How much should I charge for siblings?

[Nancy10]

I'm newly registered and have started looking after a girl of 2 during the school day 3 times a week. I charge 3.50 an hour. I will be collecting her brother and sister from school on these days and will have them all for about an hour and a half after school. How much do you think I should charge after school. I was thinking of charging an amount for all 3 say £5.50, rather than per child.

if you charge £5.5 per hour for all 3, that means that you are only charging an additional £3 per day, to collect and look after the extra 2 if someone else came along with other children for school collection, would you charge them £1.50? I have a baby and sibling, I offer a 50p per hour discount for the sibking but they pay retainer fee whilst she is at preschool too.

hth

Why?

They take more work, as siblings often argue/squabble

& when they leave you lose loads of your income

Only charging £5.50 seems very low! If I was you I'd charge full price for each of them - or maybe £5 for each after-school child for the 90 minute session?

You're all so right. I've been thinking about it and I'm going to charge 3.50 for the first and 3.00 each for the sibling. I need to start as I mean to go on. Thanks sillymillysmum, you answered my question about pre school too. I will charge whilst she's at pre school if I'm expected to pick her up in emergencies. I hate discussing money but at the end of the day I need to earn money so I've just got to set my fees and terms. I think its because the parent is a friend of mine I feel awkward!

Why give a discount, I charge the same hourly rate for all of the children.Keeps things simple and saves any misunderstandings.

If you do give a discount, give the discount for the eldest one rather than youngest.

Also think about if you want to really charge after-school places on an hourly basis, or a per session basis. You may want to consider factoring in cost of collecting a child from school - such as fuel and travel time.
You may want to say that a after-school is fixed cost of say 2 hours (so £7 in your case) per child, which includes the going to collect them and caring for them for up to 1.5 hours after the usual school finish time not the time which they actually get out of school - some children can take ages to come out after the end of school bell goes, others may stay for after-school clubs - gardening, chess etc.

i dont understand why cm give a discount

the child is still taking a place so should be charged the same

and they will all want feeding!!!!!!!!! gald you have re-thought your prices seems much better now