So my babysitter stole at least $4350 off our credit card over the period of several months. It’s a long story why we didn’t notice but we’re a farm family and that particular credit card is paid by my mother in law and she didn’t mention anything about the high bills until recently. I was going to fire her but she begged for her job and said she’d pay it back. I felt bad for her because she has cleptomania and is the single mother of a two year old son.
We agreed to keep her on and she’s supposed to pay it back by having $167 deducted from each paycheck. She makes her first payment this friday. When I told her how much she owed and how much she was going to have to pay back each paycheck I spent some time finding budgeting software that would work with her bank account (YNAB). I told her she better start budgeting carefully because she also just got a garnishment of her paycheck. She also is paying us for a car out of her paycheck. We happened to have a 2007 ford escape we had repoed from the last babysitter and she needed reliable transportation so we sold it to her.
We pay her $14.50/hr and give her plenty of hours, but she has three bills coming out of her paycheck now and she has to budget carefully to survive. I tried to impress that upon her.
Well today its almost noon and I still have no babysitter and I need to get to the office to do payroll for friday. She texted me this morning to say she had no money for gas. (Clearly she didnt budget her last paycheck like I told her to because other than food gas to get to work should be a top priority) She was going to try her old car because it had gas in it. She texts me later that she’s waiting at the storage unit for her dad to open it so she can get to the car. Then she texts me that the car doesnt run so she’s getting $20 for gas from her mom. Then she texts me that shes waiting at Menards for her mom to go on break so she can give her $20.
Theres a few problems here. $20 isn’t going to get her through until Thursday when the direct deposits go through. Its a 25 min drive to my house. Also, surely she knew before this morning that she was out of gas. This is a problem she should have spent Sunday trying to solve. She also clearly isn’t budgeting and she is clearly bad with money. She would have money for gas for example if she hadnt went out and got so drunk two weeks ago that she was puking her guts up in the morning and couldnt come to work. When my husband and I took a vacation with the kids to Deadwood a couple of months ago she came with us and we gave her $100 to go gamble and she won $3800. Wheres that money?
I’m not sure I can handle this anymore. I can’t depend on her to make it to work. I can’t be worrying about her finances, I have my own financial problems, and I can’t force her to budget. My daughter starts school soon and I’m stressed out enough about the thought of driving two hours a day just to get my daughter back and forth to school and working at the office between those times without having to worry about whether or not my babysitter is going to show up so I dont have to pack all 3 kids in the car at 7:15 in the morning.
Now she just texted me that her mom hasnt come out from her break yet and shes going to try to find somebody to jump her old car. This all should have been handled on her day off, yesterday!
