<p>We would like to ask the neighbor’s son to water our flowers and keep an eye on the house when we go on vacation. He is a college grad without a job so he could use the extra cash. We will be gone for a week, and he only needs to water if it doesn’t rain. What’s the going rate for this? I’m thinking the entire process would take him an hour a day and maybe doing it 4 days at most. $50? </p>
<p>You will probably get answers all over the place but $50 sounds fine to me. </p>
<p>Sounds reasonable.</p>
<p>We pay our neighbor kids $10 a day to water plants and feed our cats. So…$50 for four days of work sounds about right.</p>
<p>I recently paid a young man to water our yard and plants (investment property with no sprinkler system) for 2 weeks. It takes an hour to do as new shrubs need to be watered about 5 mins each and then the yard. It wasn’t daily, but every other day to every day during a stretch of unseasonably hot weather (several days over 100 degrees). I paid him 50 per week and my DH was really irritated that I paid him that much. </p>
<p>Its all individual, but I look at what I’d pay someone to do that. In the case of house watchers and cats, we had one service that began charging based on “avoided kennel cost”, so it was very expensive, and led to us eventually canceling. Part of the cancellation came because we found, after installing a new feature on our alarm system, that the people running the service did not come every day to take care of the pets, but instead came every other day. They billed for every day, though. I decided I’d rather take my chances with neighbors kids.</p>
<p>The last couple of times, the kids have tried to give me the money back, feeling it was too much. I think I paid $20 a day or so. It might be worth your while to be cautious about stating up front what you’ll pay. If I came home and found evidence that the watering hadn’t taken place, I’d be pretty cheap.</p>
<p>$10 dollars an hour or so is close to minimum wage. I think, given its a neighbor, that it pays to err on the side of generosity rather than cheapness (not saying that the proposal fits that, but just saying. )</p>
<p>What is the minimum wage where you are? Ours is $11/hr and I wouldn’t pay someone less than that.</p>
<p>Based on $10 per hour and the number of days my helper worked, I feel good about what I paid. So there, DH!</p>
<p>:)</p>
<p>We paid, a long time ago, $15/day to walk and feed the dog.</p>
<p>Not to highjack but a similar question: how much would you pay to have a babysitter stay overnight with your young children?</p>
<p>50 sounds good for the plants.
EPTR–how good are the kids? :-j </p>
<p>I currently pay a cat sitter $15/day to feed, change the water & clean the boxes. She’s probably at our house for 1/2 hour or so (she likes to play with the kitties!).</p>
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<p>My kids usually get about $10/day. The wife paid one of her employees $30/night (plus her food) to stay at our house and take care of pets while we were away.</p>
<p>ETA: The employee was single and had a really long commute to work but we live about a mile away. We did the same with one of the neighborhood college kids for a different trip.</p>
<p>Here’s my thought. You are going for a week. So you should pay him for all 7 days even if it rains all 7 days. Because rain is something out of his control.So given that I’d say $50 is low. I would think $10/day or $70 would be more appropriate. </p>