Posts filed under ‘Questions From Parents’
How Much Does A Nanny Cost For 3 Days a Week?
Q. How Much Does A 3 Day Per Week Nanny Cost?
A. Outside of a major city, I feel cost would typically be as follows:
Working Hours: 8am-6pm
Nannies Gross Salary: £10 Gross per hour
If you are city based, then you could easily be adding another 20%, especially if in London.
This I feel is a reasonable amount to assume for the nannies salary during 2012. The actual salary may well vary between applicants and on the level of experience you wish someone to have. Market forces have an affect and at the moment there are a lot of people looking for jobs, thus the salary level I am suggesting is a little lower than it was last year. Decide how much YOU feel you are able to pay the nanny. If you are not in a position to offer £10 Gross per hour then you can advertise at a lower rate and see who applies. You must comply with National Minimum Wage legislation… in the UK, National Minimum Wage for someone aged 21+ is currently £6.08 per hour and rises to £6.19 per hour from October 2012.
If it is the nannies first job, such as moving on from working in a nursery or having left college, then you may find they will accept a lower salary. This is I feel in part due to the nurseries not paying staff that well (typically in my area a full-time nursery nurse is paid around £14,000 per year for a 40 hour week). So you may find they would accept around £7 gross per hour initially, then expect more as they gain experience of working sole charge.
The Calculations for a nanny, 3 Days a Week:
Nannies Salary: £10 Gross per hour
Number of hours per week: 30
Nannies Salary per Week: £300 Gross – £15,643 Gross per Year
Employers National Insurance: £ 1127 2012/13 tax year (calculation by MrAnchovy’s PAYE Calculator 2012/13 )
Nanny Payroll: You can do this yourself or you can get a lot of a assistance from a Nanny Payroll Company such as PAYEforNannies who my employer has been successfully using for many years now. The cost of having a payroll company is around £115 a year. The payroll company will produce payslips and tell you when and how much to transfer to HMRC in terms of the deductions (Employee Tax, Employee NI) as well as your Employers NI.
Weekly Expenses Kitty (for activities/outings): £5 per day, you may find the cost increases during school holidays. The more children you have the higher the activity cost may need to be – perhaps consider £2.50 per day, per child. Based on a 48 week working year, nanny working 3 days per week, £5 x 48 weeks x 3 days= £720 total.
Nannies Travelling Costs Whilst On Duty: If your nanny uses their own car, then employers would usually reimburse the cost at £0.45 per mile (this is known as theApproved Mileage Rate). Employers can negotiate with their employee to pay less than this, though you should take into account your nannies costs of providing a car, car seats, suitable motor insurance to include transporting children for whom they care (this can be arranged through Morton Michel and other insurance brokers)
How many miles your nanny would do will vary. Consider the usual mileage they would do to take children to school and back, to get to toddler group, other outings. I would say that I do an average of 3000 miles a year (nannying 4 days per week in a semi-rural location). Start recording the mileage you do in your car during the week, you may be quite surprised how quickly the mileage adds up even if you are just going to the local shops, library, playground, woods, PYO farm etc.
For a 3 day per week nanny I suggest factoring in at least 75 miles a week… so £33.75 per week, £1620 per year (48 weeks).
While your nanny is on duty, you give them food and drink. Nannies don’t really get a lunch hour, can’t leave your children home alone. So food is seen as a sort of perk in compensation for working without a break. How much does that add to your weekly food budget… I’m not sure. Nanny will eat with the children, so eat the same thing. If nanny wants something different, I feel nanny should be buying that themselves. So increase in food bill, extra £3 a day maybe? Heating/Light will also be used more as nanny is around during some of the day, so another few pounds. If comparing with a childminder/nursery, lights wouldn’t be on at your home, heating may also be set low. If comparing with you staying at home, then there won’t really be much of a difference at all. There is also some additional wear and tear on the property. Shall we lump all these types of cost together… say £8 per working day. Suppose you could include cost of Employers Insurance in that (it is usually part of your home contents cover, check your policy). So 3 days x £8 = £24. 48 weeks x £24 = £1152
Total Cost of Employing a Nanny For Three Days Per Week
£15,643 gross salary, Employers NI £1127, Nanny Payroll £115, Activity Kitty £720, Mileage £1620, Food/Drink/Heat/Light/Misc. £1152
Grand Total: £20,377
The total cost of employing a nanny for 3 days a week will vary depending on your situation. I hope the calculations above help you consider many of the costs involved.
How Much Mileage Does A Nanny Do Per Year?
How much travel your nanny has done during the past financial year is probably something you are currently calculating if you employ a nanny in the UK as it is now the end of the financial year.
Some nannies may do very little travel as part of their job, whilst others may do quite a lot of travel. It is therefore hard to generalise about how much travel a nanny would be doing as part of their job.
Personally I have done just shy of 3000 miles of work travel using my own car this past financial year. This figure may shock some of you, whilst for others it may not come as a surprise. The first 10,000 miles of business travel is what HMRC are concerned about, as that is where the limit is imposed with regard to the Approved Mileage Rate. After 10,000 miles the rate drops and thus if an employer pays over that rate the payments are subject to taxation.
If you are considering having a nanny, then start to track the mileage you do on an every day basis so you get a feel for what your nannies mileage might be. For example, if you drive to pre-school, then record the mileage of that round-trip. Do you drive to toddler group? How about popping to the shops for some last minute things? A trip to a castle, a museum, to a playground. Even the short trips can all add up, so get a feel for what sort of mileage your nanny might be doing by tracking the mileage you do each day.
How To Calculate The Cost Of A Nanny?
How much it costs to employ a nanny in the UK is something that is often asked on parenting forums like Mumsnet and Netmums. I find myself often preparing cost calculations for parents, so today I will write about how I calculate the cost of a nanny.
Nannies Salary
Start off by picking a figure for the nannies salary. This can be tricky to decide and will vary from one part of the country to another, even within the same town or city the salary that nannies are offered could vary quite a bit. There are various factors which may affect the level of salary, such as how much experience is desired, if the nanny is expected to work unusual hours, varying shift patterns perhaps.
At the time of writing (February 2012) jobs are thin on the ground, so it is what I would term as being an Employers Market. Employers can offer jobs at whatever salary they like and see who applies. You may well be able to get a great nanny with lots of experience for less money than you could a couple of years ago, as people need jobs at the moment and it’s better being in a job than job hunting. So an experienced nanny may take a job at a lower salary than usual, in the hope that salary increases over time, which is likely to happen though the increase may be quite small.
As job applicants may be expecting the salary to increase over time, take that into account when working out what salary to offer. Work out your budget and offer a salary below your budget, so that you have room to increase the salary say after the initial probation period and at the end of the year.
Get a feel for what other jobs, nannying and non-nannying are paying in your local area. There are many job sites on the internet which will give you a feel for salaries on offer.
Nannies I would say would typically be paid £7 to £13 gross per hour. Less than £7 I would have thought would be quite rare as £6.08 is National Minimum Wage for someone aged 21 or over, so an experienced nanny I feel would be wanting more than NMW. An inexperienced nanny in their first job however may be happy to accept a wage nearer to NMW, though if you would be happy having them care for your children would be dependent on your childcare requirements, age of children, and things like how much supervision you may be giving the nanny.
Employers National Insurance
Employing someone costs money. The UK Government taxes income and requires contributions to be made towards National Insurance (introduced in 1911) which is for paying things like health care. Find out more… Why do we pay National Insurance (BBC Newsbeat article)
The amount that employers pay to HMRC in terms of Employers National Insurance varies according to the salary being paid to the employee and according to the current rate set in the Budget. PAYE calculators like MrAnchovy’s PAYE Calculator will calculate the Employers NI amount that would be due for a given salary. These calculators can be very accurate but should not be used for payroll purposes – follow the procedures for operating payroll instead. So using the PAYE calculator as a guide tool, we can see that if we paid a nanny £1500 Gross per month, in 2012/13 tax year, Employers NI would be £121 per month.
Activity Budget – Nanny Kitty
Caring for children will often involve taking them out to various places – toddler groups, singing groups, to the library, museums, castles, trips on a train etc.
These activities and outings cost money, so you need to decide how you want to pay for those things. Do you want to reimburse each expenses individually or do you want to give a weeks budget and let your nanny decide how to spend that money on your children?
I would say that it is easier to give your nanny a set budget and let them manage that budget. £5 per day may well work quite well if you have a couple of children, a bit more may be needed during school holiday periods. A bit more may be needed if you have more children and as children get older as admission charges for under 3′s can sometimes be nil, whilst a 6 year old could be charged quite a lot.
So if you take £5 per day as a budget, you can calculate that out over a 1 year period. The amount will vary depending how many days per week your nanny works. Also you won’t need to include in the budget days your nanny is on holiday (5.6 weeks is minimum holiday entitlement in the UK).
A nanny working 4 days per week would be looking at a kitty / activities budget of £928 per year.
Payroll
Will you be doing the payroll paperwork yourself or would you want some help with that? There are various nanny payroll companies who will do a lot of the paperwork side of payroll for you and each company has varying charges. I would say that £135 per year is typical of a charge for doing payroll for a nanny who is paid monthly.
Adding all these costs together can help give you a better idea of how much employing a nanny will cost you. There are other costs that may also be involved, such as nannies travel whilst on duty, nannies food & drink whilst on duty, extra wear & tear at your home if you are comparing having a nanny to using care outside of your home such as a nursery or childminder.
Are there any costs you feel should be added in, which can be easily calculated? Or are all the other likely costs too variable to be able to give a realistic general cost?
Do I Need To Be Registered To Care For Children In Their Own Home?
In the UK we have childcare legislation that applies to Childminders, Nurseries, Pre-Schools and other forms of group childcare. Nannies however do not fall under the compulsory part of that legislation (Childcare Act 2006 plus it’s amendments).
To care for children in their [the children's], own home a nanny does not have to be registered (in England by Ofsted, in Wales by CSSIW, in Scotland by SCSWIS, in Northern Ireland by HSC) unless parents are paying using Childcare Vouchers or via Tax Credits.
Nannies should find out about registration requirements in their country as they do vary. In Scotland for example it is the childcare agency that is registered rather than the individual nanny.
Nannies are often called Home Childcarers by the childcare regulators, so when looking on their websites for further information look out for any mention of Home Childcarer.
For further information contact:
England – Ofsted – http://www.ofsted.gov.uk
Scotland – SCSWIS – http://www.scswis.com
Wales – CSSIW - http://wales.gov.uk/cssiwsubsite/newcssiw/
Northern Ireland – your local Health & Social Care Trust - http://www.n-i.nhs.uk/index.php?link=trusts
Vitamin D and Babies
Babies need vitamin D for growing healthy bones and teeth. Vitamin D is made by the human body when it is exposed to sunlight.
It is hard to be sure if a baby is getting enough vitamin D, so advice from the Department of Health recommends that supplements are taken by certain groups of people:
- all children aged six months to five years old
- all pregnant and breastfeeding women
- all people aged 65 and over
- people who are not exposed to much sun, such as people who cover up their skin for cultural reasons or those who are housebound or confined indoors for long periods
- people with darker skins such as people of African-Caribbean and South Asian origin
(Source: Leaflet from DoH, Jan 2010)
Breastfed babies will get vitamin D from breastmilk, which is one reason
why it is important for pregnant and breastfeeding mums to have good vitamin D levels themselves.
Baby formula has vitamin D added to it, so formula-fed babies get their vitamin D from their milk.
Other Sources Of Vitamin D
- oily fish, such as salmon and sardines
- eggs
- fortified fat spreads
Do Nannies Have To Take Two Consecutive Days Off?
Looking at the webstats for this blog can sometimes lead to a blog post. Someone recently found my blog by searching for: do nannies have to take 2 consecutive days off? So as that’s a question someone is asking, then I feel it’s only right to try to answer that question.
In the UK we have some legislation called Working Time Regulations. This means that the UK has incorporated (if that’s the right word) European Working Time Directive into UK law.
Great you might think but no, domestic servants in private houses are exempt from the regulations. Are nannies domestic servants? Well, I’d say we are for the purposes of this legislation. Whilst we are an employee, we are also working in a private home so it’s not like working in an office. By working as a nanny we accept that some things will be different – we don’t get an official short rest break during our working day for example, though we might do if the children we care for sleep during the day. I’m not a lawyer, not a legal expert, so I don’t know for sure if we are a domestic servant but I feel it’s worth thinking that we are, but that need not mean that our employers don’t try to meet the requirements of the Working Time Regulations.
Getting back to the question in hand… do we have to have 2 days (48 hours) off? Well assuming that the question was meant to refer to 2 days off during a working week, then No. Looking at Direct.Gov: Rest Breaks we don’t have to have 48 hours off each week.
If you are an adult worker you have the right to either:
- an uninterrupted 24 hours clear of work each week
- an uninterrupted 48 hours clear each fortnight
In a week we should have 24 hours off, so it would be fine to work a 6 day week. However working a 7 day week and then a 6 day week would not meet the requirement for 48 hours clear each fortnight.
Employers of nannies I feel should try to meet the requirements of the Working Time Regulations where possible, so that nannies are treated the same as other employees. Due to the nature of the work it may not always be possible as children can’t be left alone.
Advertising Nanny Job
Q. I’ve decided to recruit a nanny, where should I advertise?
A. These days the internet is used a lot by parents looking for a nanny and nannies looking for a job. Nanny agencies can help you with the recruitment process but if you are doing things yourself (which can save a lot of money) then I would suggest you look at nanny job listings sites on the internet covering your area.
Here in the UK I feel the best sites are:
www.NannyJob.co.uk – This is a website where agencies will often post adverts to attract nannies looking for work. Parents can advertise as well (at the time of checking, £24.99 for 31 days) and your advert will then be seen by nannies looking for work.
www.childcare.co.uk – This is a website which is dedicated to listing childcare ads. It is designed to be used by parents looking for childcare and for childcarers looking for work. It is free to create a user profile (an advert). It costs money to contact someone – so if you were looking at the listing of nannies in your area (it does a distance from postcode search) you can get in touch with those nannies. Having read several parenting and nanny forum posts about this website, I think that in general it is expected that the parent advertising is generally the one who pays so they can make contact. Nannies can then find your profile and indicate to you that they are interested by adding you as a favourite – you can then get in touch with them.
Childcare.co.uk HALF PRICE OFFER – Ends Sunday 16-Oct 2011
Childcare.co.uk are offering Monthly membership for £9.99 (usual price £19.99).
Create your account today and Upgrade to Gold Membership. If you already have an account, click here to Upgrade. Otherwise create an account and then upgrade.
Local advertising – Not everything has to be done online. In some towns/villages there are shops which have postcard sized local ads. These will cost you varying amounts, probably up to a couple of pounds a week. You can’t put that much information on a postcard, so you will mostly be using it as a way of getting someone to phone or e-mail you.
Internet advertising has become popular over the past few years because of the simplicity and the amount of information that you can put on your advert. Long gone are the days where you paid by the word for an advert in a local newspaper. These days you can write a huge amount on your advert when it’s on an internet site. So include as much as you can about the job so nannies get a good idea of what you are wanting, how much you are paying, what the hours of work will be, everything you can think of that might be useful to know before deciding if the job is suitable.
How Much Would a Nanny Cost for 2 Days a Week?
A parent (via twitter @nannynick) asked me how much a 2 day per week nanny costs. I welcome questions from people, so if you have a question about nannies, do get in touch.
Q. How Much Does A 2 Day Per Week Nanny Cost?
A. Outside of a major city, I feel cost would typically be as follows:
Working Hours: 8am-6pm
Nannies Gross Salary: £11 Gross per hour
This I feel is a reasonable amount to assume for the nannies salary. The actual salary may well vary between applicants and on the level of experience you wish someone to have. Market forces have an affect so whilst a qualified experienced nanny may want more, if you are not in a position to offer more then either that nanny does not apply for the job or they decide to apply and accept the amount on offer.
If it is the nannies first job, such as moving on from working in a nursery or having left college, then you may find they will accept a lower salary. This is I feel in part due to the nurseries not paying staff that well (typically in my area a full-time nursery nurse is paid around £14,000 per year for a 40 hour week). So you may find they would accept around £7 gross per hour initially, then expect more as they gain experience of working sole charge.
If you live in a City then a live-out nanny may be wanting 20%-30% more. This may be due to various factors including housing costs, though I would argue that housing costs are just as high where I am in West Surrey as they are in other parts of the South East. So if you are city based, don’t feel you have to offer a higher salary – it can be worth advertising the job and seeing who applies.
The Calculations:
Nannies Salary: £11 Gross per hour
Number of hours per week: 20
Nannies Salary per Week: £220 Gross – £11,471 Gross per Year
Employers National Insurance: £ 607 2011/12 tax year (calculation by KISTAX Calculator for PAYE)
Nanny Payroll: You can do this yourself or you can get a lot of a assistance from a Nanny Payroll Company such as PAYEforNannies who my employer has been successfully using for many years now. The cost of having a payroll company is around £115 a year. The payroll company will produce payslips and tell you when and how much to transfer to HMRC in terms of the deductions (Employee Tax, Employee NI) as well as your Employers NI.
Weekly Expenses Kitty (for activities/outings): £5 per day, you may find the cost increases during school holidays. Based on a 52 week year, nanny working 2 days per week, £520 total.
Nannies Travelling Costs Whilst On Duty: If your nanny uses their own car, then employers would usually reimburse the cost at £0.45 per mile (this is known as the Approved Mileage Rate). Employers can negotiate with their employee to pay less than this, though you should take into account your nannies costs of providing a car, car seats, suitable motor insurance to include transporting children for whom they care (this can be arranged through Morton Michel and other insurance brokers)
How many miles your nanny would do will vary. Consider the usual mileage they would do to take children to school and back, to get to toddler group, other outings. I would say that I can easily do 25 miles a day, often more especially during school holidays. Start recording the mileage you do in your car during the week, you may be quite surprised how quickly the mileage adds up even if you are just going to the local shops, library, playground, woods, PYO farm etc.
For a 2 day per week nanny I suggest factoring in at least 50 miles… so £22.50 per week, £1170 per year.
While your nanny is on duty, you give them food and drink. Nannies don’t really get a lunch hour, can’t leave your children home alone. So food is seen as a sort of perk in compensation for working without a break. How much does that add to your weekly food budget… I’m not sure. Nanny will eat with the children, so eat the same thing. If nanny wants something different, I feel nanny should be buying that themselves. So increase in food bill, extra £3 a day maybe? Heating/Light will also be used more as nanny is around during some of the day, so another few pounds. If comparing with a childminder/nursery, lights wouldn’t be on at your home, heating may also be set low. If comparing with you staying at home, then there won’t really be much of a difference at all. There is also some additional wear and tear on the property. Shall we lump all these types of cost together… say £8 per working day. Suppose you could include cost of Employers Insurance in that (it is usually part of your home contents cover, check your policy). So 2 days x £8 = £16. 52 x £16 = £832
Total Cost of Employing a Nanny For Two Days Per Week
£11,471 gross salary, Employers NI £607, Nanny Payroll £115, Activity Kitty £520, Mileage £1170, Food/Drink/Heat/Light/Misc. £832
Grand Total: £14,715
