Money to Burn
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- August
- 24
I’m curious what you think is fair to pay a kid for a certain job. In my area, it seems to be overblown. Case in point: Sydney got $45 for a week of watering my neighbor’s plants. 45DOLLARS!!!! Yes, there were a lot of plants but…..I would have given her 25. Another neighbor gave her $25 for feeding their cat over the weekend. Again: maybe 10?
What’s bad is that my darling 12-year-old is now getting a level of expectation. While she was THRILLED to get so much money and was as surprised as I was at the amount, she has also started to question my “tooth fairy” ways: ”$2,” she asked when she lost a tooth that had been loose for a while. “What were you expecting?” I asked. “Maybe $5?”
Living in Westchester, I’m losing perspective on what is reasonable and fair. What would YOU pay?
This entry was posted
on Friday, August 24th, 2007 at 9:18 am by Jeanne Muchnick.
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No. reasonable and fair you had right. your child was over paid. I would never expect that much for assistance.
Just make sure you tell them that this was a huge gratuity and NOT to expect it from every one.
We’ve been through the same thing. My son was paid $70 for a week of feeding cats and cleaning litter box. My daughter got $30 for watering plants, even if it rained and she didn’t have to go.
It does make it hard to get them to do the same at home for their allowance, which is meager by comparison.
My Opinion: Talk to the people they are doing the work for and say listen. 5 and hour or 2 an hour is plenty pay for my kid to do this job for you …
Thats what I would do…
Same here. My son did some proofreading work for me. I offered $5 an hour. He was appalled. He’s 14! I think that’s a fortune! Neighbors paid him $120 to collect two families’ mail and feed one family’s rabbits and fish twice a day for a week.
Wait did he turn you down? if he did then you cut off the allowance .. and then make him pay for at least dinner ;-]
Thats how we all learned the value of a dollar is we balked at the payment. Oh I never balked at the payment. The food was too good to have to miss out on because of low funds. :-)