Money and time

The Washington Post recently offered a series of e-mails devoted to making “A Better Week.” The advice offered therein is fairly obvious: for instance, batch your notifications; schedule recurring activities.

The suggestion that caught my interest: “Buy back your time.” And the example of buying back time that caught my interest is the most upscale of four:

If you can budget $50 a week: You could try a monthly home cleaning service and outsource the deeper cleaning. You could plan to have a few friends over that night, while your place is looking spiffy. If you’re a parent, you could pay for a babysitter and have a few hours to yourself or with your partner.

It so happens that I read this bit of advice not long before reading this item from Inside Higher Ed :

Columbia College in Chicago took down a job ad seeking a housekeeper for the institution’s president after Columbia employees applied for the position.

Members of the United Staff of Columbia College union applied for the housekeeping job at Kwang-Wu Kim’s home, which is owned by the college, amid contract negotiations with the college. The union’s current contract expired in 2018.

“While President Kim is looking for help cleaning his home, those of us who support Columbia students every day are out actively looking for a second or even third income so we can keep our families afloat and pay our bills,” Craig Sigele, president of USCC, said in a statement. “We don’t have the luxury of hiring housekeepers. We are struggling to survive.”

President Kim’s yearly compensation, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education: $635,391.

United Staff of Columbia College has a website.

A related post
Income disparity in higher ed

[I remember as a child of the working-class being astonished that some faculty colleagues paid people to clean their houses. Other Post suggestions: paying $5 to $10 for grocery delivery and $20 a week for a laundry service. The Post’s free way to buy back time: swapping lunch-making with a friend one day a week. Which saves time how exactly?]