I need extra help with the DC in May and June (we are buying a house which needs a lot of work done on it and I would like to save some money and do some of the work myself).
I have 2 DSs, they will be 4 yrs and 21 months. 4 year old has a few mornings at nursery a week, loves playing out doors, with his trains, etc. 21 month old is an outgoing chap (gives the 4 year old a bit of a hard time to be honest!!! - but they do play well together). Both take to people quite easily and I have never had a problem with babysitters etc as I make sure I introduce them beforehand, and they have always been good as gold for them.
They have 1 full day at a CM every week.
It is a slightly rural location, just outside the M25. Not a thriving city, but very easy to get to anywhere else, train station near by, less than an hour travel to London, but frequency of trains is not brilliant as a lot of them just whizz past our station. We live between two fairly good sized towns, and can get to each other by train or by bus (London bus so Oyster can be used). Probably won't be able to give use of the car as I suspect it will be far too expensive to insure them - but I wouldn't need them to drive.
I probably only need around 25 hours a week, but not even necessarily every week. Some weeks I could have more hours, other weeks less hours (or even none!).
The Au Pair would have a separate bedroom at the other end of the house, and a bathroom which only she would use.
Would prefer an English speaker, looked at some of the Australian au pair profiles and thought some of them might suit. I noticed one particular profile mentioned that she would like to do some au pairing as she travelled, and that made me think 'hey, this might just work' but I have never had an au pair and don't personally know anyone who has so they can't confirm for me that it would.
What I thought would work is an au pair who wanted to do some travelling around Europe (hence why an Australian would be perfect - no visa issues, but would most likely want to make the most out of a very expensive ticket and see as much of Europe as they can!). I could be fairly flexible if they wanted to do long weekends away, different day trips around the country, or even 1 or 2 one week trips.
I could even keep the arrangement going on for longer - but the accommodation in the new house wouldn't be quite as nice!!!! (Not likely that all the work would be finished by then and the house wont' be as large, and they would need to share the bathroom).
Am I being silly for even considering such a flexible arrangement? Any other childcare options would be just too expensive and I might as well employ builders to do all the work as it wouldn't save me any money (we are already hiring builders to do some of the work, but trying to stretch out our money as far as it will go as there will be more jobs than there is money in the kitty at the moment!).
And if I averaged out hours and pay over a month to keep it under the tax/NI threshold is that legal? (But still pay weekly, as I suspect au pairs wouldn't be so keen on waiting a month for their money - or I guess I could 'advance' money on a weekly basis and take it out of the month's salary).
Any advice???