Minimum £72k salary required to allow me to take home same as my 19 year old nanny

I don't understand all these nannies / childminders earning £2 or £3 an hour. That's not even minimum wage!

ah well that's thing we can only afford to own & run one car................... Nannynick there are a few streets that are really bad for parking - Alexandra Road must be the worst. Fortunately having an ex-council property, complete with lovely view of hideous Surrey Towers we can use the resdients car park! Also we didn't buy a house iin Alexandra road due to the lack of parking!

TBH most 3 beds are nearer the £280k mark but there are cheaper things around but it does mean having to go further for a school etc - and just try not to think about secondry schools. I really hope dd1 gets into Christs Hospital otherwise Jubilee High bottom of the league table here we come.....

It really is all about money and house prices and we are stuck here for as long as I can see.

buffysmum - I would so love to move somewhere like that. Our jobs aren't in Central London, they're in the commuter belt so we have many fewer options commuting-wise.

I had looked at all kinds of areas within half an hour's drive of here, but over the past 3 years they have all gone out of reach.

Mind you, we do like it here, even though it seems perenially unfashionable. But I really appreciate your kind thought of helping out.

Though some roads in Addlestone are a nightmare to for car parking. So not great if you are a more than 1 car family in my view. As ever, it depends on where you live, I'm sure place I babysit in Addlestone is not representative of the place as a whole - though it could be!

Cloudhopper tell people to move to Addlestone - can commute to London and 3 beds start from £200k, nicer 3 bed semis are £260 plus but yes it's cheap for the SE! Oh and you can pretend you live in Weybridge!

HabsGirl, the figures were very specific to Knackereds' own circumstances.

Nanny is paid £10 per hour gross, for 50 hours per week. Nanny is therefore on £500 per week, which is 26,000 per year gross.
Nannies takehome pay is therefore £19,340.54 (2006/7 tax year, single person)

Knackered says it costs £28,500 to employ the nanny including employers NI payment.
Therefore the amount that Knackered needs to takehome, to have the SAME take home pay after paying for the childcare is:
£28,500 (cost of employing nanny) + £19,340.54 (nannies take home) = £47,840.54

This can then be reverse calculated so that you get the salary needed to have £47,840.54 as takehome pay.
Worked out that £1381.16 per week, £71,820.32 will give a net pay of £47840.83 for tax year 2006/7. So that's close enough.

You can play with figures yourself at: Listen To Taxman - Free UK PAYE Tax Calculator

Please remember that not all nannies are paid £500 per week, and not all employers of nannies want to have remaining from their take home pay packet, the same amount as their nanny has in their take home pay packet.

The first lesson is that before you agree to marry someone yo uhavea conversaion about parents, work and child care. You also do due diligence on his upbringing and analyse him, look at his parents and their relationsihps and check he expects to clean as many toilets as you over the next 20 years. Also pick someone who is on a par with you in terms of income and fitness too. You can't easily hoover if you weigh 30 stone.

Second lesson when planning a baby you discuss childcare in advance as if either of you might be finding and recruiting a nanny or nursery. It is not women's work. Lots of men go round nurseries or check out childminders.

The principal problem sadly lies with many women who won't give power ot men in these areas, who like to feel they have a competence men don't have as that feeds their little egos and who think that they and they alone on the planet know best how to handle little Johnny and don't let his father near him to change his nappy in a slightly different way. These women have only themselves to blame.

Then if you decide say to have a nanny then give half the list to him and half to you. Hopefully he's been the one looking up the nanny agencies and asking his male colleagues too. Then you each share the ringing round. Make sure he is there at all interviews.

Next rule - never be the one to be at home last and home first. Alternate or whatever. Try to avoid as a woman being the one who gets home first - that is the least fair option for women.

Xenia, thankyou. I was just about to say that paying for childcare enables not just you, but your partner too, to work. Therefore, you need to compare the cost to BOTH of your incomes, otherwise you are saying that if you didn't work, childcare would cost nothing.

Xenia, can I work at the school? Oh, and how old does DD have to be to attend?

Is this going to be a girls only school based on your island?

like it Xenia!

I could do with going to your school sometimes!

There used to be child tax allowances per children and a tax allowance the husband (or wife) could transfer to the other if the other didn't work.

It's not a double tax it's a treble tax. You earn X. It is taxed at 41% (or most of it if you're a higher earner) including NI which is uncapped as to 1% now. Out of the taxed income, the - the 59% left you pay the nanny's net pay. You also pay her tax and NI. You then also pay the employer's NI too.

You of course is not you alone. You pay half of all that and the child's father pays the other half. Any mother who thinks childcare costs are something she 100% bears need to go on the Xenia Feminism School.

Oh Eleusis, thank god for that!
I thought i was the only one sitting here with a expression on my face!
I'm sorry Habsgirl, but if you meant it in jest, i didn't really see the funny side to it. Our nanny is a very wonderful person, who cares for our children and is vital in helping us achieve the work:life balance that all parents are striving for. Very far from the husband stealing, thieving, slob that you jokingly (hopefully) imply.

Habsgirl - the example was how much you would have to earn to have the same disposable income as your nanny, rather than just to cover her costs. As far as I recall it wasn't a rant that nannies earn too much, it was just an eye opener about the reality of women returning to work and the financial benefits they receive for that.

Anyway, you have demonstrated that to afford a nanny, you need well above the average income for a woman in any region, even expensive areas. And that is just to break even and make a net income of nil. Not a penny of that 37k do you receive in compensation for working.

I assume that anyone below that income threshold would therefore be precluded from having a nanny. I don't suppose having a nanny has ever been that viable except for fairly high earners. However, if you have upwards of 2 children, it is possibly your most cost effective option once you take into account after school clubs, school holidays, private nursery places, childminders and all the other wrap around care needed to hold down a successful job.

If I ever earned that sort of money, and did the sort of job in my sector that would be needed to earn that much, I would expect to get a better net financial reward for all the stress and responsibility. So I will end my career progression right here for now. And that is why women probably don't get the better jobs in this society. It's just not worth it unless you are incredibly driven for success for its own sake.

buffys mum - i agree with your point about number of children. And yet for many people, the days of 150k houses are long gone and in the dim and distant past. Here you are looking at 300k minimum. For those who say move to a cheaper area, it isn't possible. Further into London is much more expensive, but further out gets you into commuter land and again is more expensive. We are in a pocket of 'cheapness' in the SE.

"(4) the abortion after DH gets drunk one night - £4k"

Excuse me?!

Your equation is missing out on the part about the parent wanting to have the same take-home pay. You have only worked out what it costs to pay the nanny and have 0 left.

Part of what I'm saying is that perhaps we should go ahead and have children when in reality we just can't afford them because we can't afford a big enough home or because the cost of childcare is prohibitive to returning to work to afford the cost of the home you need in the first place. I am very grateful we were able to buy when did, escpecially as we already had children. Had we only bought a 2 bedroomed house then (much nicer than where we are now), I guess we wouldn't now have 4 dc.

Still think it all goes back to the government massively contributing to keeping the house prices and rental prices artificially high. Does anyone actually know what we can do about that???????

Can we do some basic maths here, please?

Say nanny earns £80 net per day. Times 5 = £400 net per week. Add on the tax, and you're looking at about £540 per week, or £28,080 per annum.

To pay nanny £28,080, we need to earn (before tax) £37,110.

So where does £72k come from?

Oh, I know...

(1) cost of taking her on holiday - £5k pa
(2) phone calls to Australia - £20pw = £1k pa
(3) paying her babysitting, and the cost of the theatre tickets we buy when she's babysitting - £10kpa
(4) the abortion after DH gets drunk one night - £4k
(5) the cleaner to tidy the mess that nanny leaves each night - £6k
(6) my lost earning time spent posting on mumsnet - £3k
(7) upgrading to broadband to use mumsnet - £1k
(8) replacing the makeup and clothes that mysteriously go missing when nanny is around - £5k

There we go. £72k easy.

Yeah, that's right up there w/assuming that all people with debt have it because they spend frivolously on luxuries.

When in fact a huge percentage of them carry debt because it costs so much just to get by here.

someone (can't remeber who) posted about 'people mortgaged themselves to the max' and implied that they were being greedy and tkaing on more than they could afford.

I think thats another dammed myth. Of course there will be the odd person who has a huge mortgage and lives in a house with spare rooms, but I think the majoirty of people are just trying to get a half way decent house nr half way decent services and commutable to a half way decent job!

Around here if you bought 5 years ago you would have got a 3 bed house with small garden/yard in a GOOD neighbourhood, nr GOOD schools for about £50k. Now its triple that at £150k

Okay you can find the odd two bed house for about £120k but I have a hell of alot of sympathy for anyone who is trying to buy now and who is planning on more than one child - what should they do? stay in their 'budget' and only take on the £120k mortgage (still a pretty huge hunk of cash) or 'stretch themselves to the max' and go for the 3 bed because houses wont' get any cheaper and if they want a 2nd or 3rd kid they want 3 bedrooms. Remember salaries never go up in line wiht house prices so they could be faced with the additional expense and hassle of moving again if they want a bigger house in 2/3 years.

We're 'lucky' cos we got in halfway through the boom!

Its very easy to throw insults at people who you think are living in 'posh' houses or areas, and moaning about the costs. but the restrictions on work are very real. We'd love to move but until I have finished my training its just not viable, DH trained 'on the job' and so doesn't have the kind of paper qualifications that would enable him to get work elsewhere. Also we can both walk/bike to work here and the chances of that happening for similar salaries elsewhere is pretty slim.

I'd love to see more people moving 'up north' but the jobs are scarcer, I've changed job sectors precisisly because the job I was in was losing alot of the regional focus and most jobs were in London, manchester etc.

re Nanny costs: if you have 2 kids or more at preschool age, or if you have no fmaily back up and a sickly kid a nanny certianly can be the most cost effective option. we've had a nanny for DS cos he gets ill so often - nursery used to send him home and I lost a job over it. that lost job 'cost' me £2,000. A nanny enabled us to give him better one-one care which he needed when poorly whilst still letting me work (which for our fmaily is very important) and because she was doing the exact hours i needed rather than the nursery which had to be paid for a full 7am-6pm day even if he went 8am-2pm she worked out more cost effective after the first month.

Part of the awful reality of areas of expensive housing is that you really do need to buy a house etc before having children. I am so very grateful I bought 5 years ago when I was pregnant with dd2 otherwise I could not have gone on to have another 2. Really if the government sorted out the housing cost problems then a lot of the other financial would not be the same IMO!

Hey, I put......in my sentences, granted more than 3 but still nooooooooo!! no clubbing people who do dots with Lavendarr that would just be an insult.

very observant bobsmum!

Don't get me wrong Bozza - I'm not trying to get at you. Nor anyone who has managed to avoid the housing nightmare that we have got ourselves into recently.

I'm just trying to illustrate that those who weren't as lucky as to have bought a house 5 years ago are now facing huge overheads. These people do exist.

So a salary of 100k sounds like a mind-boggling amount of money - but if you didn't buy a house and you haven't secured cheap childcare it probably does cover basic costs.

Think about the logic of someone earning 100k and living in the houses I posted earlier, and still not having an awful lot beyond 'basic costs'. It sounds crazy, but it isn't.