Is this enough spending money for our nanny?

[headfairy]

She's worked with us for a while, and I've never really felt sure if I was giving her too much or not enough. I usually leave her a purse with £10 in (that's £10 per day she works - three days a week). DD doesn't do any special activities (classes or the like) on the days she's with the nanny, and two of the three days she's at nursery from 12-3. The nanny doesn't need to buy food with that as it's all provided, as is her petrol money (not much, she's only just passed her test so doesn't go far, just the 1 mile to school if the weather's terrible). It's really just if she wants to get the bus in to town to go to the park, or to take them to soft play (at the leisure centre a ten minute walk away, it's £5 for them to get in).

Have I got it right or not?

£30 sounds like a lot to me.

Really? she does spend the lot, though I don't really ask for receipts which perhaps I should. Some days I doubt she spends it on the children. She had a nasty cold last week and asked if I minded if the children stayed at home and played all day so she didn't have to go out (it was chucking it down and I didn't mind if they had a quiet day) and she still managed to spend £10 without actually doing anything.

£30 over three days? Every week?

It's too much if you can't identify any activities she's doing with the children which would cost that.

Headfairy if she's spending £10 without going out, I think you have your answer.

Ask her to keep receipts and record all expenditure as you want to know what your money is being spent on. I don't feel it's unreasonable to ask for the change from the £30 back at the end of her 3rd working day.

Thanks for all your replies. Perhaps I am being a bit too generous. As her car journeys are really short (she's not terribly confident and isn't great at parking in our tricky road yet - she literally drives one mile to school occasionally) perhaps I should say that her petrol money should come out of that. I think she sometimes buys the girls lunch in the park cafe (her dd and my dd, my ds is at school all day) and she probably buys herself something to eat too.

I've been very conscious that we pay her the lower end of the pay scale for someone with her experience, so perhaps she sees it as topping up her pay.

I stick £50 in a petty cash box and it seems to last for aaaaages. Our nanny always puts a receipt in, but she spends it so slowly I've never felt inclined to see what she was spending it on. The kids do go out with her in the holidays, and she needs it topping up more frequently then, but most if the time she's spending a couple of quid on a bus here, £1.50 on playgroup there, she'd never get through £30 in 3 days! I think she's been a frugal person all her life though and would never dream of wasting money, whether it be her's or someone else's.

I would have thought £5 per day would be fine, bit more if there were more children.

Maybe you should ask her to keep a log over say a month so that you can determine what their regular activities are.

I've had weeks when we have vastly overspent - school holidays for example as two of the children I care for are school age - and weeks when we have not spent that much, so having a set amount each week works well for us as we can save up for the more costly weeks.

What has prompted you to ask on here? Do you feel it's too much / not enough?

I would have a chat with her and ask if she finds it enough. Then you can ask her to put receipts in. Does she buy magazines for the children at all? I know I can spend a fair bit on that because dd3 loves them.

£30 in 3 days sounds a lot if no activities - if went to soft play for example then can easily spend £20 with entrance and drinks and lunch and parking if not took in free car park

How on earth did she spend £10 when she didn't go out?

Hate to say it but sounds like she is stealing :(

I generally have a credit card an use it for everything ie petrol - shopping - haircuts - new shoes - dry cleaning - trips out etc and then have cash kitty literally for car parks and odd sb :)

Maybe ask her to write down what she spends each week and see what your money goes on

Travel expenses for using her own car should be separate in my view. All journeys should be logged with details such as date, destination, mileage. Then the mileage claim submitted to you monthly or weekly. You need to know the mileage for one of the tax forms, can't remember which, for doing the end of year return (your payroll company will do it for you I suspect so they would be asking for the mileage and rate per mile that you paid).

Blondes she doesn't have to pay for anything you list, no shopping or hair cuts or clothes for the kids. I do all that. The soft play place near us is literally a 10 minute walk so she doesn't need to park (it's free parking anyway) but I do appreciate she may want to buy them a snack when she goes.

I put a tenner in the purse she uses at work again today, and I dropped them off at playgroup (50p per child), she said she would walk back and then take them to the park (walking distance). Lunch would be at home as she was going to give them a hot lunch. I'll be interested to see what's left when I get home (she leaves the purse behind when she goes home). After school it's the school Christmas Fair so she'll take the girls and ds to that and I've left ds a tenner to spend on that so she shouldnt' need to pay anything out of her money for it.

I wonder if it might help her budget better if you gave her a monthly amount - say £100 and said at the end of the month you would reckon up what went there so that you can make sure she has enough. Some places like swimming for example you can get a cheaper deal if you buy 5 swims at once or whatnot.

nannynick as her petrol expenses are so so low, literally 1 mile maybe once a week (the rest of the time she walks to school) we have just been giving her a bit of cash every now and then. She's only been driving for a couple of months so we've not formalised anything really. I'm not sure it's even worth putting that on a tax form. We do our own payroll.

I agree with everyone else. £30 is an awful lot to spend in 3 days. Start asking for receipts. You say you feel she's being paid at the low end of the scale for her experience but she's bringing her DD which is saving her X per hour in childcare fees herself which would actually probably bring her up to the top end of the scale. ( Ie. If I took DD to work and got paid £8ph but didn't have to pay £4hr nursery then that's equivalent to £12ph. )

I used to take DS to work with me. The family left a kitty but they paid for one toddler group and I paid for the other. We each paid for our own child for music class. If we ate out on a rare occassion, I'd pay for the kids lunches from the kitty and maybe pay for treats or icecream for example myself. I think it's unfair to abuse the kitty system especially if it's slightly unlimited.

She hasn't been taking them swimming really, as she has her own dd (2.11) with her she's restricted as to when she can go. She couldnt' go while ds was at home as she'd have three non swimmers with her and the pool won't allow that. Now dd has started nursery three days a week, our nanny really only has one full day with dd, mondays. On thursdays and Fridays dd is at nursery 12-3 so she usually has a fairly quiet morning. I was going to suggest she might want to take her swimming on Mondays. Again the pool is ten mins walk from our house, the same place as the soft play.

I give our au pair (and did the same when we had a full time nanny) £100 per month, which works out to about £4.50 per day. It doesn't go up in the school hols. She can spend it on whatever she wants. I found asking for receipts just made more work for me. So I stopped doing that.

However, the au pair / nanny and the children all have a membership to a gym with plenty of childrens activities. And Au pair / nanny also has a paid for mobile phone and a greater london bus pass. And of course i buy the food in the house. So, she doesn't really need much money.

However, the night before last it came to light that DD (age 9) has been telling au pair that she needs to start putting away £50 a month in order to fund DDs planned activities for the summer holiday next year. I said "DD, that's great that you want to start saving money. But, the idea is for you to save your own money, not someone elses". And I then explained to DD that I give the money to the Au Pair and not to DD to spend however she wants.

I then reminded DD that she is going to Chicago this summer and won't be here to spend the money anyway and her brothers would be enjoying the riches... and that was the end of that mission.

Oh dear... I so fear the teenage years!

Things change, she may not be driving far now but may well come school holidays. Does she not take them all out to places like museums, castles, nature reserves, historic houses (more the garden than the house), the beach.

She does not now but might she once more confident at driving?

Lunch break over, must get back to work, the dishwasher wont unload itself and the floors need a vac (with out waking littleone).

nannynick no, and to be honest I can't see her doing much like that in the future either. she's lovely, but she's not formally trained, she's really more of a live out au pair and it shows sometimes. She looks after the children rather than entertaining them much. I'm happy with that to be honest as I do fill their days when I'm with them, and as I said dd has nursery two of the three days I work. Plus as our nanny has her dd with her who's the same age as our dd they're great playmates.... I sound like I'm trying to justify why we use her! :o

She's lovely really :o

You say you pay her at the bottom of the scale - do you mind saying what? Plus as ebb says takes her dd with her so a slight reduction would happen anyway

I hope the £10 is still mainly there today and if not then ask many would she has done /spent it on

Either ask for a list of what she spends it on - or do as strix does and leave £100 and once it had gone then tough

Formally trained?

Ha. Send her to me. I speciallise in turning au pairs into nannies. :-)

(that is no reason she should not be expected to do the things Nick mentions)

I would wonder if any of us is formally trained as a nanny. I did the NNEB and it trained me as a nursery nurse, not specifically as a nanny.

Your nanny has her own child, so has parental experience. I can't see why she would not be taking the children out to places. As a parent she surely takes her own child to various places, or maybe they don't!

You have mentioned a bus, are there also trains? As they have the money to spend, travelling on a bus or train is within their budget depending how far they are going. Is your DS happy being at home 3 days a week during the school holidays?

Maybe you don't want them going out on outings, in which case you don't need to have such a high weekly kitty amount, certainly during term time when there is just the one day when your DD is at home all day.

When I did the nneb 89/91 so 21 years ago my course was towards nannying as well as nursery work

What year did you do it nanny nick?

All the observations were probably more to do with nursery work tho a lot was food hygiene where obv in a nursery you don't cook as have chefs

I did placements in a family environment though these days you can't as of risks

Qualified in 98 by which time CACHE had taken it over. Placements I had were with childminders, pre-schools and a school. We did have a HomeTech (making food) element to the course I remember but that is perhaps the only thing more nannying related than nursery/pre-school.

Maybe CACHE changed some elements of it when they took it over from the NNEB, Maybe I'm remembering it wrong.

nannynick she has literally had no training at all. There is a train station ten mins walk away. She does occasionally take the train with them to the next town. I think she finds it quite tough with 2 two year olds and a four year old (as he was then). During the summer holidays she did go to a local children's farm and lots of playgroups and park time. Of course I gave her a bit more if she wanted it for other outings, but really she's never ventured out much. She doesn't take her dd to outings as far as I can tell. She certainly never mentions them and we do have time to have a chat most mornings. I wonder if it's a cultural thing as she's not English.

The more I see of her parenting style the more I realise it's different to mine. Not drastically so, but she has a much more European style in that she doesn't fill her dd's day with activities, basically she has to tag along with whatever they're doing. She also goes to bed when they go to bed, usually around 10 or 11pm, which is why she still has a 2 hour sleep every day at almost 3 (she's three next week) I think, as she has to be up at 7.30 every morning to get to work at ours for 8.30 (she does similar hours with another family on the days she's not with us).

It's very similar to the style of my Italian family. They never seem to worry about baby sitters as they just take their kids out late with them, they never seem to have a bedtime routine, they just go when they're tired. They never seem to do child centred activities, they thing we're bonkers to do things like Centre Parcs or holidays that are focussed on keeping the children happy. They just go on holiday where they want and the kids have to amuse themselves.