As a nanny I would not accept my pay being varied from $20 per hour to $15 per hour, depending on the number of children, if I'm with a single family.

And then every time she cares for both kids you go back to $20?


BTW - You have no idea how often you older child will be sick. First year in school is a nightmare!!! Colds and fevers every other week. Then there are all the holidays...

Anonymous wrote:My direct experience is that you maintain my rates or I leave. My bills still need to be paid.

This nanny was in a share with a variable rate, so actually I would go ahead and do the 15/20 depending on how many kids thing because why not save money? Nanny won't leave. She doesn't sound like she's broke. No reason to overpay foolishly.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I've been a nanny 15 years and I've only worked with 4 families over all those years. The reason I was able to stay for 3-5 years with each family was because they never decreased my salary. If they had cut my hourly I would have left immediately. Not because I'm only focused on money but because I wouldn't be able to afford to take a pay cut. Plus, every time I've changed families I've gotten a salary increase. If you want to keep your nanny don't cut her wages.

So for 15 years you've been living paycheck to paycheck and you've never solved that?

That is not what she's saying, and it's none of your business anyway. Leave her alone.

Anonymous wrote:I've been a nanny 15 years and I've only worked with 4 families over all those years. The reason I was able to stay for 3-5 years with each family was because they never decreased my salary. If they had cut my hourly I would have left immediately. Not because I'm only focused on money but because I wouldn't be able to afford to take a pay cut. Plus, every time I've changed families I've gotten a salary increase. If you want to keep your nanny don't cut her wages.

So for 15 years you've been living paycheck to paycheck and you've never solved that?

I've been a nanny 15 years and I've only worked with 4 families over all those years. The reason I was able to stay for 3-5 years with each family was because they never decreased my salary. If they had cut my hourly I would have left immediately. Not because I'm only focused on money but because I wouldn't be able to afford to take a pay cut. Plus, every time I've changed families I've gotten a salary increase. If you want to keep your nanny don't cut her wages.

I would never go for this. Just pay her the same amount.
She's maintaining her availability for you.
I would leave if my employer suggested such silliness to me.

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Thank you for all the perspectives. Just to clarify, the change in income would be very small given that our DD is starting on a very part-time basis. But that I suppose cuts both ways.

You simply don't realize how often your kid won't be in preschool. Seriously its like almost 30 percent of the year they are off and thats not including when your kid is sick. You maintain her pay to maintain back up care.

OP here. Thank you for all the perspectives. Just to clarify, the change in income would be very small given that our DD is starting on a very part-time basis. But that I suppose cuts both ways.

Going down like that is a 25% decrease in her income. That's a HUGE drop. What are you going to do when the preschool kid is sick? Or preschool is closed?

I maintained it at the same rate when DD #1 went to K and will continue to maintain the same hourly rate when DD #2 goes to K in the fall and DD #3 will be in preschool two days a week (so nanny will have 0 kids for 3 hours out of the day). But I have not offered annual raises for the same reason, because it seems ridiculous to increase her rate when she's doing less childcare.

Here's what I figure for why the hourly rate should be maintained -- first, that it's kind of a sunk cost at this point and I'm used to paying it. Second, nanny has bills she needs to pay and a lifestyle to maintain. It isn't fair to constantly adjust the hourly rate based on my decisions. Third, part of what I'm paying for is the availability of care for the older DCs on snow days, school breaks, sick days, etc.

On the days when nanny has no kids starting in the fall I will likely speak to her about picking up additional duties during that time (organizing toys, changing out seasonal clothes, buying groceries related to the kids, that sort of thing).

If you reduce her hourly rate, you just have to do it knowing that she will undoubtedly leave because she needs the salary she's receiving now.

My direct experience is that you maintain my rates or I leave. My bills still need to be paid.

I would keep it at $20 . We didn't change our nanny's rate when our oldest went to preschool part time. No real reason why cutting her wages just seemed petty or tacky to me.
Added to that I didn't see the point and calculating which hours she had 2 kids v 1 kid.

We have had the same great nanny for our two DCs since the older one was 4 mo. We were part of a nanny share with this nanny until about 6 months ago though that went through different combos of kids, with different rates depending on how many kids and for how much time, etc. Now the nanny has been with my two DCs exclusively for six months though. My older DC has recent started part-time preschool and we were initially going to go from $20/hr to $15/hr (2 kids --> 1 kid) for those hours, as that is how it worked in the nanny share when there was a significant change in time. But I am now hearing different things. Some are saying (e.g. my DH) that this is reasonable, and other are saying that our nanny's pay should remain unchanged. Does anyone have any direct experience with this (as opposed to just an opinion <-- which is fine but a little less helpful ).