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Before our children became the babysitters, we were paying for babysitters. Often our entertainment budget was able to fund a movie or dinner, but not the added cost of a baby sitter. During those times we were either creative or we were not able to go out.

With a bit of planning you should be able to use the following ideas to seriously trim your babysitting budget.

In the spirit of Ellen and my early years here is a collection of ideas to help you save on babysitting:

Read the rest of the article here: http://thriftytimes.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=142

May God's grace and peace be with you in your important job as parent!

Thanks for the link

Another thing we do is plan in advance and put money away every check to pay the babysitter....and we go out on a big date night every other month, the other month we do a movie and lunch with the kids so they don't feel left out...in a couple of years our oldest will be old enough to sit and yes we will pay him too but not necessarily in cash

I hope that more of our members offer their suggestions as well

Jennifer

Your budgeting system is the Envelope system. It works well and trains us to save ahead for items.

Does anyone else have ways to save on babysitting?

the only difference is we don't use physical envelopes...we had tendency to spend the money before our date night we now have it set up so that the money is automatically deposited into our "fun money account"

Jennifer

I usually find trusted neighbors the best way to babysit.

It's been some time since I've needed to actually hire a sitter as my eldest is nearly 18 and his sister is almost 14 now. Even the younger two can stay on their own for short periods of time.

BUT when we did use sitters we would pay them well - after all they were protecting our children that God entrusted us to raise and take care of! IF we couldn't pay the sitter, we'd save up til we were able or we'd find another couple with kids and see if they would be interested in taking the kids in trade for a night out of their own with us babysitting.

There were other times when I would tutor a teen in English or history in exchange for babysitting and my eldest daughter took advantage of that with one of our neighbors too! She'd babysit in exchange for tutoring in algebra and now tutoring in Geometry!

But the best babysitter relationship we ever had was with a young man that we met 8 years ago when my eldest was 10 and he was almost 13. These two boys were ALWAYS between our home and this young man's home! About a year after we met him my husband and I decided that the boys were old enough that together they could handle the younger 3 and that being that J's Mom was just down the street in case of emergency that we'd leave them home while we went out for dinner! None of our kids were in diapers and could all take care of their own toileting and bathing needs. We would try to pay this boy but he would often tell us no or he'd take it and then go and buy something for the kids or put it away in his college fund! So we took to paying him in movie passes and gift cards. Then he'd often take our son with him! He would often spend the night and he at TONS of meals at our home! He was a fixture. Even now that he's in college - he'll stop by on a Saturday or Sunday morning expecting pancakes, and he attends at least 2 or 3 of our youngest daughter's basketball games and as many of our youngest son's wrestling matches as he can every year. He's family. We could have NEVER paid him what he was worth! He was 100 times more reliable than any other sitter we ever had!

Blessings,

Garsy

GRANDMA!

When my kiddo was tiny and we were broke, I joined a babysitting co-op. We sat for points: one point per kid per hour; second+ kid(s) were half a point per hour more. Once a month we met at a restaurant to eat, laugh and balance the books. People deep "in debt" were told they couldn't let anyone watch their kids until they sat a lot and evened the tally. There was no money exchanging hands, just kids having fun with friends.

Membership was by invitation only; and every mother was vouched for being a safe sitter by someone else who knew them well.

It was a real blessing!