I DO NOT understand how anyone affords in home childcare. - Page 2

[Eben'sMama]

We have a nanny whom we love and we pay her $12 per hour for part-time care (16ish hours a week). I never thought I would trust someone other than myself to take care of my kids, but she is very thorough and detail-oriented (like me) and is very open to feedback/compromise about little things that I tend to make a big deal out of. I am lucky that paying her hourly rate is only about 10% to 25% of my hourly pay, depending on which part of my practice I am working on any particular day. I do totally think nannies are worth it if you can find someone you trust and like.

ETA: We can afford it because we have a small house, two older cars that are paid off, and we rarely pay full-price on anything. It it's not on sale, or there's not a coupon or a co-op for it, we don't buy it. We just make it work because we have to.

[almadianna]

We have a nanny and we are not very wealthy. We do have good jobs and we both work. However we do not have a fancy house or fancy cars, we also have no debt. Most people who make our salaries have houses much larger and fancier cars. To me the priority was having decent well paid child care, we pay our nanny a good salary and we love her. She has been with us for 3 years.

We have been able to make it work by just living below our means so that we can afford this. If it meant that we had to live in a 2 bed room 600 sq foot apartment... I would. For me the first thing is having child care that I can trust.

[waiflywaif]

I had a coworker a long time ago who had a nanny. She made really good money (probably around $80-90K) and she told me that basically her entire take home salary went to the nanny. She did it however because her child wouldn't need a nanny forever and when that time passed her career would be that much further along, etc.

Exactly.

Also, I don't care for it when women say "MY whole salary goes to the nanny" unless they are single. If you have a working partner, then childcare is a family expense. I know it's the same money either way, but it's just weird to think that somehow only the woman pays for childcare.