Parents & CM Holidays!

[MaryPoppinsMagic]

I have a feeling i am BU on this.

I am a CM, I have given my parents my holidays for the year which i have as i do not get paid when i am on holiday, however when i asked one of the parents when she will be taking their 4 weeks she told me she will have holidays when i do.

Now i dont know if i will be explaining myself properly here, however i want to ask her if i can charge 1/2 fee when i am on holiday and 1/2 when she is on holiday (which she says she wont be) i think the problem i am having is that the only time i will get time off is if i am unpaid and she only wants time off if she doesnt have to pay for it.

Is this part and parcel of being self -employed? or should i ask her?

I don't get paid for my holidays. I tell parents as early as possible so they can take theirs at the same time if they like. The children don't like going somewhere else while I'm away and their parents struggle to get enough time off work if we take different times off. If you change to half pay you might have to think about including a maximum number of weeks, so someone doesn't book 2 months off. I find it easier just to charge while I'm available.

It's a deal breaker for me I'm afraid. And unfair to pull this out of the bag once the child is used to coming to you.
I met up with a childminder who wanted 6 weeks paid holiday as well as 50% fees when I was on holiday.
Needless to say we didn't use her and I saw her recently working in a bank.
Self employment isn't for everyone.

Paid holiday when she takes it AND 50% when you do? OMG!

YABVVVVU, you're having a laugh!

Yep. She hadn't a clue. I felt slightly sorry for her as she'd done all these course, got her certificates etc but she had worked for 15 years for a bank and was obviously on quite a cushy number and expect this to continue whilst she childminded.
Luckily she got straight back into her old role at a different branch.

nosex thank you for your input, I appreciate the help.

nosex thank you for your input, I appreciate the help.

I never could afford to take a drop in income so for many years now, I have tried to get as many parents as possible to pay me a fixed monthly rate. This is where I work out their annual cost of childcare, deducting all bank hols and my holidays and then divide by 12. This way I'm pretty much getting a steady income each month. Yes, I'd like to receive more i.e. if I charged for my hols, but I'm Self Employed and therefore see it fairer that I charge when I'm available to work, and don't when I'm not.

and ... like Looneytune, I have some parents who pay by monthly standing order, so when I only worked 2 weeks in December, I still had some money coming in.

Unless you only have 1 mindee, you will not get any extra time off by parents booking holiday at different times, because you would have to get all the families to take their holidays at the same time. It is nice to have a few quiet days with less children sometimes though :).

My contract with my childminder says that I pay full for my holidays and none for her holidays. If you want paid 1/2 for your holidays you need to put it in your contract at the start of the contract not after both parties have signed. Some parents can't afford to pay full fee for holidays. I don't get paid for holidays as I'm bank staff, but that's my choice to be bank staff.

MaryPoppinsMagic, are you only planning on taking 2 1/2 weeks holiday for the whole year? Won't you be exhausted?

positive that's all I have booked because that's all I can afford to not be paid, yep I will be exhausted but unfortunately that's all I can take.

I don't work bank holidays and neither do the parents I mind for so I loose them days pay also.

hsmm I think working out a yearly cost then dividing it may be a good idea, that's something I will look into I think.

My parents pay full fees for BH's
They pay full fees if the child is off due to sickness, holiday etc
They pay half fees for my 23 days off per year.

I had a child hand notice in last week ( due to mum losing her job ) i advertisted today and had filled the 3 day place in a couple of hours

I have 17 children a week and nobody blinks about holidays x

I think you have missed a trick about BHs. I think you should charge for them, that seems to be standard.

It certainly isn't standard, and as flexible/part-time work patterns become more normal is thankfully becoming less common. The issue is that most Bank Holidays fall on a Monday so if you charge for them it affects part-timers unfairly.

I charge for actual days childcare p.a, then add on bank holidays (regardless of whether they fall on working days), but pro rata them for part timers. This is what my last employer did, and it works out more fairly for those who work/use Mondays. So if your childcare days are Tuesday to Thursday you would pay for 3/5 of my bank holidays, if Mondays only 1/5 etc.

I take 4 weeks unpaid leave each year. I divide all fees over 12 months so I get the same income each month. I am available to work all bank holidays, however, if parents choose to use them I charge double time for them, if not, the normal rate applies.

We all learn things the longer we childmind. One thing I have learnt is not to charge an hourly rate but rather a half day and full day rate.

Dmo, I don't think that's right that no one blinks at holidays. It's one if the reasons why I stopped using a cm as soon as I could. They were her terms and I had to put up with them whilst I did, there was no choice but I certainly didn't like it or agree with.

Btw only talking about paying for cm hols here, parent time off should be paid in full unless taken when cm off

If she only takes holiday when you do, then she would be paying the full rate for more weeks than she would otherwise.

ie say a week is £100 (completely random figures used here) and you have 4 weeks off (unpaid) and she has 4 weeks off (at half cost) you would get 44 x £100 and 4 x £50 = £4,600 altogether.

If she takes the same weeks as you, she world pay 48 x £100 = £4,800 so you would actually get more over the whole year this way.

I think having a fixed monthly amount might help as then you know what you are getting each month.

My parent pays weekly, so could I work out the yearly cost divide that by 52 then take my 4 weeks of so she pays the same every week?

My parent pays weekly, so could I work out the yearly cost divide that by 52 then take my 4 weeks of so she pays the same every week?

Yes, just work out how many actual days childcare will be provided over the year (taking off bank hols and your hols) and then divide by 52 weeks.

The other option is doing what I've now started doing (only took 6 and half years of childminding to get this organised!! LOL)..........I have a business account and all payments go into that (whether they are a fixed monthly amount or invoiced for that month). I then worked out what an average figure for my income is (having worked out invoices for a few months) and what I need to put aside for expenses each month (i.e. NI, outings, savings for tax, rough amount my shopping costs for business side of things, fuel etc.) and I now pay my personal account a set monthly amount, a bit like a salary. This way I have more of an idea of what's going on and I'm getting a set monthly amount in my bank account. The only thing that makes that go down is if I owe a refund for any reason or if someone leaves. Otherwise it usually is the same or more (due to adhoc extra hours, overnight stays etc).

For my one mindee I collect from school and have during the holidays and my one full time mindee (4 days a week), I too deduct 4 weeks for my holidays and then charge them the average cost. It really works well as I get a set income and there are no awkward conversions about who owes who for holidays. It works especially well for the schoolie as there isn't the huge fluctuation between the cost of term time care and school holiday care.

I do charge my 2 part timers what they owe week by week as the average over 52 weeks is only pennies in difference as I charge them 50% for their holidays and 50% for mine.

Holidays work differently for different families. Some only took time off when I did, others (especially the families of younger mindees) took additional time off to go away during term time. But I knew from reading other posts that for my own sanity I needed to take my holiday time for just me and my family (sometimes just the odd day for me when my dd was at school, to catch-up on paperwork or to recharge my batteries).

I agree about 'needing' holidays. When I started out back in 2005, I think I took 1 day off in my first year. In that time I'd gone from having just my own 2 year old to having 5 children including all through the long 6 week holidays and all I kept thinking was how I couldn't afford any time off. I soon realised that without time off, I'd not be a productive childminder long term and probably then suffer business wise. It's like back when I felt I didn't have time to eat lunch. I would then feel yucky in the afternoon and burning off all that energy on the school runs would make me feels quite queezy in the end. I then learnt not to feel guilty to tell the children I needed a little break to eat lunch too, as it's important FOR THEIR SAKE as well as mine to make sure I look after myself. I do TOTALLY understand about feeling like you can't afford the time off but you really need to work round it so you get the breaks you deserve but don't feel the loss of income when you're actually off. Only way you can do that is by charging fixed weekly/monthly fees or by doing the sums yourself and making sure put a bit aside when you're not off, to cover the loss of payment when you are.