A Parent's Guide to Having an Au Pair - Everything You Need to Know About Choosing, Managing, And Living With an Au Pair

 

 

There are many great reasons to have an au pair and a few reasons not to. Use the information in this chapter to decide if hosting an au pair is the right decision for your family.

Pros and Cons

Here is a list of benefits and pitfalls of having an au pair, compiled from our own experience and the experience of others. Use this list to help you determine which child care approach would work best for you and to understand what options are available. Use the left-hand column to mark the importance of each of these items to you and your family.

Ultimately, you have to add up the pros and cons for yourself and then decide if saving thousands of dollars, a year is worth the trade-offs. Use the more detailed information in this chapter to help you decide.

Pros

This section describes all of the reasons to have an au pair.

Saving Money

Doesn’t it always come down to money? This is, in fact, the primary reason for getting an au pair. The cost of an au pair can be much lower than the cost for either a nanny or an outside day care center, depending on where you live and how much help you need, even if you figure in the cost for room and board. However, before choosing the type of child care you want to pursue, figure out all of the costs and do a thorough analysis.

You will likely find that having an au pair is the least expensive alternative available.

Cost for a Nanny

If you currently have a nanny, your costs are probably between $15 and $25 per hour plus the taxes you are supposed to pay. Suppose you work 40 hours a week, then add commute time, and time to get dressed. You are now up to needing somewhere between 45 and 50 hours per week of child care. If you have a nanny, you could be paying somewhere between $675 and $1125 per week - before taxes. Add another 10% for taxes and your total is about $990 a week on average. If you are paying for benefits it could be even more. That comes to a whopping $50,000+ per year for a nanny. If you have lots of kids, a special needs child, or lots of money - having a nanny can be a perfectly reasonable child care solution.

Cost for Day Care

Suppose your children are currently in day care or you are considering day care. Your cost can be anywhere from $125 per week per child to $250 per week per child, depending on where you live. Day care is much more expensive in large urban centers than elsewhere. So, if you have two children in day care, your cost would be approximately $400 per week or $20,000 per year for 50 weeks. While day care is considerably cheaper than having a nanny, there are other issues, such as getting your kids back and forth to school or after-school activities if these are even possible.

Neither of these estimates take into consideration the cost of additional babysitters for evenings and weekends that can cost between $5 and $15 per hour. It is healthy for parents to get a babysitter from time to time, so they can reconnect. With a nanny you are probably also paying for at least one to two meals a day for the nanny. As you can see, both of these solutions are costly.

Unless you are having your first child, or you are going back to work after being a stay at home parent, you are already familiar with the high cost of child care in your neighborhood. That is why you are considering getting an au pair.

Cost for an Au Pair
 

The two main costs of having an au pair are the sponsoring organization fee and the stipend you pay the au pair. The amount of the stipend is easy. So, let’s start there. The stipend is set by the U.S. Department of Labor and it is tied to the minimum wage. At the time of this writing, the stipend was set at $196 per week. You must also provide $500 towards the au pair’s educational costs. So, with the stipend alone you pay the au pair $9996 for a total of 51 weeks. (Every year you could have one week with no child care as the au pairs transition and you’ll need to give them two weeks off for vacation, but we’ll discuss that later.)

The second major cost is the fee imposed by the sponsoring organization (agency). The agency fees typically range from $8525 to $9250 plus airfare from the agency’s gateway city. The gateway city is usually New York, but at least two agencies are on the west coast. The agency services are described in more detail in the next chapter.

Finally, you must consider the household cost for the au pair. If you already have an extra room, then there are no additional facility costs. Of course, they do eat and drink but if you have a nanny now, you are probably already paying for her lunch, at least. We estimate the monthly cost of room and board to be about $200. However, if you take them with you wherever you go that could be quite a bit higher. If you want your au pair to drive your children places, you need to provide a car and insurance. Insurance costs between $1000 and $2000 even if they are driving your existing car. Since, you are not obliged to provide a car, we won’t include the cost of the car.

The grand total for all of these costs is:

Having an au pair is still cheaper than the average day-care without all of the disadvantages of a day care for two children. If you have more than two children, having an au pair is quite a bit cheaper than day care.

Increased Flexibility

Having an au pair can significantly improve your quality of life. While you can only have the au pair work 45 hours per week, it can be any 45 hours that you choose. It doesn’t need to be eight or nine hours per day.

True Story

When my children were little, we kept a very well-defined calendar in order to not go over the 45 hours per week limit. But when my children started attending school, we were able to save the hours that the kids were in school, for child care on the weekend.

As long as you don’t exceed 10 hours per day and 45 hours per week, you can choose the hours that you want your au pair to work. In addition, the au pair must have 1.5 days in a row off per week and a full weekend per month. With day care, the hours are very fixed, and you must pick up your children by a certain time each day. That leaves no flexibility for a late meeting, a business dinner, or date night.

If you have young children, you might have to juggle work schedules in order to stay within these limits but with school age children you should never have to worry about getting a sitter for “date night.” Our experience has been that if you are flexible with the au pair, they will be flexible with you.

One of the advantages of having an au pair is being able to get some time on the weekend for date night. This time can give you and your spouse a chance to recharge and reconnect, so privacy isn’t just something you enjoy at home. Take advantage of this new flexibility and go out sometimes, even if it is just for a walk in the evening. There is someone at home to watch the kids.

An Extra Set of Hands

Morning stress can be greatly relieved by just having someone go get the kids’ shoes or hold a toddler while you make another child’s lunch. This can be especially critical when you travel, where it is always helpful to have an adult stay with the kids, while parents deal with the inevitable challenges of travel (check in, packing, retrieving luggage, and entertainment).

Getting Your Kids to Activities

If you have a nanny, you can certainly have her take your children to school, practices, and other after school activities. But if you are using a day care provider, who is going to take your kids to their activities? Day care facilities are usually in a fixed location and care is provided at that location. They usually don’t have the resources to pick your kids up at school or take them to their activities because they have other children to look after.

An au pair on the other hand can take your children anywhere you want them to go. They can pick them up at school and take them to practices and activities. Since they live in your home, they can prepare a snack and gather all of the required equipment or books and bring everything your children need to get from one activity to another smoothly. So, you don’t have to.

True Story

There was a time between au pairs when my children had to go to day care after school. The day care provider was close to school so she was able to pick the kids up from school and walk them to her house, but she certainly couldn’t take my kids to their karate class or their music lessons. After our next au pair arrived (six weeks later), we were able to resume our after-school activities, but my kids never returned to karate. The break gave them a chance to stop.

Getting Help with Laundry, Meals, and Homework

There was a time when we didn’t have an au pair and my kids went to day care. Well, laundry, meals, and homework just about did me in. It was so stressful to rush from work to the day care at 6 pm, collect the kids, find out...