Hiring a nanny in your home

When I initially went back to work in October 2021, our daughter was nearly four months old, and we were very lucky to be able to have my mom and our niece as caregivers. But all of that changed in December. Due to some personal issues, our niece was no longer able to nanny for us, and while my mom would love to care for Ariadne every day, her arthritis prevents her from doing so.

And so we spent over a month in this terrible limbo. My mom cared for Ari two days a week, Dane’s mom was able to help one day a week, and that left us with two days a week with no childcare. Eventually it became clear that we needed to find a part-time nanny. We weren’t interested in daycare for two reasons: pandemic safety and the fact that most of them required babies to attend full time.

Searching

We used three ways to search for a nanny, and I think that one was clearly most effective, so I want to delve into why.

1. Facebook Groups ($0): I joined several local mom/ nanny FB groups at the suggestion of a friend. After posting what we were looking for, I was immediately overwhelmed by tons of messages from people that we just… not qualified. They either had no experience, didn’t speak English, or were honestly just plain strange in the way they messaged me. I ended up deleting my post within a few hours because I was creeped out.
2. Nanny Lane ($0 to post and connect with nannies): I initially thought Nanny Lane would be the most successful, but we didn’t have a great experience with it. Many of the nannies were super young with little to no experience. Most were not vaccinated and refused to do so. The one nanny we did connect with, flaked on us after being offered a full time position, which angered me because we were very clear from the get-go about what we were looking for.
3. Care.com ($38.95/ 1 month, or $12.95/month if you do a year subscription): We put off using Care.com because you have to have a premier membership in order to message with caregivers, but ultimately I would recommend it 100%. We were able to create a job listing for exactly what we wanted and within a few days had more applicants than we even knew what to do with. The site also allows you do background checks and all of that stuff, which was extremely helpful.

Interviewing & vetting

We did FaceTime meetings with every single candidate we were interested in. I think this was a great way to get a feel for who someone was without investing a lot of time into full on face to face meetings. It was also safer, of course. After our initial FaceTime meetings, we decided to do longer, at-home meetings with two nannies, both from Care.com.

After having both in our home, we felt comfortable enough with one, we will call her Dee, to do a trial. A few days later, I stayed home from work and we spent four hours going through Ari’s routine together so I could show her everything and observe the way she interacted with the baby. Prior to her coming over for the trial, we verified her vaccination/ booster status to be sure that we were as safe as can be.

Dee did great in the trial and we decided that we wanted to hire her pending a background check and speaking to her references. Care.com allows you to pay for different levels of checks, which range in price from around $80 to $300. Fortunately for us, Dee is a retired police officer who actually paid for the background checks through Care.com on her own so she could have them ready for anyone who wanted to hire her. Care was able to send us those as soon as we requested them and we didn’t have to pay for them since she already had. Every reference we spoke to absolutely loved her, so that also gave us a boost of confidence.

Hiring & paying

We had never hired someone to work in our home before, so it took a bit of searching to find out what we needed to do so legally. I know many people who just pay their nannies what is essentially in “cash” (like Zelle or PayPal), but I wanted to make sure that we did it legally so that we could claim the childcare tax credit, and so that there was no risk of us getting in trouble later on and owing money.

After several hours of searching, I discovered that the nanny tax process is actually a LOT and that there are services out there that will do all of it for you for a monthly fee. Care.com actually has their own nanny payroll service, but it is a TON of money and not something we could afford. I read a lot of reviews and eventually we settled on Poppins Payroll. I liked the price ($45/month), easy to use dashboard, and the fact that they don’t charge anything extra at the end of the year for the tax forms. So far we have used it for three weeks and it has been pretty seamless. Our nanny is paid directly into her bank account, and all we have to do is make sure that we go in every Friday if we need to make any changes. They send you an email reminder too, which I really appreciate.

In terms of cost, most of the reputable nannies in our area cost $20-$30 an hour. Anyone we spoke to that was less than $20 just didn’t seem to have much experience. Nanny costs do vary by area though, and south Florida is certainly an area with a higher cost of living. For us, this is do-able for two days a week; it’s tough but we mange. It would not be feasible for us to have a nanny full-time at that price though, so I know that if we ever do need full-time childcare, we will need to look at a daycare (we have seen some great ones in our area, but the waitlist is long).

How it’s going

We are reaching a place of comfort with Dee. Ariadne seems very happy and well-cared for with her, and Dee seems to really enjoy her. She even brought Ari a new toy the other day! It means a lot to have someone caring for our daughter who is invested in her. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t extremely anxious the first few times we left Ari with her, but each time that anxiety subsided a little more. Although we can’t wait until the summer to have more time with our girl, knowing that she has amazing caregivers while we work makes things infinitely easier.

If you are considering hiring a nanny now or in the future, I hope this post helps a bit! Drop any questions for me below and I’ll be sure to answer them as best I can.

xx,

Camile