Home Daycare

We have our DDs in a home daycare near our house 4 days a week. The girls have been there for about 1.5 years and we really, really like the woman who watches our DDs...and DDs love her, too! DH and I were discussing whether or not it is typical to give your home daycare provider a monetary raise at some point in time? I figure at daycare centers that you don't have to think about raising rates because they just tell you that they're raising rates. But, in this case I don't know as she would ever ask and I'm not sure if giving your home daycare provided a raise is something I should just know to do??? Anybody know the unwritten rule on this, if there is one?

Thanks!!

 

I don't if there's an unwritten rule, or even a rule of thumb... but we're going to give our nanny a raise after a year. I figure that I get a raise every year, so she should too. Also, if you don't, your day care provider will actually make less since her salary isn't keeping up with the cost of inflation. If you want to match inflation, you would do a 4% raise (i think that's a typical cost of inflation).

 

We did with the twins. It wasn't much, only about $5.00 extra per day. We did it 1x a year.

 

If she's great and you want to continue with her services then I think it would be a great idea. Think about how you feel/felt when you were given such positive feedback about a job you were doing. I think it will keep her happy and wanting to continue to work hard.

 

We gave our nanny a raise in July (just under a year of work for us). We actually gave her $1 per hour - $40 per week. Given the price of gas, it seemed right.

 

You can ask her if she's raising her rates for new kids? Often daycares raise their rates in September as "old" kids go to preschool or K and "newbies" start at a daycare. If we had stayed at our daycare another year, I have a feeling she would have raised the rates for us. But we switched to preschool. Often it really depends on your area and what the daycare provides (food, etc). Here in Calif, it's very $$$$ and competitive.