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10 ways a working mom can reduce childcare costs

By Sponsored Advertising Content May 20, 2016
Working moms know childcare can be similar to the cost of paying for a mortgage and while families will never win the lotto for a cost free year of childcare, there is a more flexible and affordable alternative. Use an au pair and you can clear up the following 10 issues:
  1. Late meetings generally mean late fees at daycares for a working mom but it isn’t a problem for your au pair who lives with you and doesn’t have somewhere else to be. 
  2. Lost work time because of the days you stay home when your kids are sick. An au pair lives with you so she/he can shoot that gap. 
  3. Hiring additional sitters to cover extra evening and weekend hours is not an issue with live in nannies that can adjust their schedules accordingly.
  4. Turn over. There are a lot of costs associated with transitioning between nannies.  Finding childcare in the interim is not pleasant. Au Pairs are locked into a contract for a year with the option of extending up to a second year. 
  5. Transportation costs to and from a sitter or daycare is a non-issue when the nanny is in the room across the hall.
  6. Multiple children. With daycares and nannies, any mom with multiple children will watch as her childcare costs double and then triple and so on. The cost of an Au Pair is per family, not per child.
  7. Afterschool activities. Getting the kids to extracurricular activities means time and money because moms have to take time off of work. Au Pairs can do this for you.
  8. Nightshifts. Healthcare workers make up a huge percentage of the working mom population and hiring a babysitter to stay during those overnight shifts is just not cost efficient. An Au Pair lives with you and will be there during the night hours - you can’t say that for a daycare and most nannies.
  9. Home cooking. A minor but huge detail for working moms is when they are home they can run to the store for that extra ingredient while your au pair is with the kids – skipping the oh-so-tempting excuse to eat out again.
  10. Sanity. The Au Pair saves on a mom’s sanity (mental health counseling costs?)--is anything more important?
In general when families look at their options, they assume it’s the choice between a nanny or a daycare. Some don’t know an au pair is an option and other families just assume au pairs are too expensive. In fact, after the cost of getting the Au Pair into the country, the hourly cost of having an au pair can be much less than using a daycare or nanny, especially when you are talking multiple children and larger metro areas.