To ask how much you’d expect a babysitter to cost on NYE

I was paying more than £20 for the evening in late 1990s!!!

@ThatMauveRaven great to hear that your DD enjoyed her evening. That sounds like a much happier memory for her than having done an evening of childcare alone for not very much pay. 😊

I would pay this kind of amount for 5 hours on a normal evening, including a takeaway.

I am a lone parent and would only leave them with someone who knows them well and is appropriately qualified and competent and I know would take good care of them if an emergency arises so when I do need a babysitter I organise it well in advance to ask one of their nannies if they'd be prepared to do it for me.

I would rather go out less frequently than skimp on costs for good care for them so that I can relax properly when out without worrying and have a proper break from my responsibilities.

Like the OP's daughter, nannies have first aid training, DBS checks and know my children (OP stated her daughter knows these children well) so I consider this situation to be broadly comparable: OP may have a little less of a close relationship with the children in question and less childcare experience however the children in question are younger than mine so the job was more likely to involve care during the night. One child was 18 months old so non-verbal and presumably still in nappies and perhaps not sleeping through and might be hard to settle by someone other than the parents, so that should be factored into the rate of pay.

Once, for a big birthday, I had a nanny stay overnight. This obviously cost far more (£300 I think, from memory).

I have!

Depending on what the children are like, sitting at home was probably better than looking after someone else's children for the night.

Someone upthread mentioned the poor pay given to carers. I used to pay for care for my mother. (I was working full time and my husband was also disabled.)

The care firm charged much more for overnights and Bank Holidays, though I later found out that the firm was not passing the extra money on to their workers. I'm glad that the OP's daughter refused to be taken advantage of.

Round my way (Central Scotland), the expectation is that you pay a premium for service at Hogmanay once you hit evening hours - the usual is double time.

Lots of people quoting £100 for the night but how many of you have ever paid that amount to a babysitter? I don’t know anyone in my circle that has.

Hope your DD had a fun night sitting at home.

@CowTown presumably there are many people in your local area who are earning far less than that even when you factor in the costs of travel time and self-employment, doing equally not fun jobs, so you'd expect that there would be new entrants if that is the current going rate due to a supply shortage (it's way above national average for cleaning services). My cleaner is excellent (and it's not easy to find a good one who is thorough) so I pay her an above-average rate but it's nowhere near £27ph.

@PiggyPigalle just because something costs less per hour than you earn doesn't make it a bargain, necessarily. If you need the service and that is the only price it can be obtained at then you have to pay it. If not then it has to be weighed against the opportunity cost of what else you could do with the money.

I hope the normal economics of supply and demand do their job and balance this out so that @CowTown can obtain cleaning for a more reasonable price. Just as I'd hope the rest of the thread will make people think twice about trying to lowball babysitters on pay, especially for days like NYE where they should be very grateful for someone being willing to consider doing it, especially someone with OP's daughter's skillset.

Sorry for the tangent, OP!

Yes, so weird! My cleaner is cheap actually, at only £15 per hour but she's not brilliant. I value my babysitter more as she is looking after my children, who mean more to me than a clean house.

If CowTime's worth is more per hour than the cleaner's it's a bargain.

It is what it is, and until my recent raise, her headline hourly rate was more than mine (although once you subtract her unpaid travel time between clients, lack of holiday pay, and lack of employer pension contributions, I do think I was earning more annually than she was).

I too can go clean houses for £27/hr if I want to, but I have no interest in doing that.

Maybe more cleaners will enter our local market to earn that wage, and prices will go down due to supply/demand. It’s not fun work, so I have my doubts.

@CowTown I am surprised that a cleaner can charge that much sustainably! That's more than many highly skilled graduate roles. Usually with supply and demand what would happen is that if such rates were available for unskilled work many more cleaners would enter the market to capitalise on this, and then the imbalance in supply and demand would redress itself and therefore the rates would go down again to something more proportionate to the difficulty/ responsibility/ skill of the role.

That’s how supply/demand works. I need the service, that’s how much it costs, so I pay it. I don’t act like a twat toward our cleaner and try to move the goalposts. I’m well within my rights to choose not to pay her, and to do it myself.

£27 an hour for a cleaner, more fool you.

Yup. My cleaner is nearly £27/hr (midlands).

Strange isn't it how people are happy to pay a dog walker £20 and a cleaner even more, but not for their children to be cared for.

I babysat 2 children last NYE.

It was 7pm-2am. Children went to bed around 8:30pm and I did bedtime routine.

I charged £20 an hour and then £20 extra to cover a taxi home as I don’t drive. So £160 in total.

For reference, I am qualified in childcare with 9 years experience along with my own children. DBS checked, first aid and references from work and people I have babysat for previously.

No. He is her boss at work.

Depends, is she their regular babysitter?

It was mostly the whole 'know your value' stuff. Along with how derided the care sector generally is

I agree that carers should be paid far more. I also think this applies to full time early years staff in nurseries.

The barrier to this is economic viability. The only way it would be possible to raise pay significantly is through appropriate Government subsidy of these roles because otherwise it is cost-prohibitive. As with many problems in the UK economy, the fact this doesn't happen is due to incompetent mismanagement of institutional structures and poor use of tax revenues.

However, as I said you cannot compare between a one-off ad hoc discretionary offer of work on a date of annual celebration and negotiations for full time salaries.

I also don't think that care work is derided. All people I know who have had carers working in their families are immensely grateful for the work that they do.

Yep - exactly this. Very simple.

I think it's cheeky to EXPECT someone with whom one already has an unequal power-relationship with to do a service for less than they have requested for it, yes. I also think it's cheeky (and the unprofessional and inappropriate) to post on a work WhatsApp chat full of one's employees, asking them to do something unrelated to their job.

And yes some people on this thread have said they'd do it for £60. That's fine - their choice. Just like it's the OP's daughter's choice NOT to. It is really simple. Unfortunately the fact that some random MN-ers would do it is no help to the man who now couldn't get a babysitter. It's supply and demand at the end of the day, and the demand ramps up hugely on NYE (and the supply diminishes).

It was mostly the whole 'know your value' stuff. Along with how derided the care sector generally is.

Guys, this isn’t an annual salary we’re talking about here, across the entire year.

It is one night. Arguably, the biggest party night of the year across the globe. The cost is so high on this ONE NIGHT PER year because parents are asking young people to give up their own celebration with their own friends and family to sit alone all night and babysit. That is why the premium is so high on this one particular night. It’s not a sustainable career choice across the entire year, nor is it a dig at people who are lower paid. It is a premium to pay because lots of young people would rather be out themselves. Google dynamic pricing if you don’t understand the theory.

When i was a teen i babysat
The parents had no mobile
I had the number of the the pub or restaurant
I had no first aid training
I would bet my last fiver millions of teens up and down the country have done this

I'm sure. But child safeguarding and acceptable parenting have progressed a lot in the last few decades.

Many parents used to transport their children without car seats. Many parents used to let very young children go out on their own. Many parents used to do what the McCanns did on holidays. Lots of people deciding to put their children at risk doesn't make it a good idea.