Boston Gal's Open Wallet

In 18 years of marriage, the only time my wife and I have ever hired anybody to clean our residence was the last time we moved: before the movers came they cleaned our new home, and after the movers came they cleaned our old home.

 

BG, I have to say I think you are looking at this from the wrong perspective. You could easily make that $70/month from spending a few hours more a month on your blog. Hiring a housekeeper would probably save you 6 hours of work a month -- are you really saying your time is less valuable than $11.67/hour?

I make about a grand a month with my blog and my traffic levels aren't that much higher than yours. I'd rather spend 6 hours writing a post or two that will make me money than spend it wiping down floors and cleaning toilets!

I think the kids have the right idea. Also, I hired my first housekeeper at age 22 or so.

-Erica

 

Hi EricaBiz,

I certainly don't make anywhere near what you are making on my blog - perhaps I could if I treated it more as a business. But that is besides the point.

The issue I see with such young people hiring housekeepers is the lifestyle creep. You mention hiring your first housekeeper at age 22. Not knowing your current age, but assuming at least a few years have passed... Can you ever see yourself not paying someone to clean for you? If you can't, you have just committed yourself to a 60-70+ year expense!

The argument you use of working an extra 6 hours to earn the housekeeper fee sounds to me like the argument some people use to keep paying for restaurant meals or expensive coffee instead of learning to cook at home or brew their own. Heck I have known some who never learned to do their own laundry and pay for drop off and pick up at local laundromats while the machines in their home go unused!

I am not saying you should never use a housekeeper or laundry service - just that starting out with it as a young adult is troubling. Once you know how to scrub your own toilet or vacuum your own floor or do your own laundry - you can better judge the value of the service.

I would much rather clean my own mess than hire someone to do it for me at this stage in my life. I also don't necessarily want to work extra just to pay someone to do something I am perfectly capable of doing myself. I can always treat myself to a twice a year full clean (curtains washed, windows washed, carpets steamed cleaned, etc. - kitchen/bath scrubbed) which, to me, is a much more reasonable financial commitment than a month after month after year after year expense of a housecleaning service. But then I have been doing most of my own cleaning and don't see it as difficult.

 

This is just sad. Housework doesn't even need to take that much time if people just pick up after themselves as they go along. But Gen Y (of which I am a part of, for better or worse) is full of people who were absolutely spoiled by their parents -- some of whom have never even had to do housework. No wonder their "super moms" have been so overwhelmed! In my mom's day, kids had regular daily chores.

But I got dirty looks when I suggested to my (now ex-)roommates that they should clean the toilet (which is for them but also any guests) because it is ABSOLUTELY DISGUSTING! And really, that's about all most of them ever did, and only after months when it was just GROSS, GROSS, GROSS.

And you know what, those older generations are laughing at us not knowing how to do things like vacuuming and loading dishwashers and doing our laundry because they were doing that stuff when they were KIDS! One guy my husband knew didn't know why his laundry got so much cleaner when his mom did it. He didn't know to use soap!!!

 

Hi BG,

"Can you ever see yourself not paying someone to clean for you?"

No, but then again my current income is already well into 6 figures, and I expect it will be over $1 million/year within the next 2-3 years, all from Internet businesses. $70/month (ours is $220/month) is a tiny expense compared to my income. And there's no reason you can't do what I did!

"I also don't necessarily want to work extra..."

This is where I think we really differ. If you truly *enjoy* cleaning your house -- if it gives you that awesome high -- then sure, by all means, clean your own house.

I hate cleaning. But I love writing, and I've figured out a way to make money from that. I know that I can write a single blog post and make a few hundred dollars, and that only goes up over time as more people subscribe to my blog. Not only that, but I *love* writing! It's fun, and it's a joy to really help people and make money doing it.

So what is $70/month if I can write a post I enjoy writing, that helps people, and the money generated from that single blog post will pay for my cleaning service for the next three months? And this is, frankly, limitless...I know tons of people personally who make more money blogging than I do!

It all comes down to what you really enjoy doing. My housekeeper really enjoys cleaning, and she gets paid to do what she loves. I really enjoy writing, and the fact that I can make a significant income from that makes it more awesome.

I choose to use my time to do something that I love that generates a lot of extra cash instead of doing something I hate that generates comparatively little extra cash.

-Erica

 

When I purchased my first car my Mom showed me how to take off a tire and change to the emergency donut and then put the regular tire back on. She also showed me how to do the first oil change.

She had AAA and took her own car to Jiffy Lube, but she had learned how to do these things from her Father when she was a new car owner and felt it was important for me to know I could do this as well.

At one point in my late 20's I was back in grad school and poorer than I have ever been in my life. I remember how good it felt to spend just a few dollars on motor oil and a filter and change my own oil and not have to spend the money for a shop to do it.

A lot of people I know have never crawled under their cars. Now that I am working, I far prefer to have a Jiffy Lube do that job for me. But still, knowing I can do it is important.

I just can't imagine someone not cleaning their own home or cooking their own dinner or doing their own laundry. What is next? Paying others to raise our own children? Oh wait, not the right blog for that one!

 

What's even more surprising is another article I read somewhere about how recent college graduates are saying NO to job offers these days because they are not ideal and instead think it is no problem to spend time unemployed or doing odd jobs. Sorry I can't remember where this article was. I only graduated about 7 years ago so in some ways these guys are somewhat in my generation. However they are in for a rude surprise. This job market is horrible and won't get materially better anytime soon, especially for young people with no experience. These guys don't realize how much more difficult it is to get a job if you have no real work experience even though you've been out of school for a year or longer. I interview people all the time (obviously not these days though) and I can tell you that it is highly unlikely I would hire someone who graduated a year or two ago and hasn't spent that time working in any professional capacity. It just raises too many questions, and even though you could understand the job market was horrible for them, as an employer you wouldn't want to spend money hiring someone who has been sitting around doing nothing, working some menial job, or travelling, for the last year because you'd be worried that they aren't even ready to start work. I feel sorry for people who are graduating these days, its going to be tough. I graduated in 2002, got into a good high-paying industry, and have saved closed to a million dollars in that time. Nowadays that is almost impossible to do for new graduates.

 

I always pay to have the house cleaned on the day I'm due to arrive home from a business trip. I used to come home exhausted after a high-pressure week away and find my plants dying, dirty sheets and towels, filthy kitchen and bathroom, sticky floors ... Then my husband would expect me to happily jump into bed!

So I started having someone come in and do all the laundry, clean out the fridge, and thoroughly clean the house. OK, it's $120, but marriage counseling is more :-) And, by definition, I've just put in a lot of hours, so I have the extra cash.

 

Reads to me like EricaBiz is taking advantage of Boston Gal's comment area to drum up a bit of traffic to her money making website. Hum, you just lost points with me EricaBiz!

Boston Gal - you still get a cookie (in the form of clicks on your ads) since I like your blog and don't feel that you are always trying to sell me credit cards or a "get rich while sitting on your ass at home" path to financial security that I find in some of the more popular pf blogs that have been around as long (or longer) than yours. For some reason you have not sold out to the extent so many of them have.

 

@5:26 I agree. Also, Ericabiz is in a totally different boat than bostongal and the girl in the article and bostongal. I don't know why she's even bragging that she makes so much and even advertises on her blog that she was a millionaire at the age of 26.

 

After having used cleaning services on occassion, I find that I would rather do this myself. Most of the services start out doing a great job then the quality deteriorates over time.

Besides, I'm a fan of being as self-sufficient as possible. A stay-at-home-Mom friend of mine recently had to cancel her maid service and has no idea how to clean her shower. That's just sad.

 

Anonymous @1:35 PM, any chance you have a blog post about how you saved close to a million dollars between 2002 and now? I thought my husband and I were doing well, but not THAT well. I can't imagine saving over $100K/year as that would be more than half our annual income. I assume you and I are in very different fields.

Back on the topic of housekeeping: I am unwilling to work more hours, so ericabiz's argument about the value of my time is hard to relate to. For me, the argument has two sides:

1) If the house is dirty, I have to clean it. That makes me cranky and takes away time from fun weekend activities.

2) Why should I pay someone to do something I can do myself?

Argument 2 always wins, but argument 1 is getting stronger. And now that I know it's about $200/month, and they'd get the house WAY cleaner than I do...

Perhaps I should embrace being Gen Y? :-)

 

@Mike - the reason ericabiz post predominantly on her front page that she is a millionaire is because she obviously has serious insecurities. It's pretty clear she is trying to drum up visits to her site, which from what I can tell looks like it offers no more than a billion other cheap sites on how to make a buck off the internet. But her site is in it own league because of how ridiculous she's made it by so loudly advertising the sale of her business for a million dollars so she could "retire". And yes, I wonder too how anyone could retire with only a million pre-tax dollars at that age. She must be living like a hermit.

 

I've noticed the same things that Anon 1:35 has said. I also graduated in 2002 and I interview and train new/younger employees. I have no idea what happened to the people that are up to 7 years younger. It seems that 2003 grads were normal and since then they've all been spoiled.

No I would never hire someone to clean. If you stay on top of the cleaning then it's really not a chore. Also, peace of mind with having an almost always clean house is wonderful when a guest stops by. I don't have to make an excuse about the cleaning lady coming tomorrow.

 

I guess it just depends on the person but I would not consider it myself. I do not enjoy housework at all but I find that if you keep it clean then you don't really have to 'clean'. Rinse the dishes when you put them in the sink and then you don't have to scrub.

Separate the colored clothes from the whites as soon as you take them off and that makes laundry easier.

Wipe down the counters....no ants and on and on.

I only had help cleaning when moving out of apartments just to make sure they got every nook and cranny.

I am currently watching a young couple pay for help that I think is not worth it. They even pay someone to haul out large bags of garbage on the weekends (to the dumpster 20 feet away from the house) instead of taking out the small trash bags every day as they walk out to get the bus.

 

My problem with young people hiring cleaning help is this - if you have never had to clean your own shitty toilet then you think differently.

Cleaners become a lower-class who are here just to handle things you are too good to do yourself.

That to me is just wrong.

I had a roommate from India who was working post-grad in Cambridge after spending her entire Harvard years in the school dorms. She came from a middle-class family in India, but still they had people who cleaned for them. Not just a maid service twice a month - but a woman who came to their home every day and cleaned for them. In the dorms the cleaning staff took care of the bathrooms, etc.

So here she was, living with me in my Cambridge apartment and she would not rinse a dish, let alone squirt some cleanser in the bowl and run the toilet brush around.

She expected me to clean since I was American and it was not against my culture to do so. Or she wanted a cleaning person - until she called around and found out how much that would cost. Mommy and Daddy in India were not willing to help her out with that cost.

It was the longest year of my life living with her and cleaning her messes (I can't live in a dirty house, so going on strike was not an option).

My only satisfaction is I found out from a mutual friend that she ended up in an arranged marriage with an Indian man who was born in the US. She is not working (since she got pregnant almost immediately after the wedding) and he will not pay for maid service. So she is scrubbing her own families toilets and changing her own kids poopy diapers!

 

Gotta agree about paying for maid service. I would love to but just not in the budget right now. Maybe in the future.

 

When you live in a group house with 4 other roommates, rather than fight, what's an extra $20-50 per month per person for a house cleaner to come 1-2 times a month?

I did that with my roommates in DC and it worked out great. We wanted a trouble-free existence and it worked out great for us.

That is the only time I've had maid service in my life and to us, it was to avoid fighting about cleaning which is a stupid fight to have with 5 people in the house.

Boyfriend and I talk about getting a maid because we both hate cleaning bathrooms. But the flipside is that on a daily basis, we both sweep or vacuum the persistent dog hair and our kitchen is pretty well-kept. We both grew up doing chores and frankly, I'm tempted to have a kid just to have free housecleaning! muhahaha

(I grew up at my mother's dry cleaning store, so I don't mind mountains of laundry, either. It's just the bathroom.)

 

In some cultures much of what normal Americans spend money on is considered exhorbitant, but only the truly poor resort to cleaning their own toilets (and the toilets of others).

Personally I've been grappling with the idea of hiring a housekeeper myself. Which I KNOW is ridiculous and indulgent, especially when you consider that I live alone in an 800 square foot condo.

But I can afford it, and more importantly I have realized that I won't do it myself. Not properly or regularly at least.

I need to revisit that possibility...

Oh, and I know lots of single 20-somethings in Dallas who have a maid service, and to my knowledge none of them make over $60K a year or so. But for a young single, $60K is plenty to pay around with, and the cost of a maid (esp here where you can find Mexican immigrants to do it for practically free) is not much compared to how much we spend eating out - and it brings a LOT more satisfaction and pleasure (not to mention that it frees up precious spare time)!

 

In a flatting situation, a cleaner can be a godsend. Not that I've ever had one (would LOVE to), but honestly, I believe paying a cleaner is worth it. The hassle of trying to get flatmates to clean/buy supplies etc, is just not worth it. You end up doing it all yourself anyway, and hating them. Some people are, frankly, pigs, and there's just no working around it fairly. It's not uncommon here, especially in busy flats of professional workers.