Reply to Do you have a full-time house cleaner / do you know many people who do?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Our nanny has stayed past the toddler years and is a full time household manager type. Like today she washed and organized everyones ski clothes, packed them away, re ordered replacements as needed, and also took one kid to a mid day orthodontist appointment. Everyday is different and i trust her to organize her duties as she sees fit, she works 4/5 shorter days or 3 long ones, whatever works for her and us. She cooks maybe 2 nights, does 90 percent of the laundry and cleaning, and also helps maintain our cars (like she took my car one day last week and got oil and filters done). Runs kids around, helps walk dogs, can run stuff to my elderly parents mid day on a whim, etc. It seems excessive but when i say there’s ALWAYS something to do, it rings true. I have 4 kids in 3 schools and 2 districts and DH and I work about 45/50 hours a week. Its a large expense for us (about 78k on a 490 combined salary) but our mortgage is very low (paid down significantly before i went in house) and i dont desire to level up or have nice vacations…not more than i desire the third adult!!! Shes a treasure and i respect and love her immensely.[/quote]

OP here. I wonder how the math works. The $490k combined salary is gross, I assume. Since the $78k for the household employee is not tax-deductible, you need to actually make about $140k gross in order  to cover her salary. If you and your spouse do not earn about the same amount of money but either of you earns less than the other, the net lower salary can be only marginally higher than the gross salary of the household employee.

Personally, if I made only about let's say $50k gross per year more than what is needed to cover the household employee's salary, I would give up my job. Working 45/50 hours per week to net a little bit (in my example around $28k per year) above the amount needed to cover the household employee's weekly at most 30 hours does not seem to be a good deal to me.[/quote]

Fair point but she might like her job and prefer that to organizing clothes and getting cars maintained. Also, she sounds like a lawyer with a hood in house gig, if she gives that up, not necessarily easy to get back in later. I know people who have kept a nanny on similarly for a while but they give it up at some point. [/quote]

OP here. I am actually in a similar situation. I am a lawyer, have my own law firm (with two part-time employees) and work (not bill) around 30 hours per week. While my law firm grosses $330k per year (quite high for a solo practitioner), the net amount that remains to me after expenses and taxes is only about $180 per day. On the day when my housecleaner comes and works 8-9 hours, her gross wage plus the employer contributions amount to $315! She literally makes a lot more money than I do. So frustrating. What did we go to law school for if we earn less than house cleaners? I hear that dogwalkers in my area earn up to $500 per day.[/quote]

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