BigLawyers with Working Spouses and Kids, What Services Do You Use to Make Life Manageable/Easier? Forum
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BigLawyers with Working Spouses and Kids, What Services Do You Use to Make Life Manageable/Easier?
Looking for ideas as to how to make life as two working parents easier. What household jobs do you outsource (cooking, cleaning, laundry, etc.), and what service do you use?
ETA: The cost of said services would also be helpful, if you feel comfortable sharing that.
ETA: The cost of said services would also be helpful, if you feel comfortable sharing that.
- nealric
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Re: BigLawyers with Working Spouses and Kids, What Services Do You Use to Make Life Manageable/Easier?
I'm no longer in biglaw, but my spouse is. So I'm still living the biglaw life vicariously.
Daycare: Have one preschooler and one starting elementary school. The preschooler is in extended day through 6, and the older one will have an after school program that runs until 6:30. Childcare is of course very regional, but the extended preschool runs about $20k/yr and the after school program is $3k for the school year. Looking forward to both getting into elementary school. We've had some tricky times with work travel (I travel internationally 3-5 times a year, often on short notice, spouse mostly does shorter domestic trips for work). Only way we've made it work is with grandparents in town. I don't know what people without local relatives would do in a situation where both parents are supposed to travel for work.
Backup care: Both of our employers have a service called "Bright Horizons" that provides subsidized backup care. It's $15/day through a center, or $60 with an in-home babysitter. We each get 15 days of that and it's quite valuable for things like Spring Break when you can't all leave for vacation at that time.
Cleaning/Laundary: We have a maid that comes twice a week ($160/wk) that does most of the cleaning and laundry (but we do still have to do a decent bit). Word of mouth sort of deal without an agency/middle man. Small children would almost require a live-in maid to keep the house spotless, but I like the twice a week schedule. This was recently upped from once a week, which meant we still did most of the laundry and ended up spending a healthy portion of the weekend cleaning.
Cooking: I split between cooking quick/simple meals and takeout probably about 60/40 in favor of cooking.
Lawn: I still do it myself for the most part. We do get a service 1-2 times a year to take care of some of the leaf removal and hedge trimming beyond regular mowing.
Daycare: Have one preschooler and one starting elementary school. The preschooler is in extended day through 6, and the older one will have an after school program that runs until 6:30. Childcare is of course very regional, but the extended preschool runs about $20k/yr and the after school program is $3k for the school year. Looking forward to both getting into elementary school. We've had some tricky times with work travel (I travel internationally 3-5 times a year, often on short notice, spouse mostly does shorter domestic trips for work). Only way we've made it work is with grandparents in town. I don't know what people without local relatives would do in a situation where both parents are supposed to travel for work.
Backup care: Both of our employers have a service called "Bright Horizons" that provides subsidized backup care. It's $15/day through a center, or $60 with an in-home babysitter. We each get 15 days of that and it's quite valuable for things like Spring Break when you can't all leave for vacation at that time.
Cleaning/Laundary: We have a maid that comes twice a week ($160/wk) that does most of the cleaning and laundry (but we do still have to do a decent bit). Word of mouth sort of deal without an agency/middle man. Small children would almost require a live-in maid to keep the house spotless, but I like the twice a week schedule. This was recently upped from once a week, which meant we still did most of the laundry and ended up spending a healthy portion of the weekend cleaning.
Cooking: I split between cooking quick/simple meals and takeout probably about 60/40 in favor of cooking.
Lawn: I still do it myself for the most part. We do get a service 1-2 times a year to take care of some of the leaf removal and hedge trimming beyond regular mowing.
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Re: BigLawyers with Working Spouses and Kids, What Services Do You Use to Make Life Manageable/Easier?
We use a nanny for childcare for our baby and toddler, and that comes to about 60k a year in NYC, including her taxes (and our nanny agreed to take an hourly pay cut to work for us because we hit it off). Our older kid is in kindergarten at the local Catholic school, which is about 18k/year. The "raise" we will get when we are no longer paying for full-time childcare is what keeps us going....The nanny does the kids' laundry and lunches and tidies their rooms, so we only have to do our laundry. We cook a couple crockpot meals on the weekend and use them for food for most of the week, and our apartment is small so we can clean it ourselves, though a lot of friends use cleaning ladies, at I think around $250/week for a 2br. Best way to find them is to ask friends for references or if you have a parents listserv, ask there (there are a couple in NYC if you are here and I imagine that's true elsewhere in the country, just don't know for sure). I know they prefer to hire directly rather than hire a service because it ends up being cheaper and (usually) better.
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Re: BigLawyers with Working Spouses and Kids, What Services Do You Use to Make Life Manageable/Easier?
nealric wrote: ↑Mon Jul 18, 2022 2:34 pmI'm no longer in biglaw, but my spouse is. So I'm still living the biglaw life vicariously.
Daycare: Have one preschooler and one starting elementary school. The preschooler is in extended day through 6, and the older one will have an after school program that runs until 6:30. Childcare is of course very regional, but the extended preschool runs about $20k/yr and the after school program is $3k for the school year. Looking forward to both getting into elementary school. We've had some tricky times with work travel (I travel internationally 3-5 times a year, often on short notice, spouse mostly does shorter domestic trips for work). Only way we've made it work is with grandparents in town. I don't know what people without local relatives would do in a situation where both parents are supposed to travel for work.
Backup care: Both of our employers have a service called "Bright Horizons" that provides subsidized backup care. It's $15/day through a center, or $60 with an in-home babysitter. We each get 15 days of that and it's quite valuable for things like Spring Break when you can't all leave for vacation at that time.
Cleaning/Laundary: We have a maid that comes twice a week ($160/wk) that does most of the cleaning and laundry (but we do still have to do a decent bit). Word of mouth sort of deal without an agency/middle man. Small children would almost require a live-in maid to keep the house spotless, but I like the twice a week schedule. This was recently upped from once a week, which meant we still did most of the laundry and ended up spending a healthy portion of the weekend cleaning.
Cooking: I split between cooking quick/simple meals and takeout probably about 60/40 in favor of cooking.
Lawn: I still do it myself for the most part. We do get a service 1-2 times a year to take care of some of the leaf removal and hedge trimming beyond regular mowing.
I do most of what you do, but are you really only paying your cleaning person $80 per visit? That seems VERY cheap.
- nealric
- Posts: 4279
- Joined: Fri Sep 25, 2009 9:53 am
Re: BigLawyers with Working Spouses and Kids, What Services Do You Use to Make Life Manageable/Easier?
She only stays for 3-4 hours. Works out to $20-25/hr- that's triple minimum wage here. Keep in mind there's no middle man or agency taking a cut.Anonymous User wrote: ↑Tue Jul 19, 2022 8:05 amnealric wrote: ↑Mon Jul 18, 2022 2:34 pmI'm no longer in biglaw, but my spouse is. So I'm still living the biglaw life vicariously.
Daycare: Have one preschooler and one starting elementary school. The preschooler is in extended day through 6, and the older one will have an after school program that runs until 6:30. Childcare is of course very regional, but the extended preschool runs about $20k/yr and the after school program is $3k for the school year. Looking forward to both getting into elementary school. We've had some tricky times with work travel (I travel internationally 3-5 times a year, often on short notice, spouse mostly does shorter domestic trips for work). Only way we've made it work is with grandparents in town. I don't know what people without local relatives would do in a situation where both parents are supposed to travel for work.
Backup care: Both of our employers have a service called "Bright Horizons" that provides subsidized backup care. It's $15/day through a center, or $60 with an in-home babysitter. We each get 15 days of that and it's quite valuable for things like Spring Break when you can't all leave for vacation at that time.
Cleaning/Laundary: We have a maid that comes twice a week ($160/wk) that does most of the cleaning and laundry (but we do still have to do a decent bit). Word of mouth sort of deal without an agency/middle man. Small children would almost require a live-in maid to keep the house spotless, but I like the twice a week schedule. This was recently upped from once a week, which meant we still did most of the laundry and ended up spending a healthy portion of the weekend cleaning.
Cooking: I split between cooking quick/simple meals and takeout probably about 60/40 in favor of cooking.
Lawn: I still do it myself for the most part. We do get a service 1-2 times a year to take care of some of the leaf removal and hedge trimming beyond regular mowing.
I do most of what you do, but are you really only paying your cleaning person $80 per visit? That seems VERY cheap.
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- Posts: 428468
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Re: BigLawyers with Working Spouses and Kids, What Services Do You Use to Make Life Manageable/Easier?
Similar situation here except I stopped doing the lawn after my first year in the 'burbs once I found out it was only $25/wk (not including the extra for spring/fall cleanup).nealric wrote: ↑Mon Jul 18, 2022 2:34 pmI'm no longer in biglaw, but my spouse is. So I'm still living the biglaw life vicariously.
Daycare: Have one preschooler and one starting elementary school. The preschooler is in extended day through 6, and the older one will have an after school program that runs until 6:30. Childcare is of course very regional, but the extended preschool runs about $20k/yr and the after school program is $3k for the school year. Looking forward to both getting into elementary school. We've had some tricky times with work travel (I travel internationally 3-5 times a year, often on short notice, spouse mostly does shorter domestic trips for work). Only way we've made it work is with grandparents in town. I don't know what people without local relatives would do in a situation where both parents are supposed to travel for work.
Backup care: Both of our employers have a service called "Bright Horizons" that provides subsidized backup care. It's $15/day through a center, or $60 with an in-home babysitter. We each get 15 days of that and it's quite valuable for things like Spring Break when you can't all leave for vacation at that time.
Cleaning/Laundary: We have a maid that comes twice a week ($160/wk) that does most of the cleaning and laundry (but we do still have to do a decent bit). Word of mouth sort of deal without an agency/middle man. Small children would almost require a live-in maid to keep the house spotless, but I like the twice a week schedule. This was recently upped from once a week, which meant we still did most of the laundry and ended up spending a healthy portion of the weekend cleaning.
Cooking: I split between cooking quick/simple meals and takeout probably about 60/40 in favor of cooking.
Lawn: I still do it myself for the most part. We do get a service 1-2 times a year to take care of some of the leaf removal and hedge trimming beyond regular mowing.
We use FreshDirect quite a bit for the basics and place Costco orders monthly. I know some people that use meal delivery or kit services but we don't. Our cleaning lady doesn't do laundry except for our sheets as she only comes weekly. Rarely I'll bring the laundry with me when dropping off dry cleaning. I'm interested in any "life hacks" people may use as my kids get older and their schedules get busier, there's even less time.
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Re: BigLawyers with Working Spouses and Kids, What Services Do You Use to Make Life Manageable/Easier?
Very similar here. One spouse in BL + one in-house. Cleaning person just got bumped from one to two days a week (waiting for it to take shape but super amped) but we pay $150 a visit (she and her daughter stay for 4 hours, no laundry, no agency, so this is just very dependent on location I feel). Once a quarter we also hire in a team for deep clean (clean out our drawers and cabinets, fridge, windows, etc.) which is super expensive… idk like $600? And also twice a year we get carpet cleaners and they also clean out our couches because our dog sheds a ton. Speaking of the dog, he has a pick-up, drop-off arrangement with a great doggy daycare and he goes to the groomer at least once a month.nealric wrote: ↑Mon Jul 18, 2022 2:34 pmI'm no longer in biglaw, but my spouse is. So I'm still living the biglaw life vicariously.
Daycare: Have one preschooler and one starting elementary school. The preschooler is in extended day through 6, and the older one will have an after school program that runs until 6:30. Childcare is of course very regional, but the extended preschool runs about $20k/yr and the after school program is $3k for the school year. Looking forward to both getting into elementary school. We've had some tricky times with work travel (I travel internationally 3-5 times a year, often on short notice, spouse mostly does shorter domestic trips for work). Only way we've made it work is with grandparents in town. I don't know what people without local relatives would do in a situation where both parents are supposed to travel for work.
Backup care: Both of our employers have a service called "Bright Horizons" that provides subsidized backup care. It's $15/day through a center, or $60 with an in-home babysitter. We each get 15 days of that and it's quite valuable for things like Spring Break when you can't all leave for vacation at that time.
Cleaning/Laundary: We have a maid that comes twice a week ($160/wk) that does most of the cleaning and laundry (but we do still have to do a decent bit). Word of mouth sort of deal without an agency/middle man. Small children would almost require a live-in maid to keep the house spotless, but I like the twice a week schedule. This was recently upped from once a week, which meant we still did most of the laundry and ended up spending a healthy portion of the weekend cleaning.
Cooking: I split between cooking quick/simple meals and takeout probably about 60/40 in favor of cooking.
Lawn: I still do it myself for the most part. We do get a service 1-2 times a year to take care of some of the leaf removal and hedge trimming beyond regular mowing.
We use bright horizons but our benefit only requires that we pay $4 an hour and that’s either with a nanny or through a center. We use it for weekend care a lot. Daycare during the week, usually kiddo is there from 8:15-5:15 or so but we can pick her up as late as 6. It’s ok for now, we will definitely be switching back to a nanny when kiddo is ready for kindergarten, and I’ll be glad to have someone else doing the kid’s laundry and dishes again, but it’s not a high priority right now.
My partner has some food allergies so we don’t do the blue apron/home chef thing anymore but I do get a weekly meal service that delivers pretty decent chef-created single-serve meals that I can pop in the microwave or oven for lunch instead of getting the crap from around the office.
Everything else is just stuff we are no longer stingy about. We both have gym memberships near the house and near the office (in-house lawyer gets office gym for free), we have memberships at the zoos and museums we like to go to so we can do that on a whim and not have to plan for it, we get groceries delivered. We have a airlines lounge membership so if we are traveling we can go somewhere with snacks and easy restrooms, and I do splurge for domestic business class when traveling with the kiddo and without my partner. We also use our handyman, who is great and charges an hourly rate, for like anything we can get away with. Like he strung our outdoor lights for us, he’ll change the bulbs of our can lights, etc. When we move into a new place, we are likely going to use an interior decorator for at least some of the decorating.
As is probably obvious, im always looking for ways to exchange $ for time and/or convenience so would love to hear what others do!