How much do/would you pay for a sitter for a night out?

[Tara]

My DS has only stayed with my parents but I am considering letting him stay with a High School/ College age person at some point. However I have no clue what a reasonable pay scale for a babysitter is. What do you pay for a sitter when you have an evening out with your spouse?

[Julie]

In my area it is 10.00 an hour. We don't go out much since the price is so high.... But that said, the person we use is a College Student that is getting her Masters degree is Childhood Education and has been a Gymboree teacher in the past. She is also CPR trained, etc. We feel very comfortable with her. I think there is a high school girl in my neighborhood that charges 7-8 dollars an hour. Still pricey in my mind.

[Dennis]

Our primary sitter is a college student and we pay her about $7 an hour or so. Occasionally we'll use some teachers from daycare and we pay them $9-$10 an hour.

Dennis

[Brandi]

WOW! I don't feel so bad now. We pay our sitters $8 an hour. Everyone around here tells us how that is WAY TOO MUCH. But, what do we do now? We can't really say, "Oh, we were paying you too much so we are going to start paying you less now." Our sitters are high school girls that work in the nursery at our church and Carter usually sees them once or twice per week at church so he is very familiar with them.

[Jen A]

We pay our night/weekend sitter (she's 13) a mere $5 per hour. But we do live in the back of beyond. ;)

[Karri]

The times we used a sitter w/ Aidan, we paid $5/hr. She was in junior high (14, I think).

Back when I was in college, I charged $7/hr for babysitting. I think that $7-8 is still reasonable for a college student.

[SarahK]

Man, I was a CHEAP babysitter...I used to charge just $2 an hour. (actually, I wanted to do it for free, but my mom said nobody would take me seriously! :lol: )

[TtownAnne]

I would pay $8-$10 per hour. I charged $5 when I was babysitting, so I know prices have to have gone up since then!

[Sam's Mom]

I feel old now. Back in the day when I was a babysitter, the going rate was about $1.50/hour, plus a nice holiday bonus or gift (if you had a "regular" Saturday night job with a family). New Year's Eve might get you $4-$5/hour if you were a little older and therefore possibly giving up plans of your own to take the job.

That said, I'd probably expect to pay at least $8-$10/hour these days. I'm picky and I don't really know anybody where we're living now, so if I were to find a good babysitter that I trusted I'd be more than willing to pay that much (maybe even more depending on the sitter).

[olcott]

:lol: we had a high school aged girl watch Trey when my dad got married, for the dance, and she acted like she hit the jack pot when I asked her what I owed her, and she said "I don't know", and so I wrote her a check for 20 bucks (for 4 hours), and I thought her eyes were going to bug out of her head and she had a permagrin :)

[Martian Lullaby]

We have family nearby who offer to take Maya whenever we want to go out. In fact, they have paid us to go out to dinner so they can keep her for a few hours. :lol: But if I were to pay a sitter, I’d probably pay around $5 an hour.

[RCracer51]

So I take it maybe $10/hr would work these days. Glad I finally found a place on the net for this info. (new father here)

[sheila]

We have a 16 year old, and we usually pay her $40 a night. She told us she charged $7/hour, and we are usually gone 4-5 hours, so we round up because we really like her (and since she can count on the $40, she is usually pretty happy to change plans to sit for us)

[Bonnie]

I pay $12 an hour which probably sounds like a lot, but with 3 very little kids, it isn't so bad, and the going rate is kind of high around here. I'd probably pay $10 an hour for 1 kid.

We pretty much never go out though b/c it just costs too much!

[Colleen]

I think it all depends on which part of the country/countries you are from. Around here, the going rate seems to be $5 an hour.

[Shanna]

I'd probably pay up to $50 for a night out :lol: Of course, I've never had a sitter, so I'm not sure how "in tune" that is for around here :dunno: