What do you pay your au pair?

[frums]

What do people pay their au pairs in both cash and perks?

We are in London. We ask for 25 hours work plus up to two weekly babysittings.

We provide a double en suite room with th and wifi etc, all bills and all food. We pay £100 a week. Any extra hours above that (e.g. in school holidays) are £7 an hour.

We don't do gym membership or anything.

We are about to recruit again after two years on this deal with our fantastic current au pair. I'm just wanting to check whether pay has changed in the au pair market in the last two years.

We pay the same and are also in a lovely part of London.

We also pay her extra for cleaning (her choice if she wants to do it or not) plus she gets 20 days paid holiday per year.

We don't contribute towards a bus pass because she does not need to use the bus for the children, everything is within 15-20 minute walking distance.

We don't pay for English school which costs her £20/week. The English school is located opposite the nursery and is 10 minutes walk from the house.

Don't think the salary market has changed much in the past two years!

We also provide a mobile phone sim card with monthly minutes, text and data.

You can get one from ID Mobile or Plusnet both of which have a maximum cap so you can't exceed more than £10/month in charges:

www.plus.net/mobile/plans/sim-only
www.idmobile.co.uk/shop/plans/sim-only-deals

What does your au pair do for you, what age do you want and how experienced? I just mean that there seem to be two different kinds of au pairs, one is a teenager with little experience looking for extended babysitting type job with pocket money ( I did this kind!), the other is slightly older, more like halfway to a nanny. Some of the expectations I've seen of them in London adverts is insane! But would love to know what yours does for you as will need one from next year.

We pay our au pair £90 a week, this is in South London. Our au pair is 18 and just out of school. He gets a nice big bedroom and shares the bathroom with the kids. He also gets monthly gym membership which means he can take DS swimming. He does 5 hours per day and gets every other Friday off, so that's a lot of long weekends! We occasionally ask him to babysit but not more than once a week if at all.
He once told me that whenever he goes into London he always eats at Wagamama's, which made me conclude that the money must be decent enough.
In our social circles au pair pay varies between £85 and £120 and it all depends on number of hours worked, number of kids, whether it includes cleaning etc.

EyeSpy - we tend to go for au pairs who have just graduated from uni and are looking for a year or two in the UK. We have usually gone for Aussies and New Zealanders around the age of 21/22. We have had 18 years olds but I find the uni graduates are more self sufficient and organised. Our au pairs work 7-9am and 3.30pm-7pm four days a week. They get the kids up, breakfasted and ready for school, they do the school run and then they have 6.5 hours off. Then they do the school run again and host play dates, deliver kids to clubs, make dinner, supervise homework etc. The extra 3 hours a week (to get to 25) are spent on the kids' laundry. They have no specific cleaning tasks except to tidy kitchen after breakfast and kids dinner and to put toys away at the end of the day.

We had nannies before, tbh our best au pairs have been just as good but just tend to require more direction for the first few weeks. And they do not stay as long.

My au pair works 6am - 9am. I leave for work at 6am but she does not wake up until 7.30am. She wakes the kids at 8am, gives them breakfast which I prepare and takes them to nursery for 9am.

She is then free until 4pm when she collects them. She gives them a snack, baths them and feeds them. I get home from work around 4.30pm and I cook while she is bathing them. She is free for the evening after around 6pm.

It equates to 5 hours per day.

She will babysit one evening a week and does not work week ends. I have asked her to work a Saturday once for a few hours but she said she wanted more money. When we made the offer we stated we may occasionally ask for help on week ends so I thought this was a cheeky request as her contract is for 30 hours and generally she works 25 (7 of which she is sleeping).

She does not do cook, do laundry, make beds etc. I don't ask her to do this. I have asked her to cook a few times at the beginning but her diet is very unhealthy and she deep fries everything.

Salaries from other families I know vary between £75 - £100/week for 30-35 hours.

Some families offer:

• paid days off
• bus pass
• contribution towards English school
• mobile phone sim card with monthly credit

I would definitely offer a mobile sim card as you need to be able to contact her if she has the kids.

£100 is a fair wage and for London you will definitely get a lot of interest.

Non EU au pairs are limited to working 20 hours per week plus they will need to pre-enrol at English school and arrange a student visa to come.

We pay £80 + travelcard (zone 1-6 London) at the weekend, £10 mobile top up every month.

She also look after our neighbour's child, for which she gets £10 every day.

verap please tell me that is a typo and you mean £10 every hour. Your neighbour pays her £10 per day for childcare? She gets weekly childcare for £50? As a former career nanny I'm gobsmacked.

We also pay £100, plus gym membership and they have a car (but we're not in London and public transport is very poor unless you want to get into London!) We ask for 27 hours a week, its probably 10 housework and 17 childcare, mainly before/after school but longer and fewer days in the school holidays.

Thanks all. I put an ad up on au pair world setting out hours and pay in great detail and I already have 50+ replies. Three seem excellent young 20 something from Asia/NZ and I'm going to Skype them this weekend.

I have never supplied a phone as all our au pairs have brought their own massively expensive handsets. I just get a Giff Gaff sim for them and as shift Gaff has unlimited data for almost no money we then communicate entirely but whatsApp.

I do pay holidays though. 5 weeks a year at full pay.

Hi frums,

I'd bear in mind that if you get an au pair that needs a visa then they are supposed to only work 20 hours per week as an au pair plus they need to sign up for a school before they can apply for a visa.

Good luck! My new au pair from aupairworld arrived yesterday and I'm really looking forward to the change as my last au pair was bone idle (the kids did like her but I honestly don't know why as I never saw her talking to them, she spent the majority of her day whatsapping her friends!).

Thanks Roses. I don't know why that wrote Asia as I meant to type Australia/NZ.

Aussies and NZ obviously don't go to language school but they can get all sorts of visas that work for au pairing. We have never had any problem with them working 25 hours.

Our current au pair (NZ) just told me they come either on an ancestry visa or a Tier 5 mobility visa and neither have limitations on hours.

roses - those on a student visa can only work for 20 hours a week if they are doing a degree level course, its only 10 hours for language school students. They tightened up a couple of years ago.

It basically means that you can't have any au pair who isn't EU or eligible for a tier 5 visa.