How Much Help Do You Have In Your Life?
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Hot on the heels of yesterday's post about money and priorities, I thought it might be interesting to ask: How much help do you have in your life? Do you have a killer assistant at work whom you rely on for a lot of gatekeeping/scheduling needs? Do you have a cleaning service, lawn service, snow removal service, etc.? Do you use a personal shopper? Is there a paid caregiver in your life, such as a nanny or au pair? Do you have an unpaid helper like a parent or sibling, either for childcare or meal prep or scheduling? Do you regularly use virtual assistant services? Do you have a personal assistant or chef, or have you found other ways to get help with those tasks, such as hiring someone local to meal prep for you or keeping a subscription to a meal delivery service? How about a personal trainer, or a headhunter who's been extraordinarily helpful over more than just one job?
{psst: Check out this discussion over at CorporetteMoms, where there was a much bigger focus on childcare helpers.}
We've talked about a lot of this on the blog before, but I'd love to hear about your current situation… some of our previous discussions include:
- How to Hire an Assistant at the Office (and How to Delegate To Your Assistant)
- I Tried To Use Virtual Assistants to Delegate Family Tasks – Here's How It Went
- How to Hire a Personal Trainer
- How to Hire a Cleaning Service
- How to Level Up Your Childcare
- How to Upgrade Personal Services
- How to Hire a Housekeeper or House Manager (inspired by this amazing Medium article listing all the help a self-made millionaire has at home)
- How to Use a Personal Assistant (with tips from a friend who actually used to be a personal assistant to a a wealthy businessman)
- Have Your Parents Helped You In Your Career? (This was a fun discussion, based on a study that found that post-college, 75% of parents were reminding children of deadlines and making appointments for them.)
Readers, I'd love to hear from you, though — how much help do you have in your life, from nannies to work assistants to personal shoppers or trainers or others? What has made the biggest impact? Has it changed through the years, e.g., before or after children, marriage, certain jobs, or more?
Stock photo via Stencil.
I am a non-married child-free person who does not currently live with their SO. I have a cleaning service and someone who mows my lawn. I have access to an EA at work who I use for expense reports. I take full advantage of the work travel service by bookending personal travel to work travel when it makes sense for me, but otherwise do my own travel (I am a low-maintenance traveler). I have a dog sitter who I use for very short work trips or one-offs and for the cats for long trips. My parents watch my dogs for long trips. My horse is at a full service farm so I just pay board and things happen. I have a reliable contractor on call bc I suck at DIY house projects beyond very simple things. My bf is extremely handy but I feel bad relying on him for big stuff.
I NEED a personal assistant to help me stay on top of house maintenance stuff bc I am truly horrible at it.
Oh yes, I have a regular pest service and I also am on some HVAC plan that I am sure I am wasting money on bc I always forget to schedule anything (nothing is broken).
I think I would need a household manager to manage all those listed services, lol. The only thing we have is a monthly cleaning service!
I agree, Cat. The OP sounds like she’d make a good general in the military, my Dad says!
As far as this thread is concerned, relating to help, personally, I only have my cleaneing lady, who also sends my laundry out and picks it up. I do ALL of my own food shopping (mainly at Whole Foods and Fairways), and all of my own clotheing shopping (tho I do use a personal shopper who helps me pick out styleish stuff @ Nordstrom’s).
I have a cobbler off 86th who repairs my shoes, which should NOT count. I don’t know if this counts, but my Dad pays all of my bills out of my bank account, and my Brother in Law, Ed, is my broker, though everyone must have one of those, so I do not think this counts — if it did, I’d have to include the mailman, the cable guy, and the doorman who let’s people in for me and sends up people I approve of to visit me or occasionally fix things in my apartement that break when I am at work (like now).
Military lawyer, mother of four. Husband with military command position. We have full time childcare. Until tomorrow it is a live out nanny and because she is moving away, we are getting a new live-in Au Pair. Other than that we don’t have any help; no cleaners at all, no maintenance services, no meal delivery service etc. Having the childcare in the house makes everything run pretty smoothly. We haven’t relied on family assistance before BUT my mom is watching the kids (with the nanny) next week so my husband and I can do a kid free sailing charter. My in-laws did also do a few weeks of home schooling for a couple of hours a day during a lockdown last year and they often ask to the driving to swim team for my oldest so they can hang out but they are snowbirds so they aren’t around all the time.
I am the lower rank member in a two person team so don’t delegate at work.
I have an assistant and a paralegal at work that help with most administrative tasks. The nature of my work (appellate lawyer) requires that I do almost all research and drafting myself.
At home, I have 3 kids, a husband, and pets. We do all cleaning and cooking ourselves. We use a pest control service and HVAC service and pet daycare when traveling.
I do school pick up and drop off most days (I work from home most of the time). Though my oldest can drive now and helps with picking up the younger two. When they were still in elementary school we used before and after school care at the school.
My mom and MIL live nearby and can help in an emergency.
Married with 2 small kids, recently moved to large suburban home. In no particular order:
Full-time daycare/preschool for both kids (roughly 8 am-5 pm) (year round except 2 weeks off in august and week between xmas and new years)
Biweekly house cleaners
Weekly lawn mowing/leaf blowing (and once annual “spring cleanup”/mulching and twice annual leaf collection)
Grocery delivery (occasionally, through Instacart)
Weekly Meal kit delivery (Blue Apron) – this doesn’t save time on cooking, but does save time/stress on meal planning and shopping
Approx. 2x/month free babysitting from family (two local grandmas, one local uncle and his wife)
When we moved into this house, hired movers to pack and move us, and also hired a small business with two women for ~10 hours to help unpack and organize. Best money ever spent.
DINKs here. We started doing grocery delivery last year and now do pickup. We don’t have regular assistance but hired out some big yard jobs (weed cleanup every other year, occasional mowing if it got away from us) and things like gutter cleaning or repairs that were out of our depth. I want to budget for a cleaning service in the next year or so.
Government lawyer with a pretty easy day job but lots of outside community commitments. Husband has his own firm with one partner. We use:
Weekly cleaning service
Weekly lawn service (mow, blow, and go)
Landscape guy on call for bigger outdoor projects
Travel agent as needed
Accountant for taxes and they’re doing a look at our retirement planning as an extra at no charge
Hubby has an investment guy — I do my own
We had a personal trainer for a long time but since COVID we’re a little gunshy about the gym so that’s on hiatus
On-site live-in manager at hubby’s rental triplex (I manage my own single family rental house)
Contractor on call for projects/repairs at the house and the rental properties
Haven’t had the kitties for very long — my son looked after them when we were gone until he moved out of state. For our next trip Hubby’s work assistants are going to trade off. We’ll see how that goes.
I order groceries online and pick them up, plus we’ve gotten weekly Blue Apron meal kits for years and still love them.
Not sure if this counts as a service, but Hubby belongs to a bunch of wine clubs so wine just magically appears in our house (actually it comes to his office because it has to be signed for).
Dry cleaning gets picked up and delivered to/from Hubby’s office.
Finally, we’ve started hiring help when we entertain and it’s been amazing!
Don’t know why my comment is in mod, but I have a pretty long list.
Married with two pre school aged kids. I have the big job (both in terms of hours and income) but spouse also works full time. We outsource a ton. I firmly believe the key to happiness (and success) is to buy back as much of your time as possible. To the post yesterday, we prioritize outsourcing over pretty much everything else (house, cars, vacations, clothing/stuff, even eating out, which we enjoy and do somewhat frequently, we are more of a find a great happy hour and order a few apps rather than a tasting menu couple). We built up to this list over many years and pretty much allocated raises to more outsourcing. Which is why we have a chef service but drive older cars.
Full time nanny with frequent-ish overtime when spouse is traveling or we both have work dinners or something. We also have a rotation of babysitters for date nights.
Weekly housekeeper who also does laundry.
Chef service that does grocery shopping and cooks. This covers dinners for the week. Spouse does grocery shopping for the rest, which includes a lot of pre made salads and the like for lunch. Spouse and nanny handle kid lunches.
Lawn care service who also usually either does or recommends things like if a tree needs to be gut back and cleaning gutters.
We have a handyman who comes by probably every other month for a few hours to go through our list of random home issues/repairs.
I do rent the runway which when mixed with a few wardrobe staples has me covered for in office days and nights out. Otherwise it’s a lot of 5-10 year old yoga pants and basic t shirts.
My assistant at work is awesome and does a lot of scheduling (mostly on the Business development front and also internal morale type things but also occasionally for substantive work meetings), travel for work (not super frequent), expenses and routing random questions like tech issues or event planning to the right folks because I can never remember who does what.
Does Peloton count as a trainer? Ha!
I really would love to hire a house manager but i don’t have the bandwidth to find and train someone at the moment. Maybe 2023…
I’ve also done some one off outsourcing like hiring organizers to organize our kitchen, pantry, some closets. So helpful.
Can I ask how much the chef service runs? I saw some clip on Instagram where it was ~$2,500 a month, including groceries. That seemed shockingly affordable to me.
Two lawyers (one biglaw and one in-house at a bank) and one preschool aged child who is in full day preschool/daycare/whatever you want to call it 5 days a week. We have two sets of healthy, active, kind, engaged grandparents within a 30 minute drive who help out on teacher workdays and date nights who are all over moon in love with their grandchild. Also fortunate that my mom and mother in law are able to coordinate teacher work days with each other and just tell me who is taking what day.
We also have a Cleaning service every other week, a meal delivery service 3-4 days a week, and weekly yard service.
Reading this makes me realize how much help I need with my personal live. I have a demanding job (in the office at least 12 hours a day Monday-Friday and often sitting in front of the laptop at least one full day each weekend but I have a full time admin and a full time assistant). However, the only assistance I have in my personal life is regular yard service and pest control. We own two homes and I do everything else, including all of the dog walking (twice a day) and all of the cleaning (and scheduling of routine maintenance) for both homes. Thank you for this post. I am going to work to outsource what I can. Having DH do anything is more stressful than doing it myself – so that is not an option. Sweet man and brilliant but otherwise somewhat scatterbrained and lacks all common sense.
Big law here and husband works demanding job for the federal government. We have live-in grandparents who provide fulltime care (and then some!). We also have a cleaning service 1/month. It is truly the best set-up I can imagine and I will be forever grateful to gma and gpa.