Dear Moneyist,
I am a former creative director for a global ad agency and now a freelance writer who bills at $125 an hour. My husband owns a graphic design firm that bills at $175 per hour.
Last year, my in-laws, who have always been deeply involved in social-justice issues, asked my husband and I to help them standardize and expand a successful local program they had founded. The idea was to allow the program to spread across the country and create a lasting legacy.
My husband is close with his parents as am I, and we were excited and honored to join in their endeavor. (For years we have provided off-the-cuff advice about ways to build it.)
But it was, of course, a crushing amount of work. We agreed that it would involve creating an attractive 25-week curriculum, website, newsletter, PowerPoint presentations, 30-plus supplementary materials and social-media campaigns, as well as taking numerous meetings and traveling to various locations to establish partnerships. The good news was that all of this fell well within our areas of expertise.
Understanding what a huge amount of time and energy this would take, and that we are both working full-time, my in-laws insisted on paying us for our efforts. (They are well-to-do.)
Also see: My stepfather and mother pooled resources to buy a home. My mom died in 2003 and he just passed away. His kids are selling their house — am I entitled to anything?[1]
After a fair amount of discussion, my husband and I settled on the lowest amount we could justify. We invoiced them for 50% of our hours at 25% of our usual hourly rate, and we did not bill them for meetings or travel. (Reality has intruded and we’ve netted out at billing more like 30% of our hours at 10% of our rate, but that’s OK.)
The bottom line: We decided to charge $10,000 — that’s what I alone would usually charge for creating a single website.
We spent an exhausting but very happy and productive year pulling it all together, working nights, on the weekends and through “vacations.” Between the two of us we clocked more than 1,000 hours. But our efforts almost immediately paid off: We will be launching with a major national partner soon. Three other large nonprofits have shown interest as well. So yay!
However, when my husband’s three siblings — all over age 60 and financially secure — heard that we were getting paid to do the work, all hell broke loose. Each demanded to be paid the same amount and acted ugly to us in different ways.
No, they didn’t help in any way. No, they hadn’t done any equivalent work for which they had not been compensated. But they insisted it “wasn’t fair” and raised such a ruckus that the parents, disgusted and hurt, capitulated and cut them each a...