I’m a 3 year electrical apprentice and a Full time college student. Recently my grandmother had bought a house with her new boyfriend after divorcing my grandfather. The entire house was gutted and needed new electrical, as the previous electrical in the house was old and had shown signs damage to the wires. I had gone out to look at the job and we decided everything just needed to be redone. While I was there, I hooked up their furnace temporarily and demoed some old wiring that was gonna be replaced.
We had not discussed prices prior, but my dad who is an HVAC tech was charging $50 an hour for him to be there. It’s about an hour’s drive to their house from where I live, and I’ve been putting my own gas’s in my tank. When we talked prices my grandmother was only willing to pay me $250 for \~12 hours of work. I had mentioned that I was charging 1.5x my hourly wage which would be $35 an hour since I’m paying for gas, wear on my truck, and time I won’t be home on the weekends, since I’m at college and I only get to see my girlfriend on the weekends. Each trip to her house was $40 in gas and shes now refusing to pay for traveling time. Now only wanting to pay for 7 hours of work at $35 an hour. Which is somewhere \~$250. I told her I’ve spent $80 in gas money just driving out there and that only making $170 profit is not fair for what I’m doing. I understand it’s family, but this is starting to effect my mental health as being in college and only working about 8 hours a week leaves me with not very much money. She has recently been trying to guilt trip me into doing it cheaper as well.