Babysitters - how much do you pay them?

[Freddiecat]

We are thinking of asking one of the girls from DS's nursery to babysit whilst we go to see Eddie Izzard. We've never had a paid babysitter before.

How much should we pay them? They'd probably need to be at ours from 7 until about 11 to 11:30. I am also happy to leave some dinner out if they want it.

We are in South Wales btw so hopefully extortionate London rates do not apply!

Probably not, as a lot of the time they're free to do their own thing - watch telly, knit, complete essays etc. depends how hard they have to work imo.

tigermoth - well I am going to pay one of the staff at Sam's nursery £5 an hour as that's what they are paid at the nursery.

Generally I would not suggest that babysitters get the minimum wage as it's unlikely they will be declaring the cash inhand for tax purposes so they will get the gross amount.

However as we are getting a fully qualified nursery nurse then I think it's fair enough. I am hoping that when DS is quite a bit older we can pay sensible teenagers a bit less (like £10 a night) but for now I'd rather pay a fair rate for a good person.

Am going to leave out some dinner for her as we need her round an hour after she finishes work. Is it OK to get a microwave curry-for-1 from Tesco?

In central London we paid 8/hour for fully qualified nursery worker who looked after dd during the day. But dd was only 4-8 months old so we wanted to be very sure we had someone reliable who would be able to cope with most problems.

We have asked one of the teachers at our 3 year old's nursery to babysit and were intending to pay £5 per hour. However, she will also be looking after our other son who is only 2 months old.

The baby is very good and will probably spend most of his time asleep, and although our 3 year old can be boisterous we're sure he will behave himself when he's being looked afer by one of his teachers.

Is £5 per hour reasonable or should we pay more?

Revolver - I think £5 per hour is probably just about OK. Would expect to pay more in London. Is she just qualified, or is she older? Also depends what you are expecting her to do. If she's looking after the children during the day, or for a lot of waking hours, and say if you're expecting her to do a meal, bathtime, etc., then I would expect to pay more. Also I would expect to pay more for 'anti-social hours', say post 11 pm.

Ask her what her rates are - that's the simplest way, and I'm sure she'll have a clear idea of what she charges.

Kmg1 - When my wife asked her what her rates are she said "Oh I couldn't" which seems to imply that she's either willing to do it for nothing (we'd never allow this) or is leaving it up to us.

She looks to be in her late 20's and has been qualified for at least 2.5 years as she was working at the nursery when our 3 year old started there.

She'll be looking after the children from about 7:30 pm to 11 pm and will merely have to put them to bed, ie no bath or feeding as we'll do that before we go out.