Nannyshare advice needed please...

[feelingit]

I am pregnant with DD2 and am thinking about the time when I go back to work (4 day week) and need to sort out childcare for 2 (DD is now 2.5 years and with a childminder) I am thinking a nanny share with the nanny looking after my 2 and finding another family (child) to share with.

I live in South East London and I have no idea at all about what this is likely to cost on a monthly basis in total for a 4 day week or how the cost is split between me and the other family (ie would everything be split 2/3 me and 1/3 the other family ?) any light anyone could shed on this would be really appreciated.

It may seem a little early to be thinking about this but I have recently become a single parent and am needing to seriously consider what the £ is going to look like a year from now! thanks

Why are you wanting a nanny specifically? Answering that may help to determine if a nanny/nannyshare is something that would work for you.

DD currently goes to a childminder, so is there a particular reason why you wouldn't want to also send DD2?

With a nannyshare, the split in cost can be done in many different ways, so it depends on the share family, what their needs are. It may for example depend on where the nanny is based, at your home or the other families. I would say try to get them based at your home, then you don't have the hassle of taking your children to another place.

thanks Nannynick. I am thinking that 2 x childminder would be too expensive (would work out to be around £1700 per month) and even then as you say it would involve getting 2 of them dressed and elsewhere (probably to 2 different locations) every morning before work by myself which I just can't see being an option. I figured (hoped - maybe I am wrong) that a nanny might cost less if we shared and if they could come to my house then that would be a huge help even if it was just for 2 out of the 4 days. I do also like the idea of both of them being together under the same care during the day. Does cost vary dramatically do you think ? Even a very approximate idea would be v useful to see if this may be viable thanks!

Nannyshares I think cost more than a nanny but the fee gets split between the two employers.
A nanny in London I expect could easily earn £160 gross per day (around £120 net) If you were very lucky and got someone at say £9 net per hour, that would still be around £120 a day Gross. You then have all the other things to add on top (see example of other costs).

I would expect nannies salary plus Employers NI would amount to £2500-£3000 a month. Thats based on between £9 and £12 net per hour, working 40 hours a week.

There are not many Nanny Share jobs being listed at NannyJob currently, so hard to know what typical rate would be. Between £9 and £12 net per hour seems typical from the jobs listed.

With a childminder you could use Childcare Vouchers. With a nanny, the nanny would need to be Ofsted Registered - not all nannies are. So if you get Childcare Vouchers, insist on the nanny being Ofsted Registered so you can use those vouchers to pay some of the salary.

With luck someone will be along today, or tomorrow with more insight into nannyshares and what the likely cost saving would be... if another family was to share with you.

For shares I ask for a 25 to 33% increase on my hourly rate, so let's say £12gross hourly for the maths with a salary increase of a third, making it £16gross. Nannyshares are usually a 50/50 split and if you hosted then the wear and tear on your house would compensate for you having 2 children. That would make it £8 gross for you.

I always ask how employers would cope if the other family dropped out. I advise you to have an overall gross rate you could pay for the nanny's notice period, say 6 weeks, comfortably by yourself.

Cost does vary hugely with very qualified and experienced candidates costing more. Then you will need to consider heat, light and food if they are at yours, plus your share of the kitty- likely to be about 3/5 of the cost it you work on the basis of 2 children plus 1 child and splitting expenses for the nanny 50/50.
A while ago nick here did a wonderful thread on how much the overall running cost of a nanny in London was. If you search for it then it may help a bit.

being devils avacart(sp) if thats the right word

does a parent of a nanny sher with 1 child pay less then a parent with 2

ie would feelingit end up paying 2/3rds of share

not sure if you can claim working tax credits or other benifits as now single, worth looking into

you have nice ages and great expereience for a new nanny, so maybe you could get a younger girl for less money - £1700 seems a HUGE amount for a cm for 2 children

Blondes,op will have a toddler and a newborn. Plus the other family's child... I think she should go for a very experienced nanny.

Hi
I would love a very experienced one but finances are going to have to feature quite heavily. What does everyone else do ? I guess a Nannyshare will end up being the cheapest unless anyone else has any other solutions that have worked for them ...

Do you have space for a live in? That can bring down the cost considerably.

oooh hadn't really thought of that. Does that makes things significantly cheaper ?

It can make a difference of about £100net per week in salary. The flip side is that live ins also tend to be younger and therefore less experienced. Live in salaries range from £250-500net, with the more experienced ones obviously towards the top of the scale. As blondes said you do have lovely ages for a newly qualified or less experienced nanny.

Clapham

Vauxhall unusually advertised with a per hour net salary but they're flexible on live in or out

another Clapham

yet another Clapham

Battersea

Clapham junction

Wimbledon

The going rate seems to be £300-400 full time. These are mostly 5 day weeks, so averaging around £80 net per day puts your net live in cost at £320 instead of approx £400 for a 4 day, 10 hours/day, live out on £10 net. As you're SE London it's probably cheaper than Clapham/Wimbledon.

Even better if you can share your live in!

At the moment, the average rate for a nanny share in South East London (Dulwich, Herne Hill, Blackheath, Peckham, Sydenham etc) is £11 net per hour when 2 families are sharing a nanny together on the same day. I do know of some families that pay £12-£13 for their nanny share but they are very much the exception at the moment. £11 does seem to be the bog standard average. You will not get a share at £9 net per hour and £10-£10.50 is rare for a proper nanny and you would risk having her poached by another ruthless parent. How that £11 net is split is up to the two families - usually it is a 60/40 split when one family has 2 children and the other only has 1 child, rather than a 50/50 split, and usually the older of the 2 children is at nursery or school for some of the day so the nanny does not have all three all of the time and she factors in pick-up as part of the childcare day.
Assuming the nanny is on normal tax code (currently 647L) a 4 day nanny share would average £440 net for a 10 hour day which is 644.70 gross per week or £2794 gross per month (gross includes the nanny's tax, the nanny's NIC and your NIC as an employer). A 50/50 split of this would be £1397 per family. A 60/40 split would mean you would have to find £1675 and the other family would pay £1118.
I run www.simplychildcare.com and I have noticed that registered nannies are definitely more common than they used to be so if you can get Childcare Tax Vouchers, it may not be as difficult to find someone who is registered as it would have been a year or two ago.
If you like the childminder you currently use, have you asked her if she would consider giving a discount for a sibling? Because it will be a lot less hassle for her rather than having another family fill the vacancy. You never know - she might consider it. Also another point to remember is that if you are going back to work before your new baby will be 1yr old, will your childminder have an appropriate vacancy then for that age? Most childminders can only take one baby under one, unless they work with an assistant.
I always find it interesting that the political parties when they talk about childcare never seem to realise that once there are 2 children in a family a nanny is often the cheapest option and potentially far more flexible. Nurseries and childminders are just not the answer for many parents. We were actually contacted by the Lib Dems quite a while ago as they were interested to hear the views from people like us at the 'coal face' helping parents try and find childcare. But I have my doubts that any of the parties at the next election will be doing much apart from mouthing the usual platitudes about how they support working families and rehashing the same old solutions.
I've often thought one of the best things they could do is abolish the employer's NIC when someone only has one employee. Not only would it be a huge help to parents employing a nanny but also it would help people trying to expand a business they are running by themselves - it might make the difference between taking someone on or not. And it might mean as a result fewer people being paid cash in hand under the table.

I must be very lucky because my amazing (professionally trained and Ofsted registered) nanny with 35 years experience is paid £10 net in a nanny share consisting of two children. (both just under 2). This is in SE15/SE22 area.
I also interviewed three other experienced nannies all asking for £9-£10 net for the share, so I think price is dependent on supply and demand when you're looking.
One share I was offered with a family who already had their nanny was £12.
we found our lovely nanny through simplychildcare.com.

We've just started a nannyshare in SE London (Lewisham) and between us pay £381 per week (gross for a 3 day week).

Between us we have 4 children; aged 5, 3, 13 months and 8 months. The eldest is at school all day so is taken to school and collected from school, given tea etc. whereas the 3 year old attends pre-school but mornings only. Both babies are cared for by our nanny all day.

To work out the proportion of costs each family should pay we split the day into blocks and worked out how much of each day each child was being cared for which gave us our proportions (it sounds more complicated than it was). It means that we pay less than the other family because DD1 is at school all day - their part of the gross pay is about £215.

I think we've been particularly lucky to find someone who wanted to be our children's nanny and was willing to top up her salary with agency work. She is a qualified early years teacher with nannying experience who wanted to get into nannying properly so she could actually spend time forming relationships with the children she worked with rather than feel as though she was chasing her tail in schools/nurseries. It's definitely their loss and our gain but also goes some way to explain why she wasn't phased by looking after 4 children including a 5-year-old (other nannies I contacted didn't like this idea). Her salary is pretty low (it will increase when her Ofsted registration comes through) in comparison to what others offer but as she is employed by us term-time only she is confident that she will be snapped up by someone during the holiday who may well be in a position to pay quite a bit more than we do.

It seems as though we were offering the job she wanted and so we got lucky.

In terms of day-to-day arrangements with the nannyshare it helps that the other famliy are good friends of ours and have very similar approaches to how we bring up our children, house rules/expectations etc. Before we advertised we thrashed out what we were looking for and how we imagined it would work on a practical level e.g. the other mum has use of a car so drops her two off at mine so I can walk to work and will collect them again by 6pm. During the day our nanny can choose where to spend her time based on what she's got planned so long as the children are all at mine by collection time. She lets us know if she'd like us to add particular things to the shopping list one week ready for the next e.g. ingredients for making pizza for tea and we let her know if we'd like the usual routine to be varied for any reason.