Thinking now of getting live-out nanny but they seem to earn more than I do!

[BoffinMum]

I am in Cambridgeshire and currently have an AP - there has been a thread on this as it has been a bit of a saga all round, but suffice it to say I have now had enough. I have a new baby due quite soon.

Nannynick, Blondes and others have very kindly given me a lot of top notch advice on how to recruit a live-in nanny with appropriate salary rates and so on, but after a lot of thought and soul searching, I have decided that best of all would be a live out nanny, because I am now quite bruised from having someone live in my house, and frankly going absolutely nuts from the lack of privacy.

However, having asked around, it seems nannies are asking for £8ph net locally. I grossed this up on Nannytax for the 2 hours a week I am working or commuting, and horrifically, this works out at more than my entire take-home pay, so after paying transport costs to work I will be earning minus £400 a month, which is obviously not an option if I want to stay solvent.

Does anyone have any useful suggestions as to a solution? I have thought about a nanny share, for example, but I don't know much about them.

Sorry, I meant to type 52 hours a week.

How flexible are your hours? I work for example 30 hours in 3 days which is almost 4 days pay but without the 4th day's expenses. In the longer days DP takes over at 5pm.

I commute from Cambridge to Norwich (1 hr 20 minutes). I really need to be there by 10am at the latest and I get home at 7pm if I leave around 5.30pm. I can work from home on Fridays. But I am a lecturer so can flex the timetable a little bit - there's still a load of work to get through though.

I'm near Cambridge and was on nannyjob looking for some adverts for nannies to get an idea of current salaries (same reason as you, but I'm not pg) and they weren't £8net per hour. Only found 2 adverts that actually stated salaries (both agency) and they were more like £7 gross!

Just found a couple on nannyjob.

1. live-out fulltime nanny 8am-6pm for 300net (300/50=6 pounds net per hour) - Angels Childcare, and 2)£300 net for full time 8-7pm (300/55=5.45 net per hour) - TInies.

Also a live-in job 7am-7pm, 5 days a week for £266 gross..

I have to admit when I saw the first couple of adverts t'other day I was not convinced but those jobs are with 3 different agencies so it does look like nannys salaries are taking a drop these days!

Could you work out what your top limit for childcare spending is and put on an advert and see if you get any applicants?

Nannysharing - does cut costs but the pitfalls are (in my experience - we have nannyshared with 2 different families at different times) :1) arranging holidays - you get less choice over holiday when nanny is on leave too (ie. you might get a situation where you choose a couple of week, other family chooses a couple of weeks (which you get no say in and might be difficult for you to find cover for) and nanny chooses a couple of weeks (make sure it is written down and both families know exactly when nanny is off (sounds silly but in our case nanny had much better communication with one family and relied on them to inform other family which was not ideal!)
2) Respect of the other families child's requirements -eg. our dd did not go to ballet class because other child would be too young to join in ..but when other child was old enough her mum booked her for ballet (and told nanny to take them) and didn't tell us, so my dd ended up having to go along and hang around waiting for the duration of the class..little things like that need to be sorted out at the start.
3) most importantly - finding another family! You could try netmums, or thenannysharers.co.uk

There are also the issue of what happens if one family wants to leave the share - we ended up having to employ nanny by ourselves for a couple of months (on her nannyshare salary, so more expensive than a standard nanny) due to her having an argument with the share family and them terminating without notice! (Yes there was a contract but god knows how to enforce it, and we needed childcare so took the hit and looked for another share family).

Oooh, Millarkie, I am so glad you posted, these salaries sound a bit more what I was expecting. Phew. I am panicking a bit less now.

xposts

That was harsh, having to pay the higher rate when the other family had reneged. But these things happen.

We were thinking of saying 2 weeks off at Xmas, 2 at Easter, and the whole of August off. Because I'm a lecturer I need to do it this way to fit in with the academic timetable. Do you think another family would go for that?

Tax credits? I employ a live-in nanny and because my salary isnt that fantastic, I can claim almost half of her salary back.

Just above the threshold for tax credits. But would have been a good option 5 years ago!!

Having looked on nannyjobs it seems £300 a week net is something like the going rate then.

Remember that hourly rates for part time jobs are likely to be higher than the hourly rate for a full time job too. Round where I am £400 gross would be pretty standard for a 50 hour week.

If you find an Ofsted registered nanny, you can use childcare vouchers to pay her which saves some (not much) money - about £40 a week.

I nearly agreed a nanny share but the logistics were very offputting, and quite frankly, if I want hassle I'd have sent them both to nursery (high hassle factor for various reasons).

A good nanny is worth her (his?) weight in gold - it makes a huge difference to the whole family. It consumes quite a lot of my take home pay - however, I'm rationalising it by saying it won't be forever. Soon they'll both be at school and we'll have a different arrangement. My job isn't the kind you can just dip in and out of - if I stopped working for 4 years I couldn't restart - so it's a short term measure to get us through. Not sure if I'd feel differently if I was making a loss though...

I think most people around here have nannies 2 days a week, Tankie, so that's obviously what they meant by the £8 an hour thing. Obviously if you're cobbling together different jobs you need a higher hourly rate because they probably don't all mesh, I imagine.

Snickersnack, I think it's hard to get the right balance between being suitably generous and not bankrupting yourself, so I do get where you're coming from.

Don't forget to factor in expenses for you Nanny to do things with the children even if it's just £2 here and there for drop in toddler gropus etc. it's best to budget it all from the start rather than have a nasty shock. Good Luck!

I think that's it Boffinmum - with a full time job you're guaranteed an income so maybe prepared to accept slightly less. Remember as well that wages depend so much on the nanny's age and experience. You might find a 20 year old who wants to get out of nursery nursing and into nannying, and would be happy with £350 gross a week. A nanny with 15 years experience and additional qualifications may want £500 net.

Good point weddingcake - paying a nanny £300 net will cost the employer about £420 with tax added on, plus maybe £20 a week kitty, mileage, food, heating on all day...

Tankie, do you think a 20-year-old would be OK looking after a young baby if they have trained?

BM - this is where you need to go with your gut instinct (as well as checking out all references)

Some 20 year olds will be more than capable - some will not. I nannied from the age of 16 for a 2 and 4 year old and was only 18 when I got my 2nd job looking after a 6 month old. And I was brilliant

Still nannying now and I am 40 this year!

I suppose that's the same as with an older nanny too?

Yep - that could be said too.

Training is good but I also think experience is good where babies are concerned. Only with experience can you know how to handle the demands/routines/expectations of looking after a baby.

Boffinmum, why not? A 20 year old who has done a NVQ and spent some time working in a baby room in a nursery would be more than capable of looking after a baby I would think. I had a 6 month old charge 50 hours a week when I was 21, my cousin was married and had two children under three of her own at 20. All depends entirely on the person, and if they have experience and/or training I wouldn't rule someone out because they were young. Personally I would probably look for someone 20+ just because younger than that and they likely have not had much experience. If money is a consideration for you, younger will almost certainly mean cheaper, and they may also be more enthusiastic and willing too.

The age of the nanny I don't feel is that relevant... it's far more about your ability to trust them to care for your bundle of joy. You want someone your baby gels with quickly - so there are few if any tears at your departure (you may feel you want your baby to acknowledge that your are leaving them, but a happy baby = a happy mummy... upset baby = mummy feeling guilty for leaving them for rest of the day).

Someone straight out of college is probably not ideal - you want them to have some experience outside of college placements. However you may find someone who has been doing lots of babysitting (including daytime) who you and baby gel with.

Probably best to keep an open mind and see what applicants you get. Not everyone will want to work a 52 hour week.

I suppose I had my first at 19 and I am definitely good with babies, because I have a kind of knack! But I just don't know how typical that would have been for your average young person, then or now.

I have met some nursery nurses who were a bit indifferent, frankly, even though they were well qualified, and some who are very clued up indeed but were younger and less well qualified. So it all seems to go back to gut feeling and talent really (like most other things, I suppose).

I think it would make sense to put an ad out and see what people are like at interview. I am just now deciding whether to give notice to my AP for the end of March so I get some privacy when the new baby arrives, and maybe hire a nanny to start while I am on maternity leave, maybe in May sometime, or whether to be economically sensible and wait until September 1, which was the original plan.

Do you think a nanny would get bored only doing bits and pieces (presumably on full pay) while I am on maternity leave, and then get a bit of a shock when we suddenly ramped up to 50 hours a week, or would this be a good strategy to ease us all in?

Yup, gut feeling and talent as well as any experience they have. My sister was a nanny at 18 or 19, looking after four children including baby twins and a little boy with SN - the mother was an air hostess so my sister regularly had them overnight for up to 72 hours. She was brilliant, even if I do say so myself!