Lauren Friednash will ring in the New Year watching a sleeping toddler in Washington Heights — and cashing in big.
The city’s best-paid babysitter charges a whopping $35 per hour on New Year’s Eve.
That’s tops in New York, according to the babysitting agency Urban Sitter, which surveyed 3,000 parents.
She also gets dinner and cab fare home, plus free cable.
So while the 2-year-old’s parents hit the town to celebrate, Friednash, 29, plans to hunker down with takeout food for a quiet night looking after their son.
“It’s a night you don’t really want to skip out on as a sitter, because you can be charging time-and-a-half more than you’re typically asking for,” Friednash said.
Her $35 hourly rate is 75 percent more than the $20 she typically charges this family, for whom she’s worked for several months.
So she’ll make $210 for six hours, but the child’s parents also must cover her $19 Seamless dinner and an Uber ride home to Inwood estimated at $30 due to surge pricing.
Total tab: $259.
“It’s not a terrible way to make an hourly rate,” said Freidnash, who will forgo a night out with her boyfriend and pals in the West Village Tuesday night.
New Yorkers pay more for babysitting on the last night of the year than parents in every US city except San Francisco, according to Urban Sitter: an average of $18.49 for one child and $20.28 for two.
But Big Apple sitters are tough to find on New Year’s Eve, prompting desperate parents to pony up the perks.
“Since it’s NYE we would also offer dinner and a car home or the equivalent money if you want to take the subway,” one sitter-seeker wrote on the agency’s site.
Samantha Gardner, 29, landed a $30/hour gig on the Upper East Side watching a 3- and 1-year-old from 7 to 10:30 p.m. “This is the amount that is worth my time, otherwise I am going to go out and hang out with my friends and do something for me,” said Gardner.
Red Hook couple Sara Marentette, 46, and husband Matt Nighswander, 48, hired a sitter to watch their four kids, ages 5 to 11, while they attend a daytime wedding Dec. 31 at a Chelsea apartment. Even though the couple will be home at 6 p.m., hours before the ball drops, they still had to pay up for a sitter: $30 an hour. The rate was set by Pinch Sitters babysitting agency.
“We would never pay $30 an hour, except it’s for a wedding,” Marentette said, adding that she thinks it’s a “fair” price.
Some parents are opting to go out for cocktails, but ring in the New Year at home — as a concession for “younger babysitters” who “want to babysit early and get out by 10 and then go to their party,” said Anna Fader, CEO of the blog Mommy Poppins.
“That’s kind of a hack they do,” she said. “It’s really more about the fact young babysitters don’t want to babysit, so they will agree as long as they can get out and go out.”