Wilbur and Dadinstead of mum- can you talk APs

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While you are on line- can you tell me some of the extra costs having an AP brings to the house-I am assuming a base cost of £95 per week for 25 hours. But when I work out what it will really cost, what other factors do you recommend to take into account.
My childminding is about £65 a week for pre and after school so I am wanting to think about-so this will double with no 2 (currently at cm full time and I would only want AP to do pre and after school or nursery, not all day care)

So I want to see if an AP will be better for me cost wise- even if it works out about the same, there would be other advantages

thanks

Sorry only just spotted this,

I pay £70 pw term time and £95 pw school holidays (any more and I need to register as an employer with HMRC)

Additonally

Mobile phone - I wil cover UK calls and text usally about £25 per month
Car - I am rural so this is essential otherwsse they would be trapped in our village, and all local petrol, petrol about £20 per week insurance about £50 per month and one damaged tyre to be replace per au pair
Domestic phone - switched call plans to one that give me unlimited calls to certain countries now and only recruit from thise counties extra cost of call plan £10 per month
Gym membership - included as second adult on family membership extra cost £20 per month.
Extra food £20 per week, heating on during the day - no idea.

So thats about £130 per week term time and £155 during school holidays

Hope that helps

thanks- the extra costs are good indicators. It still sounds overall cheaper to me as I will be paying childcare fees for outside school hours around £130 a week and would get more with a live in support (the bliss of not kicking the kids out of bed in the morning must be worth a lot). Why is termtime cheaper- do you use less hours?
Also, do you allow them to babysit for other locals and if so, could this extra income start to count to knock them over the tax threshold?

Exactly term time = less hours

I have never been asked about babysitting, but would say yes if asked, regarding tax threshholds prob not during term time but would during holidays (£95 is the threshhold - it is a carefully chosen number!)

And like you say with an AP the advantage is flexibility, but be aware that flexibility is a two way street, so for every time I am late home or ask for a hand on a Saturday I know I have to make it up to the AP in some way.

Thanks dadinsteadofmom, there are also lots of good posts on here at the moment which I am reading to keep myself up to speed.

Hi gallery - Sorry, I only just saw this, was away over Xmas. I think Dadinstead has covered it all but I would add that I am in a city so AP never uses our car, but I do provide her with a travelcard as she picks kids up form school by train during term time. Also, the food thing very much depends on your AP - we have had some who appeared to live on fried eggs and thin air, and others who ate huge amounts - if there was salmon in the fridge it would be gone before I could flick open a cookbook. As a general rule though, if they like to cook and are good cooks, which is great for your family, they will cost more in food so it's swings and roundabouts really. Heaating on during the day you can calculate approx by working out how much you spend on heating at the moment, dividing it by no of hours it is on per day to give you an hourly approx (but take a bit off to account for the house already being warm, tbh, I don't think it would make a huge difference for the months when it was neccessary unless you live in a draughty mansion). HTH

thanks Wilbur