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I've mentioned on here a few times that our family has an Au Pair and I work from home most days. This happy arrangement is going to come to an end and I'm of mixed feelings.
First, for those who don't know, there is a program in the State Department that is designed to connect families with young women across the world who would be interested in taking care of children in exchange for living in America for a year. The host family has to provide a separate room and pay a weekly stipend. It's a "cultural program." As part of it they are supposed to take a couple college courses every year. There is a lot of abuse, but I pay my Au Pair more than the minimum, don't ask her to do more than just keep the kids alive, and buy her whatever she asks for that seems reasonable.
When interviewing Au Pairs (it's a lot like an online dating service, with profile pages and matches) I always asked, "What are you hoping to get out of becoming an Au Pair? What benefit are you looking for?" The answer was almost always, "More experience speaking English." This seems reasonable, as a good American accent probably gives people a huge advantage in business.
Anyways, the State Department is reviewing the Au Pair program, and has proposed a series of rules that will break it for most families. I don't want to count every toothbrush I buy her, or make sure that she only eats $10.88 worth of food every day. Regardless of what is financially feasible, I'm not going to do it. There's just no way to live with someone in your house, monitor them to this extent, and then still trust them with your kids.
But then the question turns to, "Who is going to watch my kids?" I have four kids, ranging from 10 months to 6 years. There is a preschool we send one child to for 1/2 day socialization, and she likes it well enough. I could send the others to their Summer Camp. But the 10 month old would be too young, and daycare for a 1 year old is already booked up for a year.
Then there's the reality that I'm not giving my kids the attention I want to. Work takes over too much. I might technically be off work at 4:30, but someone puts a meeting on my calendar at 5, or I really need to finish these
threefive emails, and before I know it it's Dinner Time. I have all these worksheets I want to do with my two oldest and practice penmanship (which they really struggle with.) I want to take my kids outside to play. I want to go for walks. But I also want to be held in esteem at work. As long as work is there, I will put off my kids because kids can wait but work can't. But that is a LIE. Kids grow up, and toil is forever.I don't want to send them off to a church preschool from 7 to 5, and then pick them up, feed them dinner, do homework, and kiss them good night. That's not how I was raised. That's not what I want for my family.
So I will likely become a stay at home Mom, once my Au Pair's contract ends. I'm looking forward to taking my kids to parks, splash pads, libraries, festivals, and other public areas around my city. My city is actually really family friendly. I know it is hard work. I took half a year off work when I had my second child. I know it can be isolating. But I have the example of my mother, who make lots of mom friends and seemed to have a blast when my siblings and I were young. Thinking about making this change fills me with excitement and hope.
The two downsides - and they are huge - is money and the Future. Money is easy enough to explain - we will have less of it. My husband makes enough for us to live on, if we had no debt we would have a good amount left over after all the mandatory bills (food, mortgage, utilities, etc.) Unfortunately, we have debt. There are some student loans that are almost paid off and we are in a payment plan with the children's hospital after three of my children were hospitalized for a cumulative of 27 days, 10 of which were in the ICU. With this debt, we are still able to make due, and live a good quality of life, but we would need to be careful to limit things like how much meat we buy, how many clothes we get the kids, etc. Once the debt is paid off in a couple years, it's all fine. But we will have to live frugally for a couple years, or risk falling into more debt.
The Future one is harder to explain, but I can't stay home with the kids forever. By the time the youngest is 10, if not sooner, I need to go back into the labor force. I think that is where my mother messed up. She put her foot down on her identity as a homemaker, ended up not doing much during the school day, driving us around to sports in the afternoon (until I was able to drive, and then she had even less to do.) The cognitive decline you see retirees experience, she seemed to get when she was 50. She kept the public areas of the house clean, cooked dinner (badly), and otherwise watched Masterpiece Theater. Shortly after I graduated college, my parents divorced. Now she is a real estate agent with no sales and sometimes manages to convince her friends to pay above market rates to clean their house.
I see a few possibilities. I have a Master's degree, and can probably get a certification and find work as a school teacher once the children are in school. I don't have any particular interest in this. I think of schools as enemy territory, so to speak. It would be nice if I could instead home school my kids (I'm not going to leap straight into that, but it's a possibility now.) Maybe I could teach at a Catholic School. The benefit of being a school teacher is obvious, I would be off work most of the same days that my children would be.
The other idea I'm entertaining is to start my own business. I've been thinking up a small catalog of things I could crochet. Things that could only be done by hand, look unique, and would take me less than two hours a piece. I could buy a stamping kit for 1k and sell personalized jewelry. I could lean into the Mommy space, and sell "calming jars" and other kid trinkets.
The idea would be to do something for a few hours a week, just enough to keep a storefront and a tax ID. If I actually turn a small profit I can use to buy a zoo membership or something, that would be a bonus. As the kids get bigger, I can spend more time on it, eventually either actually making it a full time job, or pivoting back into being a wage worker. It seems like it will be easier for me to get hired if I can say I started a small business, rather than I took time off work to care for small kids.
I'm open to any and all suggestions.
Having dated a few Au Pairs, @BahRamYou This is your cause! Call your congressman! Call the media! Keep Au Pairs flowing into this country!
LOL. that does seem an interesting program. Not sure how I feel that I have that kind of reputation that you thought of me for this...
Don't worry love, you're still three more effort posts about it from being the "Gender ratio" guy. Two if you come with a slogan (Like powerology or the hock) that you clearly think is catchy.
In all seriousness, this might become one of my set of election year "weirdo neutral issues" I bring up to defuse political conversations.
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Aren't most of them teens? S
I think they're normally 18-23 or so. Either college age or right after graduation.
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It sounds like even though the au pair program change has inspired this, you'd be interested in being a SAHM in any case. So considering options (nanny share, retiree needing to earn a bit of extra money...) isn't something you need to waste time on. I will give my standard spiel that women often end up in difficult straits in their later years/retirement because they depend on a single income earner and things happen to make it not work out as expected. When you're in the middle of the stressful childcare years it can be tough to consider the far end of the path, especially if you're confident that divorce isn't in the cards; people don't want to consider early death or disability.
If you can financially swing it and you like being a SAHM, there are certainly ways to keep active and healthy without planning a return to work. My mom is in her 70s and doing very well, and she kept herself busy with church and child-care related activities and jobs her entire life (typical trailing spouse type stuff). She officially retired from paying work in her early 70s, but she's just as busy as ever with church activities and friends. She's sharp as a tack, although I wish she'd stay off the ladder, and I'm thankful she finally agreed to outsource the lawncare.
I didn't want to be a SAHM to a baby (I had a theory that anyone can love a baby, but it takes someone related to love a teenager, so if I was going to have to step out of the work force I figured it would happen during the years my kid was older), so we did the daycare thing. Because we were well enough established in our careers before we had a kid it gave us some flexibility. I worked from home a day or two a week, which meant short daycare days. When my kid was sick, and I needed to leave early or not come in, there wasn't a problem, I had enough sick & vacation time banked. I mention this because sometimes people re-entering the work force are stuck with one or two weeks of sick/vacation, and don't have initial flexibility while they "prove" their worth to their employer. OTOH if your spouse continues working, you can potentially lean on him to be the flexible one if you have a period of less flexibility if you re-enter the work force. On the other, other hand, it can be really hard for a working spouse to go from being all-in on his job because it was critical for his family, to suddenly being the one getting phone calls from the school because Junior's sick or forgot his lunch. I've seen this happen in both directions (and working in a male dominated field, listened to conversations men are having with men about this kind of stuff that I wouldn't ordinarily be privy to). Though you're probably senior enough now that if you do decide to re-enter you could negotiate some flexibility, it's still helpful to consider potentialities.
I wouldn't plan on making enough money with crochet to do more than subsidize your hobby. I crochet and knit, I'm reasonably good and fast, and I give things away to get them out of my house. People like me wreck the potential income. If you want to be a SAHM, and you can afford it, I wouldn't worry about trying to bring in income. For planning a work force re-entry you'd probably be better off finding a part time or volunteer situation in the same general area of your current career. There are any number of volunteer orgs that would love someone with your skills giving them time. Then you're not saying you spent 10 years doing craft fairs or trying to spin an etsy store into an entrepreneurship situation, instead you spent 10 years doing project management work with the local animal shelter, church, or homeless outreach. That is unless you don't want to resume being a PM.
I never did end up opting out of the work force. We lucked into a remarkably easy child and only had the one, and the few times we were in intense-parenting-stages all fit in times when I could auto-pilot work for a bit and focus on the kid. I enjoy working, I like the structure it gives my life, I never wanted to be a SAHM, and during the time when kiddo had a health scare and we though it might be required I really struggling with it. So that gives you some info about my biases.
I hope your kids are doing well, and it sounds like you really will enjoy being able to focus on your kids without other things pulling at your attention.
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For what it's worth, I feel this even as the male half of the household and sole breadwinner. I think this anxiety is natural for people in our position, but I also know my dad was gone from 5am-6pm every day for work. We made the most of the weekends and vacations and my relationship with him is equally strong as the one I have with my mom.
If I can talk through some of your work options:
What was the total outlay for the Au Pair? Having one is something I never considered as something I could do... but now I'm wondering if it's possible. I have a pretty big house right now, but our guest room shares a restroom with the kids. Not sure how much of a disqualifier that is.
What platform do you use to freelance?
For Au Pair: A shared bathroom is fine. Currently costs are about 35k a year, with about 10k given to the agency, 15k to the Au Pair directly (The minimum is around 10k), and 10k from education (there is a mandatory stipend for them to attend schoool,) increased utilities, food, toiletries, etc. If your kids are older and in school, I think paying the minimum works fine. Some people have Au Pairs drive their school-aged kids to and from school and to extra curriculars.
However, we expect the costs to double if the state department rules go into affect.
I use TopTal. I believe it's a step up from platforms like Fiverr, however there's also more aggressive screening. For example, I came on the platform as a full-stack developer. This required 2 interviews and the creation of a whole application from scratch, which took ~8 hours. I believe for management it's less.
That being said, I've gotten opportunities with a mix of startups and impressive logos who value onshore talent. They have great training opportunities too to keep you busy and upskilled. Not perfect by any means, but it's been way more lucrative than playing video games in the evening.
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Is preschool and working part time at your current work (or similar) not an option?
Leave them at ~8 and pick them up at 14-15? (Or even less)
I tried working 6 hour days once. The problem is that businesses are bad at dividing how much work to give someone.
I'm responsible for a whole domain. Sometimes it might take 30 hours one week to respond to things in a timely fashion, produce everything that needs to be produced, attend the meetings, etc. Sometimes it take 60 hours. I could tell work, "I'm only working 30 hours, dock my pay accordingly," but I would still be responsible for the same amount of work, I'll just fall behind faster.
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The experience and questions are so far out of my own range of knowledge that I can offer nothing, but I do just want to offer a quick note that you sound lovely. I mean it, you really sound like a great mom, and I'm glad there are people like yourself raising kids.
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I'm curious what your current job is? I think the best course would be to do something along those lines as a freelancer, but I suppose that's not possible for all professions.
My mom was a SAHM and did a lot of volunteer work, which I always thought would be a nice choice if I had to go that way. It can be a good way to pick up skills that will come in handy later.
I'm currently a Project Manager. There are freelance opportunities, but I'm a little hesitant to go that route because I don't want to be in front of a screen while taking care of my kids, I want to be active with them. I crochet while they play sometimes, and they don't mind at all. I think I could manage something like one of these a day without the kids interfering.
If I get on a computer, suddenly all the kids want to sit next to me and watch, talk, and touch things, and I can't PM at the same time.
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This is a good one. My mother did the same. Avocations can be just as stimulating as vocations.
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I am a business owner and I spend time talking with other business owners, often about tax stuff. This year, in an obvious huge mistake, I am doing all my own taxes including my business taxes. It's been an eye-opening look into how the sausage is made.
At first, I was worried about small little issues that came up. But I realize now that my accountant constantly fouled things up worse than I ever could. Nothing bad has happened. I did more research and found that only like 0.5% of S-corp returns are audited, and most of those recommend no change. This is remarkable when you consider what the records of the local taco joint must look like.
The reason I bring this up is that many people have too much respect for government rules. Progressives especially like to create a lot of onerous government rules but at the same time refuse to enforce them. The rules are basically impossible to follow. The only reason that the gears of commerce have not ground to a complete halt is because people don't follow the rules.
With that in mind, are the new regulations truly a deal-breaker? Or can you just make a separate credit card for your au pair and then just guesstimate the rest of this stuff. As long as you're not in the worst 1% of au pair families it's probably fine, although this depends on the specific rules obviously.
Out of curiosity, what do you pay yourself as a reasonable wage? I pay myself 2/3 of total earnings and have no idea if that's too much or too little.
It's a complicated formula because you have to take into account QBI. I had been paying myself WAY too much before because of bad advice from my now-terminated accountant. But my current salary is well above what would be considered reasonable.
If you're worried, follow the Kohler Payroll Matrix. According to Kohler, no one has ever gotten in trouble for using it. Most people who get audited are being stupid and paying themselves NO salary, or a tiny one:
https://lifetimeparadigm.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Kohler-Payroll-Matrix-12-01-18.pdf
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We would need to turn in logs to the regional coordinator. The Au Pair system in the US works through Agencies, you cannot get an Au Pair Visa without going through an Agency. That Agency will need to hire extra people to maintain the level of paperwork that will be required of them. Right now we pay our Agency 10k a year to handle the current paperwork to get the Visa, get the Au Pair in country, work with Embassies, and do the legally required checking up on the Au Pair (she meets with our Area Coordinator once a month in person.) It's expected that the cost of the program might double or triple with the changes.
Was this a deliberate department decision? To make this clearly non workable even though it was 'still available'?
No one will pay 30k to follow the rules for an au pair. If you're in the right state im sure that would be the salary.
It's ostensibly to give the Au Pairs a better standard of living, make sure they're getting a "livable wage" (whatever that means when all their food, utilities, phone, and shelter are being paid for by the host family, and the money they receive is on top of that.) Our Au Pairs have always had more spending money than my husband and I have ever budgeted for ourselves.
I see a lot of Au Pairs complain about the new rules. There is a worry that the opportunity will shrink for most Au Pairs. About 2/3 of host families will be priced out of the new rules. The ones that remain will have a large pool to pick from, and will likely pick the most educated with child-care experience. The 19 year old Au Pairs whose child-care experience comes from raising their three younger siblings and seven cousins will be ignored in favor of the 26 year old college graduate with 4 years of pediatric occupational therapy, who really wants to get their foot in America and this is the first step.
Maybe that's actually good for the United States? Smarter, more dedicated people coming in. But it sucks for me. I probably would not have had the fourth kid had I known the Au Pair system would be wrecked a year in.
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Well... that sucks. I still wouldn't make any drastic changes until the rules come into place. It might not be as bad as you fear. And election results might come into play as well.
And, if it's any consolation, my mom was a homemaker and seems to have suffered zero mental slowdown into her mid-seventies.
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