Reply to Wanting to barter room for child care- how does this work?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I agree that if you were to somehow give them a small private kitchen  this this would sweeten the deal by a lot. If you were to put a kitchen in I don't think you'll have a hard time finding someone to exchange child care for living arrangements with no extra compensation.  It would basically be a separate apartment. However, since there currently isn't a kitchen it is really like renting a room. Another thing that would sweeten the deal is if you allowed pets or for the nanny to bring a significant other or a child to live with them. Pets and significant others are not usually allowed in live in situations so someone who wants to bring one of them would see this job as very appealing if they were able to do so.

If you seek out someone less experienced, their time watching your children is not as valuable as a professional nanny so they may be willing to exchange child care for living arrangements with  no additional compensation.

Your other option is to leave the room as-is (no kitchen), find someone with experience, and give them between $50- $100 per week to watch the children in addition to their room. 
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Yes, this is like renting a room. To compare, I am in SF and my rent would normally be over $900 for a large room and private bath. I have a deal that is at a $15/hr rate, and 14 hours per week (9 childcare and 5 used for daily cleaning up of living room and kitchen). She doesn't always use the 9 for childcare, and my cleaning might only take 2 hours overall instead of the 5. The total pay to her at most comes to $840. I have no utilities, I get some basic food items, she pays just over half of my muni (bus/train) monthly pass since I use it for work, and I get to use her Netflix account etc. So I could easily be paying $1200/month for all this if I wasn't doing a work exchange. I also have 2 cats and like PP above said, that is a big advantage to me and doesn't affect the family much since they previously had cats of their own and like having mine around. I do other PT work for actual money, and earn $22/hr for that work (this work was taken on later than my work exchange).

The only issue that I have come across, is that because it is now a work exchange, we never really discussed pay raises. When I took this position I had less experience and was only doing care for one older child (was live-out). After I became a live-in, I started to do more care of the younger child as well. The whole job has kind of changed yet my rate stayed the same. If I were to now consider this type of position, I would be asking for at least $17/hr minimum. I love the situation though and wouldn't want to have it change because of an issue about a raise. I am a bit more ok about it since the MB has recently not been using me for my full 9 hours of childcare each week, but only 6-7 hours for 2-3 out of every 4 weeks. So once you average out the hours and pay over the month, it ends up being more like $17-18/hr (to end up with $840) after all. So I have accepted this as being a fair trade for me. If she starts to use the full 9 hours again on a regular basis, then I might talk to her about reducing the number of trade hours to show a raise in pay, but for now it is working for both of us.[/quote]

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