Latest / The Family Teams Podcast / Ep. 329 | Interviewing People to Live With Your Family

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Ep. 329 | Interviewing People to Live With Your Family · The Family Teams Podcast

• 0:00
  And I think that just totally locks everything into place in a lot better, healthier way that just prevents a ton of the very classic little landmines that people step in when they kind of invite someone in the home to live with them and work and stuff.
• 0:14
  What's up, guys? Welcome to Five Minute Fatherhood. So we had a good conversation in our Facebook group. Nathan asked, Jeremy, I know episode 17, which is, man, going way back, Nathan. Wow. You must be starting at the beginning. Five Minute Fatherhood was on hiring help in the home. I would love to hear an episode on finding, screening, interviewing, and the language and practical parts of the process.
• 0:38
  So one of the things that Jeff and I have both done and have really tried to figure out is, what does it look like when you're starting to have more children than maybe just you and your spouse can handle on your own? Is there a good way to sort of begin to hire somebody to assist the household? So I'll give you a couple thoughts, and then Jeff, I'd love to hear your thoughts. One is that...
• 1:02
  We like to call this person a household assistant as opposed to a nanny or something like that. So because the idea is we don't know exactly what jobs we're going to give you. They're going to be jobs that help the household as a whole. It's not necessarily all going to be related directly to watching the kids so that we can go do something better or something else. So that's one thought.
• 1:27
  Um, the second one that, that really, uh, is a big part of our process, um, was to, we, we often, most people can't afford to pay something like this hourly. So what they will do, most people will set up a room in their house and say, in exchange for the room, um, you will, uh, help our family, uh, with, with like cleaning and, you know, sometimes watching the kids and doing some errands.
• 1:52
  Um, but I'll tell you one thing that's really, really helped us, uh, and it's helped a lot of other families. Mm.
• 1:58
  If you do that and simply say... Dang it, you're about to take mine. You're about to take mine. Am I? Are you sure? This is my tip. I learned it from you. I learned it from you. I will sweep in and save this one if you screw it up. But I will hand off the baton and see where you go. Are you sure? Are you sure? I'll add on. I'll add on. But yeah. Okay. Let's just make sure it's the one. But it's a good one. It's the one. Okay, guys. This is a big one. Jeff and I both are very passionate about it.
• 2:23
  So what has happened in the past is people have said, in exchange for living here, you're going to help our family. And what's happened so many times when they've done that is like the first week, oftentimes it's a single woman. She'll help out the family maybe 15, 20 hours a week.
• 2:40
  And then over the course of two or three months, it'll be less and less and less. You'll be busier and busier and busier. It gets really confusing. You're like, oh my gosh, I have a roommate living in my house. Okay, so there's a better way to set this up, which is to say, this room costs $500 a month, let's say. That $500 a month, you can work off at, you can even make it generous, $20 an hour or something, you know, by doing things for our household.
• 3:08
  And if there's something left over, so if you don't work enough hours for the household, then you'll owe us that 50 bucks rent or 100 bucks rent or whatever. But that keeps everybody honest and on the same page about what the vision is. You guys need help and you need somebody who's gonna want to help. There needs to be a financial...
• 3:24
  clear financial component to incentivize them to continue to do that. And if you do that, then it tends to work out well. Another part of this is if they get really busy,
• 3:39
  and they're only helping five or 10 hours a week for a little bit of time, then you're going to get more rent for that room. So, yeah. Was that the one, Jeff? That was the one. But it just aligns the incentives right, you know, and it just puts everything in the right way. Because, yeah, the bad incentives that start to happen in almost any room living exchange for living situation is –
• 4:04
  they are no longer incentivized or motivated to work to the ceiling of what you want them because they already have the room. And so it's very easy for it to just be like, you know, well, I'm have a room either way. And so I need to go see it just, it kind of messes with, there's creates a lot of tension of like, Oh, I need to, I want to go see my friends tonight. Yeah.
• 4:19
  you know, but we need work. And so what the money does is you're kind of basically, yeah, it's like you're, it's like, you're kind of playing with fake invisible money at some sense of like, you can wash this away every month. It doesn't have to, we don't have to do anything, you know, but this is how it's going to wash away. And I think that just totally locks everything into place in a lot better, healthier way that just prevents a ton of the very classic little landmines that people step in when they kind of invite someone in the home to live with them and work and stuff. Awesome.
• 4:44
  And I would say to you, Nathan, that you talked about screening, interviewing. This is this. I really do. And a lot of times you just want to know. It's so much easier if you know the person, if you have somebody in common that you can that knows them, that you can talk to about about their character, because the last thing you need if you're drowning in your household is somebody to move in with you. That's a huge project.
• 5:08
  from just an energy perspective. If it ends up taking up a lot more time and energy, then it's really freeing you up. That's obviously gonna be a big problem. So there are some people, by the way, that you want to move in that are a lot of work because you feel like it's a part of your family's mission to make disciples by giving a place for that person. I love that. Just know what you're looking for. If you're looking for somebody to really take a lot of the burden off your family,
• 5:37
  then you're going to need somebody who's fairly low maintenance and you're going to need to do the hard work of screening, looking at references, having, you know, hard conversations up front, that kind of stuff. So, but great question. And I really encourage you, a lot of you guys to try to figure this out because for so many people, this is, this is the difference between having a small and large family is them figuring out how to get enough help to be able to handle all the physical demands of having a larger family.