Typical Wage Salary for a Nanny?

I haven't had a nanny for 6 years, so I'm not sure the current rates, but remember that you want a happy nanny, and asking her what she would like to make, and how much she made at her previous job, is a really good start.

Our last nanny was paid $17 an hour over the table, if I remember correctly, and some "top" nannies were asking $25 to $30 an hour. This nanny was completing her college degree, had certifications and background check information to give us, her own car, driver's license, and amazing references, but no prior experience with infants. All that affects pay. The more items on the list your nanny checks off, the more she will expect to be paid.

Sorry I can't be more precise, but hopefully that gives some feel for it. Personally, I would much prefer to overpay than underpay, since this is a person who will be very important in your child's life.

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Appropriate salary for a nanny really depends on a number of things -
1. Will she/he be live in or live out?
2. How old is he/she and how much working childcare experience does the nanny have?
3. Does the nanny have a college degree?
4. How many children will the nanny be caring for and for how many hours a day?
5. Will you require that the nanny do cooking, housework, or shuttle the children around by car?
6. Is she background checked (ie livescanned), drug tested, adult/infant/child cpr and first aid certified?

I am a special education teacher with a psych degree and many years of professional and informal work with children of all ages working on my PhD - but in order to stay at home with my daughter and be able to afford my phd program and our living expenses, I nanny from my own home for extra money. Send me an email or mamasource mail and we can talk about the qualifications of your potential nanny, and I can give you a pay range/scale for your particular nanny in terms of how much childcare costs in your area.
K.
____@____.com

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Four years ago we paid $15/hour for a wonderful nanny who was a Certified Nurse Assistant, though she had no other college level education and had not been a nanny before (she had cared for many younger family members and was background checked, etc.). You might want to hop onto craigslist to see what potential nannies are requesting in their posts. Also, I remember Googling info re: nannies and finding useful info about paid sick days and paid vacation days. We gave our nanny about five paid sick days so that she would not come to care for our son when she was sick. She almost never got sick, but I felt better knowing that she had an incentive to stay home if she were truly sick. Staffing agencies will quote you high hourly rates because they take a cut of the person's wage. So, if agencies say that their nannies charge $20/hour, the nanny is likely making more like $17/hour. You might want to check in with some agencies. Hope that helps. K.

I would call or email a nanny referral service and see what their going rates are. I just googled "nanny referral bay area california" and up popped a ton of hits.

We have a regular sitter and a back up sitter. The regular sitter is a college student, has her own car, etc. We pay her $12/hour. I thought it was ridiculous at first, but apparently that's on the cheap end out here. Our back up sitter has to travel further, so we pay her $15/hour.

When I was searching around craigslist for sitters, it was not unusual to find rates of $25-30/hour for experienced people with CPR, credits in education or early child development, etc. Most of these people were offering after school pick up, homework, that sort of thing.

I am currently looking at day cares and find the rates for an infant are around $1400-1800/month for an infant, with a maximum of 11 hours in one day. It goes down about $100-150/month for a toddler. I think home day cares are less expensive. I worked it out, and even at $1800/month, if you need care for 9 or 10 hours (7 or 8am-5pm), that's only like $8-9/hour. Just a thought.

If you really want to go the nanny route, I would suggest finding a day care near by that does back up/drop in care, or have a back up sitter. If the nanny gets sick, you'll need another place for your babe.

I have two toddlers and have been using nannies for the past 3 years. We've gone through 4 nannies. I had to fire one because I caught her sleeping on the job while my kids were awake! She was young, only 19, and cheap $8/hr so I guess I kind of got what I paid for there.
The next nanny we hired was in her 40's and more expensive because she had teaching credentials $15/hr. She was great but we lost her when we moved.
The third nanny I actually found on craigslist. She was also wonderful. She was in her 40's and had teenage kids. She cleaned my house and watched my kids for only $12/hr. We had to let her go when I decided to quit my job and stay home with the kids.
Now I'm going back to work and so we have hired our 4th nanny who is actually a live-in Au Pair. If you have a spare room and more than one child, I think this is definitely the most flexible and affordable childcare available. You have to pay somewhat hefty upfront fees (around $5,000) to get everything set up and transport your Au Pair to the United States but after that it is super cheap. They live with you and eat your groceries, but you only pay them a stipend of $150/wk for 45 hours of childcare & housecleaning, regardless of how many children you have. It has been working great for us so far.
The agency I use is www.culturalcare.com, check out their website for more details. If you sign up please use my name as your referral (M. Wingfield) - I could always use the extra cash. :-)

Thanks for posting this question... I am a mother of 1 (13 month old) and pay $1300/month for daycare. We were holding off on trying for #2 because it would be a stretch to pay $2600/month in childcare. We are considering going the nanny route and are very curious to know what the going rates are.

Where do you live? The rates change from area to area. The rates I am seeing below are incredibly high! $25-$30 per hour would be if they are in house, doing laundry, cooking meals, running errand- etc. etc. You can get much better rates if there is a group of mamas sharing a nanny. $9-$12 hour.

If you live in the peninsula, going rates for nannies for 1 child are about $15-$20 per hour, which ends up being around $2400-$3200 per month. This will most likely include some light housework as well. Try going the nanny share route. Nanny rates for 2 children around $20-$25 per hour, which is only imcrementally higher than the cost for 1 child. So, if you split this cost with another family, it's much more reasonable. The only way you will be able to find less expensive day care in SF or the peninsula area is if you go with a home day care provider, where you drop off your child at someone's home and they watch multiple children at the same time. Most day care "centers" will charge around $1600-$1700 a month for an infant.

Oh yeah, and there's more: Nannies these days are usually allowed 2 weeks of paid vacation time, and they also get holidays paid as well. Also, if you miss a day because your child is sick, most nannies ask that you still pay.

I was a nanny for about 3 years. I only worked for one family. The boys are in their 20's now, so this was a while back. They offered me 1200 a month and an apartment on the premisis which I paid rent for 400.00 a month. All in all I started at 800 a month. The family had some trouble with a previous nanny, so they wanted the rent to be a seperate transaction from the wages offered. I had my own car, but if I did the carpools I had access to their automobiles. It was a great experience and I really loved my job. I was usually off around 7 and had every Sunday off unless the parents were ill or out of town. I think the best part was that the parents counted on me to help with the boys, but also allowed me to do lots of fun stuff with the boys. I got to take them to the circus, Disney on Ice, Six Flags. I think that put some real balance in my relationship with the kids. They did do fun stuff with their parents too. The parent were really great people.

We have our two children in full time care now and pay $900/mo. We plan on going the Nanny route next year and will offer $1500/mo... we are very flexible and plan to be as accomodating as possible for that price.

I don't know if you have room to offer her room and board? We offered r/b and $150/week with every 1st 2nd and 4th Saturday & Sunday off. Leaving one weekend for us! She was off each night by 6PM to go to school and her own social functions. That was when we had 2 incomes and only 2 children. Now that I am a stay at home mom w/ no income...I think we should have paid her more! LOL

It totally depends on the level of service you are looking to have.
Do you want a college student or someone that does this "professionally?"
If you are at work all day - are you expecting her to do chores (laundry, grocery shopping, picking up, etc?)
The good news is you only have one child. If you are looking at hiring a full time nanny, I would expect to pay around $15 an hour. The more you ask her to do (as far as chores) the more you will have to pay her.