How can anyone afford a nanny?

[Anonymous]

Am I missing something? A nanny makes between $20-25 an hour, so at minimum $800 a week if 40 hours. That's almost my whole salary as a teacher. I have a baby and an elementary kid and have no clue what we are doing for child care once schools open up.

[Anonymous]

We did a nanny share for 2 years. I spent my meager savings (10k), stopped retirement contributions, and got help from my MIL to pull it off.

[Anonymous]

The short answer is that nannies are for people who make more money than you OR are willing to pay someone much less under the table.

As for the bigger picture question of WTF are we all going to do this fall, it's going to be very ugly without a full week in school option. There is going to be a serious childcare crunch anyway because daycares are closing/can't take as many little kids and there is no structure set up to take care of older kids who would otherwise be in school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Am I missing something? A nanny makes between $20-25 an hour, so at minimum $800 a week if 40 hours. That's almost my whole salary as a teacher. I have a baby and an elementary kid and have no clue what we are doing for child care once schools open up.

What is your budget for daycare?
Do you need a nanny for 40 hours?
Can you do a "nanny share" and bring in a classmate of your elementary aged child to share costs with another local family?


My friends who are teachers who did nanny's all did shares to split the costs and stacked their hours such that they did not need them for 40 hours. [1 parent started their day early so they were done early / other parent started day later]

[Anonymous]

Do you have room in your home for a live in nanny ? Depending on hours you can find one for 400 per week.

[Anonymous]

OP here. I was paying 350 a week for the baby before this started and about 500 a mo th for extended day for the older one. We don't have space for a live in nanny, but could do a nanny share if we can find someone. Husband sometimes travels for work, essential so its not getting cancelled. I'm going to assume I have to be in school every day so staggering a schedule won't work. Nanny share seems the best option at this point but would a nanny do my 2 kids and someone else too? That seems like a lot.

[Anonymous]

We sacrifice for our nanny. For awhile, while DH was in grad school, we used savings. We haven’t bought a house yet.

[Anonymous]

They're for rich people, or those with outside resources (like parental money) they can draw upon.

[Anonymous]

We pay $22 an hour and do taxes so it's another 7% for employer taxes. It's a lot but about the same as 2 in daycare. Lots of families in our neighborhood do nanny share and nannies make about $25 an hour for 2 kids.

[Anonymous]

You aren’t missing anything. I don’t know any teachers with nannies precisely because a decent nanny for two kids costs about the same as the take-home pay of a teacher.

I would say you can’t afford a FT nanny. But you shouldn’t need one - if you are back in school FT, your elem kid will have somewhere to go part of the time. That will help. And a nanny share for elem kids could have four kids fairly easily since they don’t have nap schedules to coordinate and are pretty independent. That would keep costs down.

The hardest part will be: if every family needs a nanny in the fall, where are all the nannies going to come from? Even if 2-4 families share a nanny, I worry about supply.

[Anonymous]

Can you find an in-home daycare in your neighborhood? That's what we used and it was $250/week. Your older kid could potentially go there after school too. Now, I have no clue how a teacher who needs to be at school in person and a spouse who is essential and travels are supposed to make this work if kids are not at school full time. Could you connect with a friend in older kid's class who you could trade off days with?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Can you find an in-home daycare in your neighborhood? That's what we used and it was $250/week. Your older kid could potentially go there after school too. Now, I have no clue how a teacher who needs to be at school in person and a spouse who is essential and travels are supposed to make this work if kids are not at school full time. Could you connect with a friend in older kid's class who you could trade off days with?

I'm in some kind of denial about this whole thing right now. We have a couple neighborhood friends we could try to coordinate something for the older kids but that also depends on them being on the same A or B schedule. Which I doubt we would know any time soon.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You aren’t missing anything. I don’t know any teachers with nannies precisely because a decent nanny for two kids costs about the same as the take-home pay of a teacher.

I would say you can’t afford a FT nanny. But you shouldn’t need one - if you are back in school FT, your elem kid will have somewhere to go part of the time. That will help. And a nanny share for elem kids could have four kids fairly easily since they don’t have nap schedules to coordinate and are pretty independent. That would keep costs down.

The hardest part will be: if every family needs a nanny in the fall, where are all the nannies going to come from? Even if 2-4 families share a nanny, I worry about supply.

40 million new unemployed. I think there will be plenty of non-professional nannies available at competitive rates. For a family that needs 2 elementary students supervised/exercised/fed 3 days a week, that's sufficient.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You aren’t missing anything. I don’t know any teachers with nannies precisely because a decent nanny for two kids costs about the same as the take-home pay of a teacher.

I would say you can’t afford a FT nanny. But you shouldn’t need one - if you are back in school FT, your elem kid will have somewhere to go part of the time. That will help. And a nanny share for elem kids could have four kids fairly easily since they don’t have nap schedules to coordinate and are pretty independent. That would keep costs down.

The hardest part will be: if every family needs a nanny in the fall, where are all the nannies going to come from? Even if 2-4 families share a nanny, I worry about supply.

40 million new unemployed. I think there will be plenty of non-professional nannies available at competitive rates. For a family that needs 2 elementary students supervised/exercised/fed 3 days a week, that's sufficient.

A friend of mine did this. Instead of getting a "professional" nanny that goes for $20+/hr, they hired a person who was working retail for $12/hr, and paid them $14/hr. It was a bump up for them, and better working conditions too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You aren’t missing anything. I don’t know any teachers with nannies precisely because a decent nanny for two kids costs about the same as the take-home pay of a teacher.

I would say you can’t afford a FT nanny. But you shouldn’t need one - if you are back in school FT, your elem kid will have somewhere to go part of the time. That will help. And a nanny share for elem kids could have four kids fairly easily since they don’t have nap schedules to coordinate and are pretty independent. That would keep costs down.

The hardest part will be: if every family needs a nanny in the fall, where are all the nannies going to come from? Even if 2-4 families share a nanny, I worry about supply.

40 million new unemployed. I think there will be plenty of non-professional nannies available at competitive rates. For a family that needs 2 elementary students supervised/exercised/fed 3 days a week, that's sufficient.

A friend of mine did this. Instead of getting a "professional" nanny that goes for $20+/hr, they hired a person who was working retail for $12/hr, and paid them $14/hr. It was a bump up for them, and better working conditions too.

I would gladly do the same. I understand why professional nannies command the rates they do, especially for babies and preschoolers, but for elementary school aged kids I would just want a babysitter who can help with social studies homework sometimes.