Is $10 an hour a fair wage for mowing the lawn?

I have asked my husband for the past two months to mow the lawn. He is "too busy".

I do not mow, due to an irrational fear of the lawn mower. (Yes, it's stupid.)

Is $10 an hour a reasonable amount of money to pay someone who will mow a 1/3 acre lawn? It usually takes about two hours. Let's face it, I'm willing to forgo a treat a couple of times a month to pay someone else to do it; I'm tired of fighting with Mr. Missy Vixen about this.

What are your thoughts?

kick your husband's lazy fucking ass or do it yourself

I realize it's going to cost more than $10 an hour. ;-)

The grass is getting so long now that I'm afraid we're going to find some kind of animal preserve in it. The anal-retentive next-door-neighbor is probably having a shit fit, too.

:eyes:

I've seen you kick major ass right here on DU when the fat phobes who consider themselves "progressive" rear their ugly heads in certain threads - yes INDEED

I aspire to be as effective an ass-kicker as you are, and I say that with all sincerity.

Plus, I hate bullies, and there are so many fat people who have been bullied their whole lives. I'll put on my steel-toed boots any time for them.

I can't wait to see the look on my husband's face when he meets the new lawn mower, especially when he finds out there are other consequences.

:mad:

THAT'S THE SPIRIT, GIRL! :D

:rofl:

It's not my lawn!!

It would cost more if you get a landscaper who weeds, prunes and fertilizes but if you just pay a neighbor's kid to mow it would be a great little job.

I'm hoping some enterprising high school student will want to take me up on it. Then again, there was a job posting about a month ago for poop-cleaning at a local kennel for $10 an hour; 200 people applied for it.

I'm crossing my fingers for someone that needs the money, and I am happy to provide cold water and a tip.

.
...I would take $20 under the table for two hours of lawnmowing.
.
I think one of the previous posters is right -- maybe we're completely
out of the loop, but I think you would get a faithful "regular" high
school student who would schedule you for whatever regular trims you
would like.
.

It's a garden variety gas-powered thing.

My mom was so afraid we were going to injure ourselves as kids (and my dad broke his glasses re: a rock in the lawn while mowing once,) I was NOT allowed to touch the lawn mower. I'm still afraid of it as an adult. Yes, it is STUPID.

:eyes:

oh... and emptying the diswasher almost daily. lol

that is his pay jobs, then of course he has the jobs that we all do just cause we live together, or his mess.

i think 20 for a high school kid good. if it is under two hours, he made more than ten. BUT i find it hard to find people willing ot be paid to do the work. i have tried, several times, over a period of time.

He sounds dependable. Plus, I know he comes from a good progressive household. ;-)

Good job, Mom!

part time. he will turn 15 soon. it might just be mowin some lawns

His parents lent him the money for a good mower as an "investment" in his business. They made him pay them back out of his earnings, and he STILL made a pretty good amount of money. He's in college now, so he's not around for as much mowing.

Another business that's slightly less fun but really taking off: Pooper-scooping people's backyards once a week. There are a couple of companies here that are making a fortune doing it.

i havent been able to convince them that is their job yet... scoopin up poop.... in their back yard.

he has been doing our yard, this is the third year. so i think he is good enough he can do for other too.

Hell, I'd do it. (I put horses in the yard to do mine - know anybody with a couple sheep?)

Maybe I should look into renting some goats for a day.

I also just got an e-mail from someone who used to work for Home Depot in the gardening department. If he's okay with the wage and he's dependable, he's got the job.

they will eat your flowers and shrubs more than sheep

$10/hour is good - if he doesn't work out you might want to switch it to $20 - 25 for the JOB so you don't get stuck with somebody who takes a half day to do it

another thought is to suggest a push mower - great exercise and not anywhere near as scary as gas or electric

.
...and the other is that my brother had goats on his farm to sell their milk
to local health food stores. His "town" consisted of one intersection on a
back state highway -- one empty corner with a huge field used for sailplanes,
his farmhouse, a gas station/general store, and a bank on the fourth corner.
.
The bank manager spent THREE entire weekends (his off time) putting in these
beautiful flower beds around the bank.
.
When finished, he went inside for no longer than half-an-hour and when he came
out, my brother's goats had broken through their fencing and had completely
annihilated all those beautifully hand-manicured flower beds.
.
Took my brother quite a while just to get back on that manager's "kinda" shit list.
.

yeah goats are ... uh...interesting. We have had the occasional dumped goat here, and once we found a whole herd. Funny to see (and have a picture somewhere) my strictly COWboy cousin herding goats horseback.

It's more expensive than someone mowing the lawn, but we could take care of the blackberries that are eating the backyard, too.

http://www.thegoatlady.org/Residential-Rentals.html

Even better, they're in our hometown!

:)

Would you be able to get someone who would do it for that price? Absolutely.

Can you afford to pay more? What are your personal hourly rates for work you do? What I'm getting at is if you pull 30-40 or more per hour, and you are paying someone a fraction of that, and they'll take it at that price because they are desperate for the work, the fairness of it becomes a matter of personal beliefs about capitalism.

Now if there are hundreds of trees and doo-dads they have to maneuver around or rocks and steep hills - yeah, but for the run of the mill 1/3 acre suburban house it is fine.

Are people supposed to base what they pay someone else to do on what they themselves make (for different work)? Not understanding your point.

You know how some CEOs make over a hundred times what their employees make? I never thought that was fair - even though I might think their employees wages were fair if the CEO earned something in the same ballpark as their employees. For me, the salary of the employer does make a difference when determining fairness of wages.

I was going more from the merit of the job. Not that a large corp. is all that comparable to a homeowner hiring day labor.

>the fairness of it becomes a matter of personal beliefs about capitalism.<

The first mowing will cost me more because the lawn is fairly high. I'm prepared to pay for it. We're not rich, but we can share. We want to make sure the person who's mowing for us feels they've been fairly compensated, and they'll come back again.

The second mowing (and mowing thereafter,) is probably an hour and a half work, tops. Here's a question: Is it better to put some money into the pocket of someone local who needs it, or should I hire a high school student that's working towards an iPad? This is a four-hours-a-month job.

What's a fair wage to mow a lawn?

because I don't know your income.

I am presuming your husband works if you can afford to hire out for lawncare, and I have no idea (and don't wish to know) his salary. But I'm saying the amount you earn (you being family income even if you work in the house) would affect what I would consider fair.

I'd say the same if you were hiring a wedding photographer. If you were a young couple just starting out, struggling to find full time work or pay your bills, I'd expect a wedding photographer to get paid maybe a few hundred bucks because it's all you can afford. If you were someone like Oprah, I'd think you were kind of a cheap ass if you paid a wedding photographer a few hundred bucks. It's all relative.

More than fair what planet do you live on? It shouldn't matter if she makes $15 or $100 per hour herself

Plus lunch and soft drinks if they work that long.

Ours is a 1/4 acre, we would have to pay minimum $35 (with year-long contract) for cut, trim and edge. We pay $20 for our teenagers to do it and they gripe, but it's only an hour and a half worth of work.

At least out here. If you've got a big yard a bigger crew shows up, and they still get done pretty fast.

I paid a guy 60 bucks to mow and edge about an 50 x 75 area roughly, maybe less. But he is very meticulous. Lost of trees and sidewalk to edge. For the empty 50 x 150 lot I paid 50.00.

For the whole thing at one time, probably 100.00

I hate to mow and he is awesome. He will go over and over the grass til it is completely smooth - no scraggly edges showing. Of course my grass is nice - I keep it well fed and weed free.

I paid a guy 60 bucks to mow and edge about an 50 x 75 area roughly, maybe less. But he is very meticulous. Lost of trees and sidewalk to edge. For the empty 50 x 150 lot I paid 50.00.

For the whole thing at one time, probably 100.00

I hate to mow and he is awesome. He will go over and over the grass til it is completely smooth - no scraggly edges showing. Of course my grass is nice - I keep it well fed and weed free.

Why do you have 1/3 of an acre as lawn?

Why not plant fun things?

:thumbsup:

We have a tree out front; there's a patch of lawn around it. The back yard is just lawn. It's all flat, so the person mowing our lawn isn't dodging a lot of shrubbery or landscaping stuff.

The dog hangs out in the back yard, so I'll be pooper-scooping.

Maybe the best solution is to buy a push mower. I don't care about edging and all that. Mostly, I just wanted the grass knocked down to a better level.

when I moved here, the yard was horrible, but the house was one that I've envisioned living in all my life. One of my first memeories is driving by it with my parents and just loving the ivy covered stone chimney and all the big pecan trees.

Well, finally realized my dream and if I never do anything else in my life, I will die happy.

Its been fun getting the yard all spruced up again. It had been a rental house for years and no one bothered with the yard. It was rented by people I like to call "yard parkers". They treat the whole place like one big parking lot.

I just finished my morning rounds of my "estate". I look at all my flowers and trees to make sure all is right in their little world. I have a nice veggie garden. I planted an olive tree and avocado tree this year.

I don't mind the veggie gardening and I used to put together lots of potted or hanging flower baskets, but now I just buy those. So much easier.

Don't really like to mow, so the lawn guy is so worth it.

P.S. I have a reel mower, and that thing is going to the yard sale in May. It's kind of hard using that thing - would rather use a gas mower, but that is a pain also.

I mow the small lawns here for a little extra money and I charge $10 each time, but it only takes me 20 minutes or so. The reason I charge $10 is because some of these people were paying lawn care places $20 a week for mowing whether it really needed it or not. I live here and if the grass needs to be cut, I mow it and if it doesn't, I don't.

I sure I could get away with charging more, but I'm not mercenary about it.
$10/hour for 1/3 acre lawn would depend a lot whether it's a riding or push mower.

Especially if you don't pay for the gas.

If you pay for the gas it is still on the low side except maybe for some kid who will do a crap job.

paid my nephew $15 and provided the gas.

it's by the job...

when it's me doing the mowing. My time is worth far more than that. I hope that this helps.

:hide: Please don't send Skittles after me...

I only send Skittles after the deserving. ;-) :hug:

The person's using our mower, our gas, and at the very least, they'll get ice water and snacks. I've also heard from people that live in our hometown, so they're not traveling a long distance to get here, either.

I spent a little time last night looking at non-gas or motorized push lawn mowers, too.

Dang, I'm living in the wrong part of the country ;)

:hug:

And, they were far more strenuous, and required a B.S. degree. And, I had to do my work in areas full of venomous snakes and other unpleasantries. Ten bucks an hour is a good wage, IMO--unless the person doing it uses their own mower and gas. Then, they should get more.

That would motivate your husband to do it himself.

:rofl:

a couple of times i paid someone $15 to cut my tiny lawn which takes 15 minutes to cut

they've never come back and it's been FIFTEEN years

no, $10 an hour is not the going wage for lawn care, at least not in these parts, try $40...

when I first moved into my house (this was last July) and was waiting for my lawnmower to be repaired charged $40.

It takes me about a bit over an hour - the lot is 52 x 150. Not sure about trimming, if that's added in, as I still haven't gotten my trimmer working.

It was a tiny yard and it only took me 10 minutes, so that comes out to be $30/hour. Of course if she had a lawn service do it they would have charged $20-30 to do the job and would have had it done just as quickly and would mow it every Friday whether it really needed it or not.

hired an illegal alien. Uh, you don't live in Arizona do you?

My lawn is .30 acre. He runs his lawn chopper around for an hour and has his son trim.

I have a strange fear of lawn mowers too. Something happened with a lawn mower back in 1976 that I still can't talk about.

Unless you live in SF on one of those lots with eight feet between houses, I'd start with $20.

How big is the yard, how high is the grass, and how much stuff is in the yard.

Tall grass and a lot of stuff in the yard makes the job harder.