Comments from parents about the 2002 nanny survey
Please do not share my email with anyone and please keep my identityconfidential.
Our previous nanny was paid by check, we withheld taxes, etc. This nanny refused to work unless we paid in cash with no withholdings. We had searched for months to find a nanny (we both leave for work at 6
Because she is part time if there is vacation days we both try to be flexibel and adjust schedules so she gets paid for the agreed upon hours and she provides care for said hours, but maybe on different days. We also try to line up vacations together.
I pay mine and my nanny's share of social security and employment taxes (my employer does not do that). I also accomodate my nanny's ever shifting student schedule, including reducing hours during exams, etc., and allowing her to choose her own vacation times to accomodate her family, which is valuable to her. I believe I probably pay about average hourly rate for one 2-3 yr old child, however I don't pay more when she watches my older son (7 yrs). I also let my nanny bring her child whenever she wants (she saves on childcare that way) and her child and my older son have become good friends. It's probably not your typical arrangement, but it works for us.
Questions 7, 9 (and possibly others) assume nanny cares for children alone. I have 3 children but someone else is always taking care of them with the nanny - either my husband, me or (rarely when we're unavailable) a second babysitter. I answered on the basis nanny took care of three children, but really it's mostly 1.5 children. Question 9 does not allow for raises - our nanny started at $9, was raised to $10 after 3 mos. and $11 a year later. Also it assumes nanny decides what to charge - we were the ones who offered raises. Question 19 asks if we pay for medical *insurance*, but no question asks if we pay for medical expenses - which we do.
The options on some of those questions do not really convey the nature of the arrangement. References were the way we checked her out, and we used the same terms as the other parents said they had with her. If we are not going to need her, we tell her at least a month in advance, and she does the same. Everyone seems satisfied.Also, in terms of her experience/training, we were not concerned because we are at home the whole time, which is a very different nature of relationship from most nannies.
We are a trilingual household, and the nanny's native language (Spanish) is what we mainly speak at home, so there's no abrupt transition in language when the nanny arrives.
Great idea! I would love to know the results of this survey. I have felt for some time now that Nannies are the only employees not affected by our current economic downturn. Our nanny actually received a raise in September.
Eventhough my nanny has only worked with me for less than 6 months taking care of my 2nd child, she has already worked with me previously with my 1st child (she took care of him when he was 1 yr-2.6 years old). She has been a very reliable, dependable and caring individual. We just love her. I found her from Bananas.
She is the primary care-giver for my younger son (8 months old), and for that is paid $14 per hour. However, she also occasionallycares for my older son (7 years), at no additional charge. She sometimes brings her 6-year-old daughter along, but mostly when sheis caring for my older son (the 2 older kids like to play together). She speaks mostly French to my son, although her English is good, too.She takes him to the library and museums regularly, and arranges for play-dates weekly.
Elaboration on - 10. Nanny will usually work on holidays so they are treated like normal days. 14. My nanny cooks meals for my son only as she cares for him at her house. 17. My nanny speaks English (My NL) and Farsi (Her NL) to my son but her husband speaks to my son only in Farsi, since his English is less proficient.
I live in Piedmont.
Our nanny speaks both English (out native language) and Spanish (her native language) with our children.
Good idea to do the survey. I am very interested in the outcome. We just finished interviewing quite a few nanny candidates. The range was $13/hr - $18/hr for two babies. Most were asking $10/hr for one baby, $16/hr for two. Several mentioned that they had contacted Bananas to find out what the "going rate" was.
She is part of a community of Mien (Lao) nannies, and that is an excellent thing
you don't have choice for nanny speaking both languages to children
maybe should have bilingual option in survey
Our nanny is an employee of my husband's company and also receives 401k benefits.Any tax deductions are taken as her employer with the guidance of our CPA. Thereforewe do not pursue tax deductions separately for childcare.
When I was searching for a nanny in October '01, I met many qualified candidates who wanted $15/hour off the books. All the parents I met paid in the $10-12 range. I was wondering what would happen to these candidates.
When I first hired her I did not pay insurance, mileage, etc. These were added later as a way of giving her a raise without either of us having to pay additional taxes.
I pay the woman who helps me with my children--I don't really think of her as a nanny--$8.50 an hour. I don't really think of her as a nanny because I'm mostly home when she's here. I have two small children (one five months the other 25 months) and she sometimes cares for them both, but often each of us has one of them. She does housework and laundry when she gets a chance and stays home with one child when I need to take the other to an appointment or run an errand. She started at $7.00, but I've been upping her .50 cents an hour every couple of months because I feel her services are so valuable to my family. I pay her for 16 hours a week. If she doesn't work for whatever reason, a sick kid of her own or a trip for either one of us, I pay her half for the hours she missed. This involves a great deal of respect and integrity on both of our parts, but she's increadibly responsible. I am thinking of a Christmas bonus, maybe $100 dollars or s0--keeping in mind she's very part time, only 16 hours a week. I do teach her a lot of English and she's gotten much better in the time she's been with us, so that is a hidden benefit for her. She has become an important part of our lives.
We pay our nanny $13/hr whether she is caring for one or both of our children
I pay a fixed weekly salary whether my nanny is looking after my child only, or my child and my neighbor's child (usually about 20 hours per week). She brings her two children with her when they are out of school.
Found my nanny (share) through Bananas. Pay $8 per hour per child for 2 children, $10 per hour for 1 child. My nanny plans to provide a replacement when she takes vacation. I pay her when I am on vacation.
I would love to fill this out but am concerned about confidentiality especuilly regarding income tax questions. Please advise. Thank you.
Thank you for doing this survey. I look forward to seeing the results.
I strongly believe in paying a living wage for childcare. Ingrid, who takes care of my daughter, a friend's daughter, and her own son, for 12 hours each week is from Germany and was a Waldorf kindergarten teacher there. When she watched just my child and hers (both around two years old), I paid her $15 dollars per hour. Now I pay her $150 per week for 12 hours of care, and my friend pays $120. (My friend is a student and not earning any money; I'm doing paid work while Ingrid watches my daughter.)
I find that childcare in Berkeley is much more expensive than my friends in Southern California and New York are paying. However, because we love our nanny, we think that the $10,000 per year (for 2 days a week of non-share care) is worth it. I find the UCB parents network helpful in trying to find another family to share our nanny with, although we have not yet had a match.
Our situatio works really well. One day a week our Nanny is with our child alone and one day a week she is with the child of the other family that we share with. THree days a week the nanny is with both children. Tuesday thay are always at our house, Thursday ther are always at their house, Wednesdays they are at our hous one month and their house the next. Sounds complicated but it really great. We pay $ 12/hour when our nanny is with one child and $ 16.50 (up from $ 15 when we started) when she has both. I am glad to participate in this survey but please do not include my email and my personal information anywhere. Thank you.
We have an agreement to seek a childcare share in January, at which time we will pay a total of $16.00/hour for 2 children.
we're extremely happy with her.
its great your doing this, and i think it will be very helpful. This comment is too late, but i think it would be a little more helpful if the survey is every done again to have even more precise categories for hourly pay (and sick leave- one category covers 1-5 days)
Thank you for conducting this survey.
We have used Au Pairs who live with you for a year. They are here on a cultural Visa -- J-1. If you get a good match, then it is a terrific experience. You should go through an Au Pair agency so that if it doesn't work, then you can get a replacement. There is a 3,000-5,000 fee for setting this up, acquiring insurance, etc. that is paid up front each year you get an Au Pair and they can only stay for 1 year.
RE 17 above, nanny speaks to our child in both our native language (english) as well as her native language (mien).
When I worked full time (and had only 1 child) I paid our nanny $10/hr + OT after 8 hrs. I took out taxes and paid her 2 weeks paid vacation (but no sick days.) I took out all taxes and used a payroll service which issued her a check every 2 weeks.I also paid her $20/week for gasoline. Now that I work part time at home, (we have 2 kids now) she works 2 days/week for us, taking care of both kids. She charges us $12./hr - I no longer pay gas money on a regular basis (but give her $ if she takes the kids out for a long outing, such as to the zoo.) No paid vacations, no sick leave, and no taxes are taken out. Instead of a W2, we'll issue her a 1099 this year. She works the other 3 days/week at a neighbor's house taking care of thier child in thier home (she never sits for our kids and the other child at the same time.)
Some clarifications
I got my nanny off of craigslist after a grueling 6 week search. I'm glad I was as picky as I was, though, because she is terrific.
I am interested in the cost for twincare. The nanny agency said that twin nannies cost more than nannies for two unrelated children of the same age. I am not convinced that this is justified, so any additional info comparing the situations would be helpful.
Thanks for doing this. Should be interesting.
Our trust has built little by little, to the point where our nanny is now a part of our family and our daughter has been taken in as a member of hers. Sometimes she takes our daughter to her home if she has a doctor's appt and her grown children will take care of our daugher while she goes. Sometimes her 7-year old grandson comes with her if he does not have alternative care. All of this has evolved over time as we have felt comfortable with each other. Our decision to hire her was not entirely obvious as there were others who were more "qualified" but our decision was intuitive based on who we thought was most loving, gentle, careful. We could not be happier.
In addition to her hourly pay, we pay 1-2 weeks pay as a bonus and another week's pay at Christmas; this adds about .85 to her hourly wage on average. She also gets a substantial raise each year. Also, when she was out on disability we supplemented her disabilty insurance/workman's comp payments so she was getting the same take-home pay as if she was working. We DON'T want to lose her.
My nanny requested $10/hour, but I felt that she was worth at least $12/hour to us, so I unilaterally gave her a raise -- much to her surprise.
While we pay $10 per hour for one kid, we pay $12 per hour for the two (ages 1 & 4). We give Kaiser health ins. for her only (not rest of her family).
We are sharing the nanny with another family that had been working with her for nine months before we joined. There is no contract, and we have had to invent the "rules" for days-off and payment as we go along. We find this situation frustrating because we don't know what the nanny is expecting and we aren't sure what is fair. Our attempts to put the procedures in writing were rebuffed by the other family, so we have resorted to paying the nanny more or less according to scheme of our other child's family daycare. We and the nanny would really like to have a contract.
Nanny cares for children (I have twins) in her home one day a week...rest of the time the kids are in pre-school. Nanny's children are often present, but they are three teen-age girls who actually assist with the care of the children, rather than needing care themselves. Nanny also cares for my children on those occasions when the school is closed, but we don't have a holiday (at least once a month).
We offered a $100 Health Insurance stipend if needed but our nanny had coverage and didn't need stipend.
RE
For question 1, How did you find your current nanny? I'd add Bananas as an option as I'm sure there are lots of people who have used them too.Also, make the e-mail addresses not case sensativeas my first try submitting this was rejected.
Clarifications of above
Hourly pay is misrepresentative because our nanny has lots of days that are light because all 3 of my kids are in school most of the day. She covers days that they are sick and days that they are home during the summer. We have worked with each other for over 12 years to raise my children.
Our nanny speaks both Spanish and English to the babies throughout the day.Also, her pay can vary throughout the week depending on how many kids she is caring for.1 = $10/hr2 = $8/hr/child = $16/hr total3 = $7/hr/child = $21/hr total
This survey does not work well for our situation.Our nanny lives with us - she is a live-in.We provide her with a monthly salary, a car, room and board, health insurance, a phone line and a computer. She has 2 weeks off every year, although 1 of these weeks she must take wehn we request her to take it. In addition, we are gone another 3 weeks per year which end up being additional vacation for her. She has 1 afternoon off a week, plus, of course, the weekend.We pay her about $1400/mo before taxes, and we pay her $7/hour when she has to baby sit outside of her normal hours. We also paid for her driving lessons until she had a CA driver's license.She takes care of the boy at home, and drives him around to his school and classes during the day. She does errands for the house, does the laundry, the dishes, and cleans the house. She does not cook except if she wants to, which is about once every 2 weeks when she cooks some native dishes (they are delicious).We were leery of getting a live-in when my son was born. It turned out to be the best thing in the world for us. We would recommend it to everyone but with many caveats in the sense that we planned for it carefully, and do not know how a less planned venture would have turned out.Thanks for the survey! We will check the results carefully.Take care,Michel and MP
We've changed from a nanny to an au pair - because we have the space (a bedroom/bath for her), this is MUCH more affordable. Au pair from an agency run $139/wk for 45 hours of care, and it doesn't matter the number of kids. Plus, she can do anything (laundry, etc) related to the kids. You do have to pay the agency an up front fee, but it still averages out to less than $250/wk. And it's all completely legal; healthcare, taxes, visas, etc. covered by the agency. I think it's an option families should be more aware of. We love it now.
My nanny only had one year of experience when I met her through one of her friends. She comes at a very reasonable rate due to her limited experience, inability to drive a car and limited proficiency with the English language. Her rate is $8 per hour right now. I plan to raise her to $9 per hour at her one year anniversary. She has been wonderful!!!
Share care is awesome! We share our nanny with another family. The boys have a great time. I never mind when my nanny brings her son, maybe a few times a month.
we use split rates
We have had three wonderful childcare providers over the years. We always treated them like extended family members, but paid them like professionals. I am appalled by the cavalier way some of my friends have treated their babysitters/nannies/au pairs - trying to pay them as little as possible, demanding that they keep the house clean as well as take care of the children, not paying for vacation time when the employer family is out of town, giving no holiday or yearly bonus, no farewell party or gifts for departing au pairs, no respect in the way they dealt with them. Why wouldn't you respect and honor the person raising your child? I had a wealthy friend who hired Chinese immigrants who spoke no English, paid them $5 an hour to clean the house and take care of her one and only child! She had no way of communicating with the person who was raising her child, demanding a clean house (but had no clue as to what the caregiver was doing with the child), and gave no sick days or vacation. Even her business employees were treated (somewhat) better than that! My feeling is that if you can't afford to pay someone an appropriate wage, you should try to find a share situation or daycare where you can together pay a higher wage (my friend and I found an incredibly qualified, wonderful person by combining our hours to offer a full time job with higher wages).
Nanny speaks both her and our native language to the baby.
This is great!Thanks for taking the time!
We are paying our nanny above-board, and like all (!) of theother nannies we spoke to, she had been working under the table,so we have to pay her 25% more than her take-home ratein order to get her the same take-home rate she is used to getting.
My nanny sometimes implies that her pay ($10/hr per kid or $15/hr for two kids) is not high enough, though I always feel that we offer her good enough pay and benefits (gas $, vacation, sick leave, presents/perks).
Oour nanny is now only providing 1 day per week, but when she started with us, when my kid was 6 months old, she worked 2-3 days/week. Alternating homes with another family has been ideal. Also, she specializes in working with 2 children/babies at a time, which is invaluable for the little ones. I've been really happy with this arrangement for everyone involved.
I work at home, so know everything that goes on between our sitter and our children. She had no experience, so I spent a lot of time with her in the beginning. I had been through the wringer with other nannies, and now believe that someone young and fresh, without her own children, was the solution for me -- she is happy to do things "my" way and there are no tensions between us. I'm glad I'm around so much -- when I say "she is wonderful" I know what I'm talking about!
I found my nanny on Craigs List... I had terrific response.
This was an unusual situation - we needed a nanny for only six months, who could take care of an infant, and who could be quite flexible. We paid $15/hour, which seems high, in order to have this flexibility.
My nanny lives in during the week so that is part of her compensation.
thanks for doing this!
Please note that the above data pertains to when I had my nanny two years ago.For the past two years my child has been in full -day preschool. Also, till I started work my nanny worked much fewer hours. The hours listed became applicable when I started working.Also, the language we communicated in was English and the survey question did not have this option. English is neither my nanny's nor my native language though my English proficiency level is that of a native speaker.
My situation may be unusual, one of my children is autistic and my nanny has been with us for 8 years. I would do anything I could to keep her.
You may not want to use my response, because several of the questions didn't fit my situation. I have a live-in nanny, which I guess is somewhat unusual in this area, although quite common in New York where I used to live. Because she lives in, I pay less than I would otherwise in terms of salary. I also provide her with a car and meals, so those questions were a little difficult for me to answer. Finally, she is on a salary like a professional -- she gets paid the same amount no matter how many hours she works within the term of our agreement. If I ask her to do something extra (like weekend hours other than the two weekend nights a month we agreed on), then I pay her extra. You might consider next time expanding your questionnaire to provide for the live-in situation, or providing more choices like "not applicable" or "other". Thanks
the pay does not reflect, that she brings her own child to the care.
It might be a good idea to define "nanny." I'm not sure what I have isn't a "mere" babysitter.I'm not sure how informative my survey answers are.The nanny is my neighbors' full-time nanny.She and they work out the schedule together, and we send our baby over part-time if it is convenient for them and for her.We pay her $9 an hour, and they pay her $7 an hour,but they guarantee her a full week of work.The paid work holiday issue hasn't arisen for usso far because we have always used her if she is available -- we have tons of work of our own to cram into whatever time she can give us.She brings her own child when it suits her, but I left that child out whentalking about the number of children she is caring for in conjunctionwith the hourly rate she gets.She does do some housework for my neighbor, but not for us.We may seem lax about CPR, language, etc. but the male half of my neighbor couple is unemployed and home all day, and my husband is home (next door) too, so in an emergency, she has plenty of help to call on.My neighbor found her and hired her so I can't really answer about references,experience, qualifications, etc. We were asked if we would chip in a child tohelp plump up her earnings when the other half of the neighbors' share arrangementbacked out.
We found our nanny through Neighborhood Parents Network newsletter, via an ad put in by parents for whom she'd worked in the past. We thrilled with her.We pay her $10/hour for our child alone, and she gets $15 for 2 when we share.
our nanny takes care of our child and the child of some friends together, three days a week. one week the care is at our house, the next week, it's at the other child's house. about once a month she brings her 3 yr old daughter along, which works out fine. when we hired her 15 mo. ago, we wrote up a contract together that we all signed. it has been helpful to remind us of what holidays we're giving her, etc. we started out paying her $14/hr for two kids, $10 if she was caring for only one. she also accrued 1 personal day (for vacation or sick leave) every three months. after a year we gave her a raise to $15/hr and a personal day accrued every two months. once every couple of months, both moms and the nanny sit down together for a meeting of an hour or two (we pay her for her time) to discuss how things are going, the childrens' development, etc. we are all satisfied with the arrangement and have been able to talk through any concerns (though they have been minor).
Our nanny works for $12/hour for one child, $16/hour for two, and $18/hour for three. We pay her a small amount once per month by check, and she has filled out W-2 an W-3 forms, and will declare that income to the IRS (she recently received her green card) so we will be paying some taxes. We found her at BAB+NANAS, but as it turned out she had been working for someone from my first child's mom's group for five years -- the glowingness of the recommendation made the language barriers negligable. She is a FANTASTIC nannyand we all love her dearly. I'm really big on paying as much as possible for the best care possible, and for understanding that for the nanny, a steady weekly salary is more important than an occasional unpaid day off.
Nanny is Registered with Trustline
We found it very difficult to compete with the nanny agencies, who seem to purposefully raise the salary expectations of potential nannies. Out of desperation, we finally had to go through an agency last time. While we were happy with our nanny, we felt the agency's fee was exorbitant. Furthermore, they continued to call her *at our house* to see if she was interested in other positions!
Nanny sharing has worked very well for our family. It has made having a nanny a financial possibility.
Please do not share my email with anyone and please keep my identityconfidential.
This information is a few months old, as my children are now in pre-schoolalmost full-time and my nanny of 4 years is now working with anotherfamily. I think the data is sill relevant. (We were paying 13$/hr fortwo kids through August, and I believe she is now getting 14$/hr for two.)