To think nannies are overpaid?

[Fr0thandBubble]

Inspired by another thread about how much people earn. Plenty of nannies earning £50-£60k per year apparently and one on £120k!

Our nanny has just left us (youngest about to start reception, thank goodness) and we were paying her nearly £50k for 8:30am-6:30pm Mon-Fri. She would also pick up quite a bit of extra money babysitting evenings and weekends L. She didn’t even have to do anything from 9-12 each morning while my youngest was at nursery - and then only had my youngest to look after until school pick-up time when she had my eldest too. And nannies these days are very reluctant to help out with any cleaning or ironing so she really was doing nothing much at all in those hours.

She was lovely but has no qualifications and is in her early thirties.

It seems wrong to me that nannies are getting paid more than most teachers when they don’t need any qualifications. What do you think?!

I was a nanny for 20yrs now a Maternity nurse

Why did you chose an unqualified Nannies. Plenty of nneb and nancw btec etc for that salary

Nanny does sound a tad lazy. She can do children’s laundry and tidy rooms and batch cook

But also deserves some spare time as nannies don’t get a lunch break

Yes compared to someone in a Manual job earning nmw Nannies can earn a lot £12/15g per hour. Sometimes more

R.E.M. that nanny makes your life easier. Means you can go to work
And do your job knowing kids are safe and looked after

Stay at home with your children full time, take a year off and then you might realize how hard it actually is. I’ve gone from being a high flying professional to a mum, I have a nanny one day a week and work around mine, it’s hard work. I think your nanny deserves every penny she got. Kids laundry is not just a matter of throwing in a machine, mine takes forever to sort out and as for a quick sandwich lunch, just trying to get them to eat is a mission. Sorry but get a grip and be extremely grateful to have some for so long who took care of them in an environment you felt comfortable with. Not everyone can afford to go to university and get the qualifications you have got. You have a different kind of stress and 50k in London is peanuts. Plus working long hours with small children is difficult. teachers or nursery staff know what time they can clock off.

Hiya full time nanny here!!! Working in the industry for over 19years I have worked with many different types of families and dynamics. Most of these years were working in london. My rates have changed with my experience and qualifications to reflect what I bring to the table.

-I have 19+ years experience
-Combined BA in Education & Early Childhood studies
-A qualified maternity nurse and experienced twins, singles and triplet maternity nurse.
-deputy manager responsible for three crèches
-travel nanny and
-sleep trainer!!!

Having a nanny is a luxury that not all families can afford. If you are employing a nanny, they should do all child related tasks, which does not mean cleaning your bedroom or folding your smallest... however if you employ a nanny housekeeper that could be an agreement you make.

My starting salary used to be £10per hour making £500 a week. For the past 6years I have worked with High Profile families and High Net worth families. With a weekly salary 4x times the U.K. standard with the perks of 1st class Travel, own suites and drives/chefs. Double salary twice a year and my own apartment just to boast!! And name a few of the perks of my job. But these obviously come with long work hours and private life sacrifice so it’s no one sided at all.

I love my job and have enjoyed it over the years, and if there is one thing I’ll say about childcare, finding the right fit and compensating them fairly for it.

* You get what you pay for. *

I think the question is - why did you pay £50k for someone unqualified to be in charge of your children!? If she was fully trained fair enough but nothing?

Nannies are there for child raising - when did they do house work to? Unless you have an agreement for such i would have assumed it was child care only. You are also preventing any other paid work during the day as she will have to do pick ups and step in for illness, cook tea, so you have to hire her for the full day. If you wanted extra chores you should have stated in the contract or got someone qualified.

Nannies are massively overpaid, hopefully with au pair regulation after Brexit things will be better. There is a deficit of after school care, which qualified nanies don’t need to do.
But employers need be better at advertising only gross annual salaries and make it clear that they employees.

@nicegirl73

YABU having relied on nannies as a single parent to three children I believe they are worth their weight in gold and I would pay that if I could. They are basically a spare mum.

They're absolutely not. Unless you think childcare and domestic work is the sole responsibility of women. A nanny is a spare parent, not mum.

@underneaththeash

Eh? What au pair regulation is there going to be after Brexit? And why would that lead to nannies being paid less?

@bloodywhitecat

I am an NNEB qualified nursery nurse, until 15 months ago I worked as a Specialist Nursery Nurse for the NHS looking after children with complex health needs. Many of the children were on home ventilation and had oxygen therapy as well as having complex epilepsy, complex drugs regimes and many were fed via tubes. As a team we provided care so that the rest of the family could do the things that most of us take for granted as the children on our books were too poorly to even leave the family home, we also worked nights so mum and dad/carer could sleep. For that I earned the princely sum of circa £23k pa. It seems mad that I could earn double that as a nanny.

How many hours a week did you work .. ?? Nannies work on average 50/60 hours a week ...compare you hours and salary to that and find out it wouldn’t be much different ..

@roses2

YANBU - I think the going rate for a nanny is extortionate. This is why so many women are effectively forced to become SAHP because the cost of a nanny far outweighs what they earn.

Bollocks they command such a high salary because they look after our loved ones all day. Nurseries and childminders do the same and charge half at least. It’s supply and demand.

But... do they? Is your childminder available to step up in the event of an issue? At 8pm? A nanny's role is different to that of a nursery/kindy worker, or a childminder.

The clue? You take and fetch your child from them.

Your nanny (in this situation, lives in) has to be more available.

@Whatnowhey

Crikey - my daughter is a live in nanny works 4 days a week 7am to 5pm (was doing a full time Forensic Psychology degree for 3 years - just finished Upper 2.1 (Hons)) does the washing, cleaning and gets the dinner ready and is being paid £320.00 per month, yes that's right, not a typing mistake, I've not forgotten to add another digit. £320.00 per month. Oh and no student allowances. When I was working I held a very senior role in a school in London and didn't earn 50K!!

Surely you mean she's an au pair, does she have sole charge of the children ?

"8:30am-6:30pm Mon-Fri"

Those are really long hours compared to my 9-5. Not really relevant that she doesn't have anything to do during some of those hours if she has to be present at her workplace.

@whatnowhey, ty for replying. Your daughter probably shouldn't let that continue then as they really are taking the mickey.

No one is 'overpaid'. Everyone is paid what the market will bear. At any given time.

Be that the (massively over-entitled) OP of this (who, despite her highly paid, important, finger on the economic pulse, intellectually demanding, long-hours job- doesn't realise this) or her nanny.

The market has found its level. She's happy for herself, but resentful of her nanny.

You were paying over the odds. You have more money than sense 🤷‍♀️

Perhaps the OP and her DH should have thought more about their kids and less about their high powered careers if they were that dissatisfied at how much they had to pay out in childcare.

It's sort of like the controlled crying thing

Ahh yes, all the "quality research" on that one too.

@Thehop please come live with me!

50k ! I want to be a nanny !

When you know that the salaries are actually confidential, and the website only gives the most basic guide possible...

some people would faint if they knew the real salary of a Nordland nannie!

@Whatnowhey

If your daughter is a nanny, not an au pair then her friends are on very dodgy ground. They aren’t paying minimum wage and could find themselves in significant trouble.

Presumably they are also paying her cash in hand - again dodgy.

Well I need to leave for London and become a nanny! But I have my own kids to watch. We're you paying 50k for a live in?

Seems like you're overpaid if you can afford 50k a year for subpar child care for a school age child and one in pre school.
A childminder would have been cheaper.

Surely it would have been better for her to simply work 12-6:30/7:00 to lower wages?

Would nursery been cheaper in London?

The going rate is £10-14ph net (southeast). With NI, tax, pensions and bonus a full time nanny would cost the employer £35-50k.