Childminders - what is a reasonable retainer fee?

Bitsy_Beans

thatgirlsam wrote: »

But don't forget that a childminder could have 3 full time children under 5, each paying £4.25 an hour.. so in reality that could be £12.75 an hour

Unless like me when I started my two kids took up 2 out of the 3 under 5 spaces thereby reducing my earning potential to not very much :rotfl:

Kaz2904

Bitsy_Beans wrote: »

Unless like me when I started my two kids took up 2 out of the 3 under 5 spaces thereby reducing my earning potential to not very much :rotfl:

You could look at it that way or you could look at it in the other way of you being a childminder saved you £8.50 per hour. If you had to pay that amount per hour for 2 children, you wouldn't have much left over from your wage. That sounds like I'm sniping, I don't mean it to.
I know that one of the Mums from school had twins so she became a childminder because she couldn't afford to give up work but couldn't afford child care for two littlies and her school aged daughter. I don't think she has many during the day but she does have a fair few that she takes to and picks up from school. I now see her walking to school with the twins whereas before she would drive. She can't fit them all in the car but it sticks in my mind because she's almost horizontal pushing a double buggy with 2 sleeping toddlers in up our steep hill :eek:.

It's just a really expensive business having children. It does get cheaper (apparently). Sometimes it's cheaper to change jobs to a part time evening or weekend job but there's little out there at the moment. I was lucky, I went onto permanent nights for a little while, then did 3 nights and a weekend day shift for a while.

Molly41

A good childminder is worth her weight in gold. Over the years I have had to pay thousands out in childcare for my four (now nearly adult) kids. I never begrudged it though because they were doing such an important job - standing in for me, acting in locum parentis.

It is important to build a good relationship with your childminder and tbh sniping about money is not going to get you off to a good start! My neighbour was gutted when her childminder gave her notice because the childminder could not communicate effectively with her:eek:

Bitsy_Beans

Kaz2904 wrote: »

You could look at it that way or you could look at it in the other way of you being a childminder saved you £8.50 per hour. If you had to pay that amount per hour for 2 children, you wouldn't have much left over from your wage. That sounds like I'm sniping, I don't mean it to.

well my mum used to have my kids for free so there was never any cost to me so thats why i always looked at it that way

i think there is a general feeling that CM's must be raking it in. I am sure there are some but in order to do that they must be racking, packing and stacking the kids into their home. My friend earns £10K a year working full time. 10 hours days with no formal lunch breaks and that doesn't include all the required paperwork thats completed in your own time. It was the hardest job I ever did.

onlyroz

Bitsy_Beans wrote: »

i think there is a general feeling that CM's must be raking it in. I am sure there are some but in order to do that they must be racking, packing and stacking the kids into their home. My friend earns £10K a year working full time. 10 hours days with no formal lunch breaks and that doesn't include all the required paperwork thats completed in your own time. It was the hardest job I ever did.

I don't think anybody said it was an easy job. Certainly not one that I would be able to do. I think that my childminder and nursery do a fantastic job and while I wish that I didn't have to pay so much in childcare I don't begrudge them their wages in the slightest.

duchy

Really good childminders are worth their weight in gold-however it's a two way relationship. You seem to be resenting her before you even start.

The other thing is that if you are consistently late due to trains a childminder may get tired of it and give you notice as you'll be eating into HER personal and family time. I think you aren't really seeing that just because a childminder is working from home it doesn't make it any less of a business than if she worked from an office. Presumably you build "delay" time into getting yourself to work-why wouldn't you give another professional in business the same consideration ? (or do you not regard a childminder as a business professional in the same way?)

I'm not having a go-just wondering if there's a bit of a double standard going on.

Bitsy_Beans

onlyroz wrote: »

I don't think anybody said it was an easy job. Certainly not one that I would be able to do. I think that my childminder and nursery do a fantastic job and while I wish that I didn't have to pay so much in childcare I don't begrudge them their wages in the slightest.

I know no one said that I was just commenting on my experience.
There is always a lot of focus I find on what Cm charge, less so about nurseries and I never really understood why nursery fees were always accepted but CM fees were always subject to constant scrutiny. Not necessarily on this forum but I saw it a lot on Netmums etc.

For those of who have have childminders or are looking to get one.....if they are good treat them well (and by that I mean don't take the Mick, pay on time, tell them you think they are doing a great job) it will pay dividends. I would have bent over backwards to help out the parents that appreciated me. Not for the ones that didn't

Metranil_Vavin

I have just dropped my LO to the childminder for his first full day there. I am starting a new p/time job in a couple of weeks and am using a combination of the local council childrens centre nursery for Monday and Tuesdays, and a local CM for Wednesdays.

I really like the CM. I liked her the first time I went to meet her, and have since had her recommended independantly by my old neighbour whose son she used to look after.

I am happy to pay her rate, and have factored into my new work contract that I will be leaving work by 4pm on the dot to ensure I make it back to the CM by 6 (when she closes up for the day).

I know that if I do run into bad traffic or am running late on the odd occasion she will be fine as we have had the chat about it already, but I am certainly going to do everything in my power to ensure that doesn't happen as I am aware that from 6pm that is her personal family time, and I would get so annoyed if someone was constantly late in picking up their kid from my house.

I have also been to a baby and toddler group with her and I couldn't do her job in a million years! I also believe that good childcare is like gold dust,and I have a lot of respect for the work CM's do.

Tirian

There’s an awful lot of talk going on about “not begrudging wages”, and “sniping about money” etc. Let’s get a few things straight. Number one, I don’t begrudge anyone’s wages – and I’ve never suggested that I do. We’ve discussed rates with all the childminders we’ve visited, and we’ve been perfectly happy with all of them.

Number two, querying an unexpected £1000 charge is not “sniping about money”. It’s common sense. Besides, why do you think I’m enquiring about it on here first?? No-one we spoke to made any mention of retainer fees, even when we asked about rates – it only popped up when we went back to one to say we’d like to place our child with them. Hence why I wanted to know if this was normal practice – and frankly, if it is (as it seems) it’s not particularly nice, or good business practice, to just spring it on people once they want to confirm a place without ever mentioning it in any discussion about fees and rates.

Third, we are not “planning” on being late. But if you took the time to read my posts, you would see that we both commute substantial distances to work by public transport. It’s simply not possible to say that we will never be late, because I’m afraid trains do get delayed. And no, you can’t factor in points failures to your commuting time – I’d have to leave before I got back home! And yes, that’s exactly the same for my work – if the trains fail, I can’t get in on time. Magic wands don’t exist, I’m afraid. Whatever reasons nurseries have for their late fees, and it’s not a case of simply making sure we leave work on the dot of time … it’s possible that we may be unavoidably late on occasion, through no fault of our own.

And please don’t patronise – of course we’ve budgeted for having a child. But you can’t budget for what you don’t know about – and you can’t know what people don’t tell you. I think perhaps the childminders we’ve seen assume that everyone knows about all these little quirks and ‘retainers’ – but this is our first child, and we don’t. And given that we moved house to the area only five weeks before she was born, we didn’t have the luxury of being able to sort any of this out further in advance.

Everyone happy now? Then maybe a little less judgementalism, and a bit more understanding would be helpful (and big thanks to all those who’ve already managed that without being asked …)

goRt wrote: »

OK, if it's more palatable to you, call it a non-refundable deposit of £1,000

I could call it that – but it wouldn’t change the fact that it’s not. A deposit would be deducted from the fees on commencement, the retainer won’t be.

onlyroz

You are coming across as very agressive in your responses.

Let's say that I offered you a job, but I said that you could not start that job until April. By agreeing to accept the job you are effectively saying that you are going to stop your job search. If somebody else came along and offered you another job that started tomorrow (assuming for the moment that the pay was the same) then it would be reasonable for you to request that I offer you an incentive to not take the second job. Some sort of retainer for the three months would be appropriate.

That's not to say that you couldn't take a temporary position in the mean time, but I would want some sort of guarantee that you actually were going to come and work for me in April, and not s*d off and take a position somewhere else.