When I was facing a financial hardship that threatened the stability of my family, I desperately needed to work more and felt compelled to reach out to those I trusted to watch my kids, despite feeling guilty for asking for free help.
When I was facing a lack of time that was hurting my business, I finally arranged carpools to reduce the two hours a day I was driving back and forth to my kids’ school, despite feeling like a burden for bothering other parents with texts, calls and emails to keep up with all of our changing schedules. These challenges led to the idea to create MomSub, an app where moms from the same friend group, school or neighborhood could easily help each other with care and rides for their kids. MomSub takes the old-fashioned concept of a babysitting co-op and modernizes it into a high-tech mobile phone application.
The price of Momsub
When I describe MomSub to those in the business world, their initial reaction is almost always the same: Why don’t you charge more than $1 per child per hour?
They tell me people won’t value a service if it’s priced too low. But when I ask if they ever left the store without their groceries because their credit cards were denied (like I did), they stare at me blankly.
When I ask if they ever endured stressful situations because they felt guilty asking for help (like I did), they shrug. I think they don’t know what it’s like to wish they could work and keep more than half their paycheck or take a break from kids knowing they earned it by helping another mom.
Despite many roadblocks, I’m proud the app is nearly finished and the early version is available to a select group of testers in the Chicago area.
You can create a profile to access the childcare trading features, or you can look through the list of other moms on the app first. My vision for MomSub is to encourage a mother to invite another mom’s children to her house to earn credits -- 1 credit per kid per hour-- which she can use when she wants someone to watch her own kids.
My mission for MomSub is to provide moms a way to access nearly free childcare, because moms pay for care using credits they’ve earned -- in addition to $1 per child per hour that goes to run the app.
And that’s a price that we all agree can go a long way towards helping us get a handle on our finances or just save a little money while contributing to our community.