Working Moms
LeahCK
member
In home Nanny (daily)
LeahCK
member
in Working Moms
Does anyone use an in home nanny? If so how much do you pay her? How did you find a reputable one? I am trying to weigh our options in comparison to day cares.
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Re: In home Nanny (daily)
We'll have one for our DS. She was/is a teacher at our DD's former daycare. I offered her a competitive salary and extras (three weeks paid vacation, 5 sick days and just about every federal holiday off plus an extra day here or there when I decide to take time to be with my children if their grandparents come in for visits). I don't have a recommendation on how you can find a good one. Like I said we poached ours from our DD's former daycare/school so I knew she would pass muster.
What about a craig's list ad for former daycare teachers? college students who are going into elementary ed etc? Those are usually good choices- you can vet them by asking for references and seeing a resume and calling former employers. As for salary- I'd see what daycare costs are for your area and what the ratio is and offer a bit more than that since your child will be one on one. For example daycare in our area for an infant for a good center is between 280 and 350. We offered our gal top of scale for her services plus all the benefits I listed above. We'll also provide her with gas money and we're going to enroll our son in kindermusik and possibly one other activity so that they get out of the house. Also we want her to take him out to the library for story hour etc. Obviously we'll pay for those activities. My job also offers free passes to the aquarium, zoo and our children's museum which I'll likely get tickets for them to do when he gets a bit older.
We just switched DD to a daycare, but we had a nanny for the first year. We found her through care.com. We paid her $8/hour, but I would ask around in your area about the going rate. Also take into consideration their experience, if you want them to do housework, if they are driving your LO around, etc.
I would do a lot of interviews. Try a website, but also post something at the local college. Education majors are great as nannies. We called references and met with probably 5-7 candidates. In the end, we picked the person who DD seemed most comfortable with. She bonded with her instantly and it worked out perfectly.
good luck!
We use an in-home nanny and I love it! It is more expensive than daycare, but the benefits of having E in my home and the additional time I get with E is amazing. Totally worth the extra $ IMO. We used a nanny agency to find a nanny. We worked with the agency to create a job description based on what we were looking for, and the agency sent us all the applicants. We picked who we interviewed and once we found someone we liked, the agency handled the background checks. Another benefit of going through an agency is we have backup care available if our nanny is not available due to time off or sickness. We pay $13/hr which is middle of the line for our area. In my state, we legally have to pay overtime of time and a half for any hours she works over 40, which she does. Our state also requires home employers to have workers compensation, so keep that in mind. You will also have to pay payroll taxes.
ETA: It is not in our nanny's job description, but my nanny also cleans. She will make sure our kitchen is clean on a daily basis, and does all of E's laundry. Another benefit of an in home nanny! I can spend more time with E because I don't have to do the daily light housekeeping or laundry.
We found ours through care.com. Using sites like that allow you to run a background check on them. Sites like care.com and sittercity.com also have a payment calculator to search for the going rate for a sitter in your zip code.
We pay $10.50/hr in her take home check (so really her official pay is around $11 before social security and medicare are withheld).
Always call multiple references for them and interview more than one person to make sure you have found a good fit! This is definitely costing us more than daycare but it has been working out for our family.
Good luck with your decision!
We have had 2 nannies, 1 hired through an agency and another we found on our own. The agency cost $1500, found the candidate, ran background checks, and helped with hiring negotiations. I found that the agencies actually get most of their candidates via craigs list or care.com themselves. If you are willing to do a little work on your own then just use care.com. We placed an ad on care.com, phone interviewed and then personally interviewed a candidate we loved. We called references and used usinformationsearch.com to conduct the background check. This is the same process/background check firm that the agency used.
Our nanny works for a weekly salary. It ends up being $13/hour. For legal/IRS purposes you are obligated to pay 1.5 times base pay for a household employee after $40 of work. Her contract states she gets $10/hour for 1st 40 hours and $15/hour for the over hours (these are close numbers). You can look at publication 926 on the IRS website for household employers. Another website that's helpful is 4nannies.com for some helpful calculators.
Having a nanny is significantly more expensive than daycare, but for us it was a good decision (our child was very sick in daycare) and it is less stressful for us without having to drop off and pick up at daycare.
Sorry for long reply, let me know if you would like any more info. Good luck.
Thank you everyone. That was all very helpful. I will definitely do the research since I have time. I won't need one until the beginning of Sept when I start to ease back into work.
Lilly I love the idea of poaching!!
I think this could be better since I'm a work at home and don't think she'll have to work more than 40 hours a week (mostly).
I love the idea of signing her and baby up for activities and story hour!!
Has anyone compared their services to the Au Pair services, or have used them both?
care.com
I got 25 or so resumes, had 10 phone screens, 5 in person interviews.
$13/hour (this is reigional)
she gets the same vacation time I do, so 6 weeks paid a year, plus holidays that my company observes.
She has driving privaleges with him, so they do stuff like go to the library, aquarium, playground, there is a water park for little kids down the street, and she can take him to the pool in the neighborhood in the summer.
she's excellent. I expect a lot from her, I expect to see her curriculum for what they work on, I expect her to know what milestones he needs to reach next, etc. she's not a glorified, well paid baby sitter to me.
GL!!
We do a Nanny share with another family. We stole her from our daycare center. Her take home pay is $1450/month, but withholdings bring it to a little over $2000. She never works 40 hours a week. We set it up to pay her salary although it technically does not qualify, but we wanted her to get a consistent paycheck.
Most weeks to date she has only worked from 8-3. The nanny share allows us to split the cost, which makes it a little cheaper than daycare.