Who pays for what - spelled out?

[Anonymous]

Do most HP or agencies provide any kind of list as far as who pays for what when AP arrives?
I am excited for AP and we tend to be generous, but want it very clear who is responsible for paying for certain
Things so that it is not an expectation that we pay for anything she joins us for. Is there typically a list provided, or is it as simple as HF pays for groceries, provides car for getting to classes and
Meetings, the stipend obviously , and all else is up to the AP. I'm thinking of things like family trips - we would pay for many parts of the
Vacation - like if we are all taking a $20 giant ferries wheel ride we would not leave her out- but this doesnt mean every family outing would be that wAy. If we go to a movie as a family we would get her ticket but if it was a constant for her to join us it would add up significantly. Overall I'd like to know how to set expectations lower, so she is happy when things are paid for, but not establish precedent that leaves her resentful if we can't consistently fund her participation with us.

[Anonymous]

Yes, you pay for her. Or, don't invite her.

[Anonymous]

So for example we are traveling during the holidays to the mountains. We can consider it a work week, because we don't want her to miss opportunities to travel on her own two weeks of vacation to places she might prefer, but believe she may enjoy seeing the mountains and we hope she is integrated with the family. We do not need her working this time as our kids are all school aged and at most we'd maybe go out for a date night while there so that is all she would be "working" and we could easily go without that, we just would probably do it if she is there. In this way we are actually planning this trip as more of a perk for her to travel and not ours for her being there to care for the kids as it isn't really needed. We want her to have the opportunity to see the area and feel free to join us and count it as a work week. Many of the things our children do and we sit out and watch- like riding rides ,going in mirror mazes, go carts, etc. Is it reasonable that anything we do as a family we pay for, and anything we as parents sit out, she could choose to do and pay for, or sit out with us?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So for example we are traveling during the holidays to the mountains. We can consider it a work week, because we don't want her to miss opportunities to travel on her own two weeks of vacation to places she might prefer, but believe she may enjoy seeing the mountains and we hope she is integrated with the family. We do not need her working this time as our kids are all school aged and at most we'd maybe go out for a date night while there so that is all she would be "working" and we could easily go without that, we just would probably do it if she is there. In this way we are actually planning this trip as more of a perk for her to travel and not ours for her being there to care for the kids as it isn't really needed. We want her to have the opportunity to see the area and feel free to join us and count it as a work week. Many of the things our children do and we sit out and watch- like riding rides ,going in mirror mazes, go carts, etc. Is it reasonable that anything we do as a family we pay for, and anything we as parents sit out, she could choose to do and pay for, or sit out with us?

Seriously, you pay.

[Anonymous]

If you're going to have her work at all, even a date night or two, you pay. Even if you're not going to have her work, think seriously about your expectations. Let's say you're all in the car driving there and puts her headphones on and takes a nap and your kids are cranky - are you annoyed with her that she's ignoring them? Would you expect her to play a game with them or something? If so, not a vacation. You pay.

You could say "AP, we're going on a trip to the mountains. We don't need you to work. We'll give you the choice - we'd love you to come for the experience, but we will ask you to pay for X, Y, and Z, which will be approximately $? Or you can take the week as an additional week off - what would you prefer?"

[Anonymous]

For the first month or so, on the weekends we plan and invite her to local things that she might find interesting. Then, and all year, we pay for restaurant meals and activities if she joins us on a "family" outing. After that, we continue to invite her to things but I do sometimes purposely plan an activity for the day of her LCC meeting. We enjoy sometime just us, just like she enjoys going out with her AP friends without us. There are also times where we're taking the kids' friends or something, and there isn't an extra seat in the car.
As to the vacation, we've taken ours when it works out. If we do, it does count as a work week for her and we typically schedule for her a day and an evening. On her work days, we paid for her to do whatever the kids were doing. On her days off, she was responsible for whatever she chose to do. We had a condo for the week, so if she wanted to eat lunch out on her day off, that was on her. She could have made a sandwich and eaten it by the pool. About a week before we left, I made sure she had her schedule and knew which activities we were doing as a family on her "work days". I sent her websites and information about things she might want to plan for her off days.

[Anonymous]

I go by the "if we invite her, we pay" philiosophy. It keeps it easy and I don't want to waste energy playing mental gymnastics in my head. With that said, we also don't invite her to every little thing we do. Sometimes we need time alone as a family. It's more about that than the money.

[Anonymous]

On vacay, AP pays her own excursions if she goes somewhere by herself. Anything we do as a family, we pay.

[Anonymous]

Aside from stipend, room, food, education, technically nothing else. Sadly, some people take this as not even paying for toilet paper which I think is nuts. There is no special list aside from the above. They leave it up to you to be generous.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for clarifying OP. We recently left the program, but we were in your shoes pretty much day 1 when we joined the program since our kids were old enough that we never needed AP to vacation with us.

Twice we took long family vacations to our APs' home country. We explicitly told them when we matched that they were not coming with us and that they would get the time off (one of those weeks counting against their 2 week vacation- and the others at our expense). No one had an issue with that.

Otherwise, I have to admit that other vacations we would otherwise have taken as a family have been affected by the fact that we have an AP. As a family of 5, any trip with flights during school vacation is already incredibly expensive, so we have taken very few.

When we travel by car, we usually offer AP to come with us and we pay for everything. There are no babysitting expectations (but I do expect that AP will spend time with us, since she is tagging onto our family vacation...).

3 times we went to all-inclusive family resorts and did not invite APs. We told them ahead of time that this was for family only and gave the extra week off or made it correspond with one of her vacation weeks (it would have been terribly boring for AP to join us).

The one vacation that resembles your scenario was when we flew to Florida for one week. We did not need AP but she had expressed an interest in seeing Florida. So I told her that she was welcome to join us but she would be responsible for her plane ticket. Everything on site, lodging, meals, activities would be covered by us. In the end she decided to fly to Miami with a friend during that same week. I took no offense, she preferred to be with her friend.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes, you pay for her. Or, don't invite her.

+1 except for incidentals. For example, if we are out in the city and walking down the street and AP wants to buy a water at a street vendor I wouldn't run over and pay. But I would pick up the tab for all family events or meals.

There are a lot of prior threads on groceries and special requests. Same with gas on personal use time. These are pretty much the tricky areas for people to navigate because of budget restrictions and not wanting to be taken advantage of

[Anonymous]

What I'm really thinking about is whether she fits in the kid category or the parent category when we go somewhere with optional and expensive rides/ games/arcades/etc. we might give our kids $ for lazer tag, bumper cars, etc. but we sit some out because we are adults and don't need to spend more money for us when 4 kids is expensive when each thing you do is $10-$15. I guess we will just make it clear that they are using grandmas money or their allowance and let them choose which things and she will see that while we've covered almost every aspect of the vacation, counted it as a work week even when she is doing 4 hours of work, and brought her along paying for every activity that we join and admission etc. that she wants, that we can't then drop another $150 on her optional things at the amusement park or gift shops,etc.

[Anonymous]

We take our AP to amusement parks and places like Disney world. We pay for everything except souvenirs and alcohol. If we are not going to a park like universal and AP wants to go there on her own she would pay for it.
Pretty much like having another kid is the way we budget for ap. Except we do not buy clothes or electronics for AP other than a phone.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What I'm really thinking about is whether she fits in the kid category or the parent category when we go somewhere with optional and expensive rides/ games/arcades/etc. we might give our kids $ for lazer tag, bumper cars, etc. but we sit some out because we are adults and don't need to spend more money for us when 4 kids is expensive when each thing you do is $10-$15. I guess we will just make it clear that they are using grandmas money or their allowance and let them choose which things and she will see that while we've covered almost every aspect of the vacation, counted it as a work week even when she is doing 4 hours of work, and brought her along paying for every activity that we join and admission etc. that she wants, that we can't then drop another $150 on her optional things at the amusement park or gift shops,etc.

Should you buy her a pop when no one else is getting one? No. Should you treat her to ice cream when all the kids but neither parents get ice cream? Yes. Do you buy her souvenirs? Probably not

Think of her as a teenaged niece or an exchange student for these parts. Would you really begrudge her a carousel ride or a game of laser tag? Maybe boring to you but very likely New and interesting and exciting to her. This is the intangible, no set rules grey area, but probable should fall under the host-parent-providing-cultural-exchange thing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What I'm really thinking about is whether she fits in the kid category or the parent category when we go somewhere with optional and expensive rides/ games/arcades/etc. we might give our kids $ for lazer tag, bumper cars, etc. but we sit some out because we are adults and don't need to spend more money for us when 4 kids is expensive when each thing you do is $10-$15. I guess we will just make it clear that they are using grandmas money or their allowance and let them choose which things and she will see that while we've covered almost every aspect of the vacation, counted it as a work week even when she is doing 4 hours of work, and brought her along paying for every activity that we join and admission etc. that she wants, that we can't then drop another $150 on her optional things at the amusement park or gift shops,etc.

Should you buy her a pop when no one else is getting one? No. Should you treat her to ice cream when all the kids but neither parents get ice cream? Yes. Do you buy her souvenirs? Probably not

Think of her as a teenaged niece or an exchange student for these parts. Would you really begrudge her a carousel ride or a game of laser tag? Maybe boring to you but very likely New and interesting and exciting to her. This is the intangible, no set rules grey area, but probable should fall under the host-parent-providing-cultural-exchange thing.

+1, if that poster choose to have 4 kids plus an au pair and can afford a trip, they can afford to pay. Its pretty crappy to tell them to pay or sit out with you when they are on a family trip.