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[quote=Anonymous]We have a wonderful nanny who's taken care of our kids (ages 4, 6, and 10) for 8 years.  She does everything so well - takes great care of the kids, gets them outside for activities, makes them healthy lunches and snacks, does the laundry, is completely reliable and professional, etc etc.

For the past 5 years, we have paid her out of our savings.  (I was working part-time, and our salaries didn't cover what it cost for her to work for us.)  In hindsight, we should have probably used daycare in lieu of having a nanny, but my husband and I both thought a nanny would be nice (and figured our salaries would go up more than they have).

My savings have now dried up.  I recently went from part-time to full-time, but my salary still does not cover all of her wages.  (We are pretty generous in that we pay her $25/hour for 40 hours/week, plus 3 week of paid vacation time and most paid federal holidays.)

Because we love our nanny so much, and our kids are so attached, we realize that this will be difficult.  We could start by cutting the hours she works when our youngest is in preschool.  We were always reluctant to cut her hours because we worried she would find another job.

Here are some options I am now considering:

(a) Advising her that, once our 4-year-old starts kindergarten in the fall of 2015, we'll probably have to switch to an au pair.  This would give our nanny time to find a job.  We'd pay her a bonus for staying with us through Sept 2015.

(b) Using Option A except starting in the summer (and using our wonderful 17-year-old neighbor for babysitting for the summer, if she will be reliable enough for us.)  We need someone totally reliable because of our jobs.

(c) Using Option A, except that starting in the fall of 2015, we'd just use her from 2:30 pm to 6:00 pm (if she would even want that.)  I could use boards like DCUM to help her find a morning job.  Problem is that, for morning jobs, many of the potential employers seem to want to pay more in the range of $15/hour and tend to cancel a lot.  She would need someone who could commit to giving her reliable hours.

(d) Asking her to start each day at 1pm instead of 11:30 am, since our 4-year-old is in preschool each day until 1pm.

(e) Asking her to clean our house, so that we do not have to pay a separate person to clean (since she is at our house 1.5 hours per day without any children to watch.)

Do nannies tend to expect this at a certain point?  Are any nannies ever willing to stay with a family just for after-school hours?  Or is that too uncertain in terms of morning jobs?

My husband is reluctant to "rock the boat" with her.  But we are literally not able to afford her anymore.  I think she assumes that we are doing well financially, but then again, she knows we live in a small house in Arlington and drive average cars.  Her previous employers were doctors from McLean and so I think she had very high standards coming in.

Thank you for any advice you may have![/quote]

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