Paying the childminder/nanny................................................

[ssd]

This is to all parents who use a childminder or a nanny.

Do you pay her or him on time ALWAYS?

Please be honest.

I don't know if I'm just unlucky with my employers or if this is "usual" in childcare to often be paid late.

TIA

TP - If I don't earn money, my family (& the mindees) don't eat

So if people pay late.....I let them know I am unhappy

as it is I tend to get bank transfers or chqs in plenty of time

It is interesting though the split between nannies and childminders. All nannies and their employers have posted that they are paid/pay on time.

However childminders are often not it seems.

I wonder if this comes down to the fact that nannies are employees and childminders are self employed. Perhaps parents take their responsibilities as employers quite seriously?

I wonder whether also, the self employed generally are paid far later than the employed. Most self employed people I know are often extremely lucky to be paid within 14 days of raising an invoice.

Also paying in advance is virtually unheard of for any other self employed group - so again perhaps people take it less seriously??

I've no real idea though - just throwing in some suggestions

Our nannies have always been paid weekly with cash going into their accounts by DD on the Thursday of the current week.

as a nanny im paid a month in arears

soapbox - I used to have a childminder and she asked to be paid in cash - which does make it more likely that people will forget. I was probably a day late a couple of times (but as I was paying her in advance on a Monday, I don;t think paying her on Tuesday is really late - just not as in advance as it should have been). I wanted to set up a direct debit but she didn;t want me to.

As a parent I paid monthly and was more than a little late usually. But it didn't help that the cm never had a calculated figure ready and we always had to check the hours she'd recorded. We also had to check her charges for those hours (She would cut corners by charging per day or half day regardless of the contract which said by the hour, unless of course that would leave her worse off in which case she would scrupulessly add up all the hours). And then she had that blind spot for adding the figures which always erred in her favour. It wasn't huge amounts but the recalculating it for her and getting her to agree sometimes meant we were 2 weeks late in paying.
Sometimes I just forgot it was payday, I'm shamed to say. But reading mn has made me vow never to be so lax if I have a cm again.

Soapbox, I was a nanny and wasn't always paid on time. There were two families in particular who took the piss and I can still remember the feelings of helplessness and anger it inspired in me, to know that they would basically give me my money when they felt like it and there was bugger all I could do about it

I think it's just the nature of who your client/employer is. Working parents with young children are generally very busy people, and often struggling to juggle the finances. So, it's easy to forget the money when your running out of work to pick up the wee ones. Or something happens at work which means you don't have time to get to the ATM on the way to the childminder or you'll be late, and she won't like that either. It's not malicious... at least not usually.

Sorry. Just meant that I don't think parents are uncaring about paying their childcares. But, then there could be an exception I suppose.

I kept forgetting to take a cheque to my CM's. So I started giving her 4 signed cheques in advance. She is extremely trustworthy. I often have to remind her to pay herself.

I had a parent who left his whole cheque book here full of signed cheques to me to fill in as and when!! He occasionally needed a cheque, so would beg for one in front of other parents, and then tell them what a tyrant I was!!

I haven't worked as a c/m (thinking about it) but have done tutoring with older children, and I think parents often pay late because they think that what you do is a glorified extension of babysitting. They also seem to think that because you enjoy what you do and enjoy nurturing their children, that somehow you are doing it out of goodwill and therefore payment isn't so important. I think this applies especally if you work part time or combine with another career. You do get more experienced at spotting problem parents from the outset though. If I do go into childminding I will be asking for payment in advance by standing order, and making my boundaries clear from the outset.

DS and DD haven't started at the childminder yet but we will be paying monthly in advance.