your presence with our handsome Bug."
    Duh, you should know this already. :)

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  4. Flat rate since for most of that there's a lot of sleeping going on. As for what to pay... $50 sounds good. The Husband would probably pay less, I'd probably pay more, so that is right in the middle of what we'd do. ;-)

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  5. My daughter usually gets a flat fee. Hope this helps.

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  6. Flat fee. Around $50 is good, maybe a little more. As a girl who has babysat A LOT, about $50 is a great payment for watching a kid, especially overnight.

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  7. Flat fee. We would probably pay $50 (as technically the girls would only be up for 4 hours during that time max). Our rule with overnight sitters is the kids will be fed (or their food will be ready), bathed and in jammies so all they have to do is watch them eat and put them to bed. In the morning, easy breakfast items are ready to go. I usually give the sitter an option to have pizza (I leave pizza money or order the pizza ahead) and we tip $20. $70 for a night is not too bad especially as we have 2 kids, 1 in diapers still.

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  8. We paid our babysitter $100 for 2 nights while we were away a couple of weeks ago. I'm a sucker for anyone that will take good care of my child. (Oh yeah, I bought her a souvenir as well. :) )

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