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[quote=Anonymous]If you can get it to 45 hours a week (maybe M-F 8am to 5pm?), then an au pair could work.  But one of the benefits of an au pair is that you can be more flexible with the hours week to week as long as you stay under 45 and 10 hours a day.  If you're using all your hours 8-5 every single week day, then the benefit of flexibility goes out the window.

An au pair costs about $20k a year just for her stipend, the agency fees, and the education stipend.  Then you are required to provide all meals and housing.  Most families provide a cell phone.  If you want her to drive, you pay for car, car insurance, licensing fees, etc.  It ends up costing us about $24k a year.

Then of course you have to live with your au pair.  So you have to have a private furnished and comfortable room for her and be willing to share your house, which comes with lots of challenges.  Au pairs also take more time than a nanny because you're basically orienting and shepharding a young foreign adult through life for a year.  They are also here for a cultural exchange program, so you have to be committed to including them as a member of your family, being interested in learning about their culture, and sharing yours, and basically give them a year of learning about US culture.  Finally, au pairs cannot do household tasks unless they are directly related to the children.  They are just for watching kids and not for housekeeping or management.

So au pair - about $24k minimum plus living with a young adult plus extra time spent training and managing the au pair.

Depending on what qualifications you want and where you live, one 4yo would maybe be $15/hour for a nanny?  That varies obviously, but let's say that.  So 40 hours a week times $15 plus 5 hours a week times $22.50 (OT) = $712.50/week times 52 weeks = $37,050.

With a nanny, obviously you don't have to live with her, she's essentially "out of sight out of mind" during off-hours, she will probably need a lot less training and day-to-day management, you can get someone with lots of education and experience (although I've heard there are some regular au pairs that have lots of experience, we've searched for months and never found one - most are young, in a gap year between HS and college, and have just babysitting or a week at a daycare center or something), and you're not limited to under age 27.  You don't have to worry about your cell phone and your car that she's driving to dance clubs in DC.

Bottom line is that yes, an au pair is going to be monetarily cheaper for your hourly requirements by maybe $10-15k a year.  But then you need to be willing to share your home and your car and put some serious time into developing a relationship with your au pair and providing her with a US family experience.  You also need to be willing to either sacrifice on child-related education and experience or search really really hard for an au pair who is well-qualified.  Alternatively, there are programs like the au pair extraordinaire program that offer better-qualified candidates, but they will run you about $5k more a year in fees and stipend, so that starts to close the gap between au pair cost and nanny cost (worth it in our family's opinion, but that's just us).[/quote]

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