Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. Only the apps you allow.

Meet the Other Phone.
Only the apps you allow.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
Money matters

Find financial and money-saving discussions including debt and pension chat on our Money forum. If you're looking for ways to make your money to go further, sign up to our Moneysaver emails here.

Original poster

How much do I need to earn to "take home" the same as my 19 year old nanny??

52 replies

knakered · 01/02/2007 21:24

I pay my nanny £10/hr gross - 50hrs/week ...costs me grand total of £28,500 with employers nics - as she has been chatting about her upcoming holiday to Jamaica - it just occured to me how much disposable income she has (ignoring the fact that she lives at home rent free etc and I have a massive mortgage and 4 kids to feed and cloth) -- how much do I have to earn to at least take home the same as her ..ie what do I have to earn to pay her from my net salary and have the same net income as her???

OP posts:
majorstress · 02/02/2007 13:27

and it isn't financial sense for many parents, if they look beyond the few years that kids are small.

themildmanneredjanitor · 02/02/2007 13:29

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

Soapbox · 02/02/2007 13:32

And if that is what she chooses to do - so what?

majorstress · 02/02/2007 13:38

FioFio what's the other one called?

TMMJ-I don't know about moaning about the nanny, or who you are or your education, I've been off line for a long time. I'm only saying that for some jobs, taking a break to raise kids equals giving up forever and that really isn't financially sensible in SOME cases. It may be well worth it to pay all the wages into childcare, to preserve the job. It was for me.

nailpolish · 02/02/2007 13:58

ok

i think of it this way = when you were 19 yrs old, married, working mothers of 4 who had a house to run would have looked at YOU (assuming you werent married ora mother at 19~!) and thought "gawd i wish i had all that disposible income and no dependents etc et c etc"

SO

in a few years time, knakered, your 19 yr old nanny MAY be in your position, with a house to pay for and children whose care to pay for

it is all part of the stages of life

DOES ANYONE know what im on about?

btw a cm can be £4/hr, per each child, and she doesnt clean your house

mousiemousie · 02/02/2007 14:06

justaphase is spot on here

why not move in with your parents then you too will be able to afford a holiday in Jamaica...

uwila · 02/02/2007 14:11

Nailpolish, if the childminder cleaning was directed at me, I was referring to her own house which she must clean after the mindees make a mess of it.

And MMJ, you did sound like you were going down the SAHM vs WOHM route.

nailpolish · 02/02/2007 14:18

uwila, it wasnt directed at anyone

uwila · 02/02/2007 14:22

The what did you mean by "btw a cm can be £4/hr, per each child, and she doesnt clean your house
"

nailpolish · 02/02/2007 14:24

it was just a statement, meaning i dont think £10/hr for 4 children is expensive. i paid that to a cm for my 2 children (almost - she was £4/hr per child)

uwila · 02/02/2007 14:29

YEah, but with a nanny you still cover all the costs on top of that (ballet tuition, bus fares, money for food, etc.)

morningpaper · 02/02/2007 14:29

There is no point working out this sum, it is meaningless

Are you saying that you "deserve" to have as much free money as your nanny? Well you shouldn't have had those pricey children!

She is young 'n' free and you are not. Doing these sorts of sums is meaningless.

nailpolish · 02/02/2007 14:32

~WHAT uwila?

i still had to either provide food for the dd's lunch or give the cm lunch money on top of that!!

and if the cm took the dd;s to ballet i wouldnt expect her to pay for that

ROFL

uwila · 02/02/2007 14:39

Oh, when I used a childminder all food and activities were included. But then she was £5 per hour.

nailpolish · 02/02/2007 14:40

so dont you see my point uwila, about £10/hr for 4 children being a reasonable price?

uwila · 02/02/2007 14:56

I see the point about it being unaffordable for the parent. I also see the point about it not being a huge income for the nanny to live on. However, I too am very well aware that my live-in nanny has vastly more disposable income than I have. And I do think that's crazy. I don't think it's her fault. But it is still crazy.

nailpolish · 02/02/2007 14:59

but uwila she wouldnt have that income as disposible if she had children! its all relative

FioFio · 02/02/2007 15:18

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn

FioFio · 02/02/2007 15:19

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn

uwila · 02/02/2007 15:25

I am not advocating that nannies are overpaid, I am sypathising with the parent because it is really hard to pay these bills and not go bankrupt -- literally.

Judy1234 · 02/02/2007 15:38

I suppose looking at how many years you will need a nanny it's not that many considering a life time of work from age 22 or 23 to 65 is it? So it's a kind of price you pay because you want your children looked after and you can't persuade your husband to do it.
I always think on these threads of the Finnish lawyer I met where child care was £1,500 a year, state provided and his friend was complaining it had gone up to that level. Mind you he wasn't that happy with 61% taxes he would have to pay if they went home.

So I suppose if our children (and we if we have the choice) pick careers where we will earn £200k plus then there isn't the same problem when it comes to paying nannies because the differentials are different or I know people who work in China and other countries where there are huge wage differentials. I was somewhere in the summer where wages are 7 dollars a day and someone was told off for going up to 10d as it spoiled the local economy! We used to have was it 1m live in very cheap and badly paid domestic servants in England. Even the smallest of London semis had a tiny servants' room and that was because labour was so cheap I suppose.

ANyway having children is certainly not easy. Having a lot can help as older ones can look after younger ones a bit as I find sometimes in my set up.

Ladymuck · 02/02/2007 22:04

I don't think that £70k+ is a bad salary at all - certainly not when you've also factored in up to 4 years of maternity leave along the way. Of course if you're earning below £45k (close to double the national av wage) then you're probably making a loss by going to work.

I have to say that at the point I was young free and single and earning £25k, and watching people around me earning more than £70k+ it definitely didn't dawn on me that I would have more disposable income than they did (though admittedly I wasn't living with my parents). In fact overall I think that possibly the cost and complexity of childcare was the main area of parenting of which I was blissfully ignorant prior to parenthood. I didn't appreciate how my working life would be so dictated by the type of childcare that I could get, and how my family would be affected by any change in that arrangement (be it moving between rooms at nursery, or new children at the cm, or a nanny moving on). I certainly hadn't any idea about the complexities of childcare once they were at school. Frankly life is so much simpler in this regards for SAHMs. If you're working it isn't just the pull between work and home, it is the interaction between work - home - childcare.

And if I was ignorant, dh was totally clueless!

Judy1234 · 03/02/2007 01:06

We talked about nannies though, my ex husband and I even before we were engaged and childcare and we knew the costs. So some people do plan but I was planning a baby age 22 so there was an immediate need to sit down with calculators and work things out. I think my daughters as they're 22 and 20 and talk to me and discuss all the childcare arrangements with their little brothers have a good understanding too but I know they and their student friends won't really understand all that stuff about how much tax and NI is taken off your pay and they'll say things like - that's a good job because my friend gets free clothes.

I try to direct them away from careers which have a lot of inherent sexism and into interesting careers where they could afford a full time nanny if that's their choice at the time if indeed they want children at all.

hatwoman · 03/02/2007 01:21

good post LM. I agree with you so much about the complexity of it all. I've just come up against a new one - if I increase my hours (currently working 3 days a week) I'll be running at a loss

It annoys me greatly when people think that those who lament the financial cost of childcare are failing to value childcare. You can't put a purely monetary value on caring for your children - but you can do some sums and work out what you can and can't afford.

When you ask the question is £10 an hour "reasonable" you are blurring two questions - does £10 hour reflect the value you put on childcare (of course not, you can;t put a price on it) and can you afford £10 an hour (for most people: no)

Judy1234 · 03/02/2007 08:46

Childcare is expensive because we now pay nannies and nursery workers more than our Victorian ancestors paid their live-in maidservants/nannies relative to the family income and there is no state subsidy for most of us unlike countries in Europe with higher taxes. A lot of grandparents help for nothing. I think my mother who still had my brother at home when I had my daughter was looking forward to some years without children around (she was fairly old when she had us - 32) and didn't live near.

It has always been one our greatest expenses over 22 years and even now is still reasonably substantial a cost because of all the time they are off school and after school.

I think part of the equation is not just I and my husband earn £X an hour and my husband and I pay the nanny £Y an hour so therefore we are left with XYZ, but also if I were to leave the labour market now I might go insane (some of us aren't suited to being with small children and it's not what we want to do all day) or more importantly looking forward to when I'm 40, 50 and 65 there is this career path I want to be on and remain on in work I like and if I take 5 years off now it will be very hard to get back on it and therefore I am writing off my investment in my university education, all those hours of work in my 20s and contacts and the future upwards curve of income. Of course if you hate your job and it's deadend anyway those factors are not relevant.

When we paid our nanny in 1983/1984 more than one of our net salaries I knew that in 20 years time nannies would still be earning about the same amount but my income could well be 10 times what it then was in real terms so the nanny cost was an investment in my psychological health and in the family's financial well being in the long term.