Anonymous wrote:It depends - do you need to keep it legal? if so, I believe you need to pay at least min. wage although I think there are some flexibility for the amt you can attribute to rooming costs.

If legal is not a bit issue, then you may not HAVE to pay a certain amt but I would think that not doing so, particularly in a really nice but not metro accessible area, will really limit your pool of people.

This is not true- if she is bartering then the person is not an employee. It is definitely not illegal to barter housing for childcare.

Are you still looking for someone? I just posted an ad for this exact exchange. Please contact me if interested.

Nightnanny2@gmail.com

Thanks!

Anonymous wrote:I agree that if you were to somehow give them a small private kitchen this this would sweeten the deal by a lot. If you were to put a kitchen in I don't think you'll have a hard time finding someone to exchange child care for living arrangements with no extra compensation. It would basically be a separate apartment. However, since there currently isn't a kitchen it is really like renting a room. Another thing that would sweeten the deal is if you allowed pets or for the nanny to bring a significant other or a child to live with them. Pets and significant others are not usually allowed in live in situations so someone who wants to bring one of them would see this job as very appealing if they were able to do so.

If you seek out someone less experienced, their time watching your children is not as valuable as a professional nanny so they may be willing to exchange child care for living arrangements with no additional compensation.

Your other option is to leave the room as-is (no kitchen), find someone with experience, and give them between $50- $100 per week to watch the children in addition to their room.

Yes, this is like renting a room. To compare, I am in SF and my rent would normally be over $900 for a large room and private bath. I have a deal that is at a $15/hr rate, and 14 hours per week (9 childcare and 5 used for daily cleaning up of living room and kitchen). She doesn't always use the 9 for childcare, and my cleaning might only take 2 hours overall instead of the 5. The total pay to her at most comes to $840. I have no utilities, I get some basic food items, she pays just over half of my muni (bus/train) monthly pass since I use it for work, and I get to use her Netflix account etc. So I could easily be paying $1200/month for all this if I wasn't doing a work exchange. I also have 2 cats and like PP above said, that is a big advantage to me and doesn't affect the family much since they previously had cats of their own and like having mine around. I do other PT work for actual money, and earn $22/hr for that work (this work was taken on later than my work exchange).

The only issue that I have come across, is that because it is now a work exchange, we never really discussed pay raises. When I took this position I had less experience and was only doing care for one older child (was live-out). After I became a live-in, I started to do more care of the younger child as well. The whole job has kind of changed yet my rate stayed the same. If I were to now consider this type of position, I would be asking for at least $17/hr minimum. I love the situation though and wouldn't want to have it change because of an issue about a raise. I am a bit more ok about it since the MB has recently not been using me for my full 9 hours of childcare each week, but only 6-7 hours for 2-3 out of every 4 weeks. So once you average out the hours and pay over the month, it ends up being more like $17-18/hr (to end up with $840) after all. So I have accepted this as being a fair trade for me. If she starts to use the full 9 hours again on a regular basis, then I might talk to her about reducing the number of trade hours to show a raise in pay, but for now it is working for both of us.

Anonymous wrote:It depends - do you need to keep it legal? if so, I believe you need to pay at least min. wage although I think there are some flexibility for the amt you can attribute to rooming costs.

If legal is not a bit issue, then you may not HAVE to pay a certain amt but I would think that not doing so, particularly in a really nice but not metro accessible area, will really limit your pool of people.

You do not have to pay someone ANYTHING if doing an exchange, as long as you have worked out how much you would be asking per month for rent/utilities and then make sure that you are paying at least minimum wage to her to cover it, which she then pays back to you (you just don't do the physical changing of money back and forth). Work exchanges are LEGAL and actually do not need to be taxed (or they didn't the last time that I looked on the government website about this). You can just do a straight exchange of hours for rent, but make sure you have a work agreement written out which talks about pay rate and hours, and anything you would want included in the rental agreement (it can be part of the work agreement). Agree on length of notice needed from either side, what to do when she moves out, etc.

Maybe OP wants someone more experienced than a student, for her 8 month old baby.

OP, your situation is common and you won't have a problem finding a student who would love this arrangement. The only thing you might consider is adding a small fridge and microwave, or allowing kitchen privileges. There is no need to "sweeten the deal" by allowing SOs, children, or anything else. It's already a good deal.

Also, in terms of where to post an ad, I would go with Care.com and Sittercity.com. Yes, the majority of the applications you get will probably be from under qualified nannies who are asking for more compensation than they are worth -- however, you should be able to weed out the garbage applications and find the few good nannies who are applying. Also, of course, the better your package (kitchen, extra compensation, etc), the better your pool of applicants will be. If posting on these sits with competitive rates you should get at least 30+ applicants.

I agree that if you were to somehow give them a small private kitchen this this would sweeten the deal by a lot. If you were to put a kitchen in I don't think you'll have a hard time finding someone to exchange child care for living arrangements with no extra compensation. It would basically be a separate apartment. However, since there currently isn't a kitchen it is really like renting a room. Another thing that would sweeten the deal is if you allowed pets or for the nanny to bring a significant other or a child to live with them. Pets and significant others are not usually allowed in live in situations so someone who wants to bring one of them would see this job as very appealing if they were able to do so.

If you seek out someone less experienced, their time watching your children is not as valuable as a professional nanny so they may be willing to exchange child care for living arrangements with no additional compensation.

Your other option is to leave the room as-is (no kitchen), find someone with experience, and give them between $50- $100 per week to watch the children in addition to their room.

If you do the math, pp, 15hrs sounds like a maximum, as OP seems to realize. Is there any space to set up a kitchen, maybe a mini fridge and microwave?

Biggest problem I see is lack of a separate kitchen. An independent living setup is easily worth 15-20 hours of care. And this is legal. But essentially just a room and bath. I do think you'd need to pay something. Maybe 10 hours of exchange and then a more market rate on top. With a steady schedule so someone can get another job.

Op you will probably get another college student I assume? IF you're looking for long term you might want to pay atleast a little something. Approximately 60 hours a month does leave the nanny room to find other work but nannies who get these types of jobs usually will do it for a reason, whether it's because they're in college, need some place to live, etc. So I would atleast offer food to make it more appealing and too keep a childcare giver around. Or maybe a monthly ''allowance''? Esp if you have more then one child.

It depends - do you need to keep it legal? if so, I believe you need to pay at least min. wage although I think there are some flexibility for the amt you can attribute to rooming costs.

If legal is not a bit issue, then you may not HAVE to pay a certain amt but I would think that not doing so, particularly in a really nice but not metro accessible area, will really limit your pool of people.

Alexandria, in Kingstowne.

Where in va?

My husband and I have an 8 month old and are purchasing a 4400 sf home. We will live *just* outside the beltway in the DC area (VA), not walking distance to metro but about 2 miles away. We will have a very large finished basement that includes a bedroom, full bath, and private entrance. We currently have a super nanny who is a grad student and she works for us 15 hours per week. Unfortunately, she is graduating and we have to find someone new. What I'm wondering is whether or not it is possible to advertise this position again as one that would provide housing in exchange for the 15 hours per week. I don't use the term "board" because I would not go grocery shopping for this person, but of course if we have milk or bread or whatever I'm not going to be a crazy person about it. But, rent and utilities would be included.

Is this something that sounds like it would, or could, be attractive to someone? Where would I advertise? I looked at craigslist but it seemed kind of sketchy. Is care.com appropriate for something like this? Church bulletin? Also, the hours would be pretty flexible. We would need to set them ahead of time but could tailor them towards the right candidate's schedule.