Save Money On Baby Sitting and Save Your Marriage
January 21, 2009 by Erik Folgate
Filed under Budgeting, Family and Relationships
Many of us are cutting back on things that are not necessary to spend money on, and entertainment is one of life’s little luxuries that we tend to cut back on during tough economic times. However, there are a ton of date nights you can do with your spouse, and I will have a list of my ideas for tomorrow’s post. One reason many married couples with kids cut back on entertainment is because of the cost of babysitting. Young teenage girls aren’t cheap anymore. The days of paying them $5 an hour are gone. they want $8 to $10 an hour. If you’re gone for 4 hours, that’s a huge chunk of change to add on to your night out. Here’s a way to completely eliminate the cost of babysitting.
Create a Babysitting Co-Op Group
- Find a group of couples ranging from 5 to 15 couples that would be interested in joining the group.
- Hold an informational meeting explaining how the group will work and what information you need from each couple.
- Assign tasks to a stay-at-home mom or someone with a little extra time on their hands to keep records for each spouse. Information you want to gather are emergency contact numbers, names of child’s doctor, special instructions for the children, etc.
- Make a list of operating rules. Set a list of rules about how the babysitting will work so every member knows what to expect. For example, will you drop off your child or will the couple come to your house to babysit?
- Start a free blog at Blogger.com and give full access to each couple to post updates and information and requests for babysitting. This is a great thing to have, because it leaves a paper trail for babysitting requests and open dates for babysitting.
Why This Works
Everyone is pitching in to help each other out, and if you find couples with kids a similar age to yours, you won’t have to do much babysitting, because they’ll just play together most of the time. If you feel like your marriage has been a little off lately, it’s because you haven’t spent quality time with your spouse. Setting a date night once a month is essential to a healthy marriage. You must get out of the house and away from the kids sometimes. Your kids are not your world. Your priority is to be a good husband or wife first, and THEN a good mother or father. Many people flip-flop these priorities and marriages begin to fail.
By the way, this co-op group also works for pet sitting. We have a dog, and we always dread the money we need to spend boarding our dog when we go on vacation. So, give it a try. I think you’ll find that everyone benefits from a group like this.
You forgot to mention a discussion of how to handle situations in which the children misbehave. Each parent has a different view on how children should be disciplined, so that’s a very important discussion to have. My sister recently let a woman babysit her kids and this woman had a nasty habit of smacking her own kids across the face. While my sister isn’t opposed to the occasional spanking on the bottom, she absolutely does not condone smacking across the face. Needless to say, she’s found a new babysitter.
This is a great idea, and I certainly agree that married couples should try to find or start a co-op of some sort. Not only are the benefits to the marriage spot on, but you also have the added benefit of being a better parent. You have some alone time away from the kids, which allows you to relax and refocus. This can really help you when dealing with your children. I think trying for two to three nights a month would be even better than just one.