Cost Of Childcare

[nikisue]

Can anyone tell me what the going rate is for a full-time nanny (outside of Bankgkok). Basically, I have a 20 month old daughter, and will be returning to Thailand with her and my husband (who is Thai) in January. We live near to Rayong about 21/2 hrs from Bangkok and need some childcare. Previously my daughter attended a nursery near to our house, whilst I worked. But I am looking for her to have a nanny instead, as I need something more flexible. My husband will be working and I will not be working, but doing my research for my MA project so need the time to write and read etc..... I also would like to do some travelling around and I am not committed to a job and can read and write from most locations.

So I am looking for someone who would consider travelling with us within Thailand on occassion. I guess the hours would be approx 4 hours per day and occassional weekends. But flexibility in times. I would pay a monthly rate for lets say on the basis of 80 hours per month.

What monthly rate should I offer? And do you think this is they best option? I would appreciate to hear any alternative options.

[torrenova]

I have just set on my wife's aunty who she trusts with a 3 month old baby. She is on a 5 day week with occasional night time babysitting (perhaps once a week), food of course and she is on Bt4000 a month an a bonus after Xmas / New Year. I envisage bonuses being Bt8-12000 per year and thus making her salary Bt5000 or so per month.

She is poorly educated and worked previously in a hairdressor for a similar salary but for 6 days a week. We substituted an extra day off for the nightime babysitting.

She will be no good to educate the baby but she does cooking and cleaning and the laundry. My wife and I are often up late and it gives us the opportunity to have a lie in.

She lives nearby but she lived here in Pattaya anyway beforehand. I originally considered a live in.

[think_too_mut]

I have just set on my wife's aunty who she trusts with a 3 month old baby. She is on a 5 day week with occasional night time babysitting (perhaps once a week), food of course and she is on Bt4000 a month an a bonus after Xmas / New Year. I envisage bonuses being Bt8-12000 per year and thus making her salary Bt5000 or so per month.

She is poorly educated and worked previously in a hairdressor for a similar salary but for 6 days a week. We substituted an extra day off for the nightime babysitting.

She will be no good to educate the baby but she does cooking and cleaning and the laundry. My wife and I are often up late and it gives us the opportunity to have a lie in.

She lives nearby but she lived here in Pattaya anyway beforehand. I originally considered a live in.

One of cleaning ladies in our former building was looking after my daughter Mon-Fri 5-8pm for 2000B per month. End of her shift, she would just come in.

No cleaning, no cooking. It was while the baby was 6 to 10 months old. The babysitting was mostly reduced to watching TV and hardly anything else.

She lived nearby and her own children were coming to sit with her, do homework and play.

[MrSquigle]

3 to 6k per month, depends on live in or not and the total hours and jobs she is responsible for.

Also depends on how good she is, there are some absolute idiots out there and it may take some time to find the good one.

[Heng]

Ours is 4,500 a month and live in.

Recommend you screen out gals that don't speak Thai clearly (and have whatever other habits you don't like of course: for example, in our house the TV is NOT the babysitter... you are!), since this is your baby's brain's sponge time.

Edited October 24, 2007 by Heng

[sonicdragon]

We have had a lot of difficuly finding a nanny and resorted to having our chinese nanny in HK come over on a visa exemption a few times. The problems we faced with thai nannies were:

- if you pay less than 7-10k per month then they will be uneducated and only suitable for babysitting, and in my opinion you want a *lot* more than that at your daughters age.

- above 10k you could find a university graduate or at least someone with a good secondary school and college education - but I suspect that in your area you might struggle to find someone. We live only just outside bangkok and it was a real problem for us.

If you only want someone for 4 hours a day I think you will find it difficult but please let us know how you get on since we still need one ! At the moment one of our maids does nanny-type things, but the situation is not ideal at all and we want a "proper" nanny.

[nikisue]

My worry is the care my daughter will get. Like some posts mentioned I don't want her sitting in-front of a TV all day. It seems a lot more difficult outside of Bangkok to get anyone suitable.

The idea of bringing someone other from another country seems an option that I might try and look into. Does anyone know about how to apply for a visa for a nanny from overseas. Is it worth the cost and time and effort to do so? The other option that I was considering was finding someone who is in education or at least semi professional and wants to study and improve their English. For exchange for childcare and a set wage I woul also include English lessons. Do you think this would be an incentive for someone to take a nannying position outside of Bangkok?

[sonicdragon]

My worry is the care my daughter will get. Like some posts mentioned I don't want her sitting in-front of a TV all day. It seems a lot more difficult outside of Bangkok to get anyone suitable.

The idea of bringing someone other from another country seems an option that I might try and look into. Does anyone know about how to apply for a visa for a nanny from overseas. Is it worth the cost and time and effort to do so? The other option that I was considering was finding someone who is in education or at least semi professional and wants to study and improve their English. For exchange for childcare and a set wage I woul also include English lessons. Do you think this would be an incentive for someone to take a nannying position outside of Bangkok?

I looked into it getting a visa for our chinese nanny, and found that it was close to impossible. Actually, it's not the visas that's the problem - it's the work permit - basically I don't think it's possible for a foreigner to get a work permit to work as a nanny/au-pair. That's why our nanny came on a visa exemption. You could also do it with a tourist visa, but both of these solutions are illegal, and that's why we don't do it often.

The exchange idea is a good one, but I don't know how you go about finding a suitable person.

[Goinghomesoon]

For all the negative reasons above we pay well above market rate for our maid/nanny/cook. She is older, raised five kids of her own and is trilingual (Thai, Khmer, English). She has worked for humanitarian organisations, most recently helping Cambodian migrant workers. She is educated, so can help the 9 year old with her homework. As an experienced parent she is able to take over easily when I travel for work. She generally cooks Thai but enrolled herself in Indian cooking classes because she wanted to try something new.

That said, it was incredibly difficult to find someone who understood what I envisaged in a carer. I lucked out when someone at her organisation introduced us: she knew our helper was burning out and wanted a change of lifestyle and I was looking for someone with her qualities.

Outside Bangkok you might have to find someone enthusiastic but inexperienced and spend lots of time training them. I did consider bringing in our Filipina nanny from a previous country to train a young Thai if necessary. Or persist in finding someone already on the circuit. If they are really good you will have to pay significantly more than you might like. Maybe think of it as investing in your child's future Seems to hurt my hip pocket less if I think of it that way.

Edited October 28, 2007 by Goinghomesoon

[sonicdragon]

For all the negative reasons above we pay well above market rate for our maid/nanny/cook. She is older, raised five kids of her own and is trilingual (Thai, Khmer, English). She has worked for humanitarian organisations, most recently helping Cambodian migrant workers. She is educated, so can help the 9 year old with her homework. As an experienced parent she is able to take over easily when I travel for work. She generally cooks Thai but enrolled herself in Indian cooking classes because she wanted to try something new.

That said, it was incredibly difficult to find someone who understood what I envisaged in a carer. I lucked out when someone at her organisation introduced us: she knew our helper was burning out and wanted a change of lifestyle and I was looking for someone with her qualities.

Outside Bangkok you might have to find someone enthusiastic but inexperienced and spend lots of time training them. I did consider bringing in our Filipina nanny from a previous country to train a young Thai if necessary. Or persist in finding someone already on the circuit. If they are really good you will have to pay significantly more than you might like. Maybe think of it as investing in your child's future Seems to hurt my hip pocket less if I think of it that way.

Can you elaborate on what "well above market rate" means ?

Of necessity to us is also a cantonese and standard mandarin speaker. English and Thai are not a requirement, but useful if possible. This makes Thai nanny's even harder to find.

[Goinghomesoon]

Well above market rate....one woman I have known for 15 years is currently paid 17,000 p/month (7 days a week with one day off p/month) for a family with recently born preemie twins that have a lot of special needs. She speaks & reads fluent Thai & English and saves her salary so that every year she can go on a tour-group holiday somewhere like Singapore, Australia, China etc. So she is well travelled and has a sense of how the world outside Thailand operates.

Another 2 or 3 families I know have excellent staff that they pay 12-15,000 per month. One of these expats is a single parent whose (legal) Burmese maid/cook/nanny has to run the whole household and be a defacto parent for her children as she travels frequently for work. The nanny is more successful than the mother at getting the eldest child (14) to do her homework.

You can't compare these staff to your run-of-the-mill 4,000 baht per month girl from the provinces. It's like trying to compare a professional nanny back home to the teenage babysitter from next door.

[sonicdragon]

Well above market rate....one woman I have known for 15 years is currently paid 17,000 p/month (7 days a week with one day off p/month) for a family with recently born preemie twins that have a lot of special needs. She speaks & reads fluent Thai & English and saves her salary so that every year she can go on a tour-group holiday somewhere like Singapore, Australia, China etc. So she is well travelled and has a sense of how the world outside Thailand operates.

Another 2 or 3 families I know have excellent staff that they pay 12-15,000 per month. One of these expats is a single parent whose (legal) Burmese maid/cook/nanny has to run the whole household and be a defacto parent for her children as she travels frequently for work. The nanny is more successful than the mother at getting the eldest child (14) to do her homework.

You can't compare these staff to your run-of-the-mill 4,000 baht per month girl from the provinces. It's like trying to compare a professional nanny back home to the teenage babysitter from next door.

Thanks for that. Did you actually read my first post in this thread ? I'm very well aware that you can't compare these kinds of staff with "normal" thai maids (we have 2 of those already). 17k is no problem for us - it's less than we pay our Filipina maid in HK and a lot less than we pay our chinese nanny.

Can you share with us the way to find these staff ? Do you know if any have chinese language skills ?

[thaiclan]

Nikisue, if you only want someone for 4 hours per day then maybe it would be better to enroll your child into a pre-school for that time? St Andrews International School is in Rayong and has an excellent pre-school facility....

Finding a good housekeeper and child carer is always a problem. I've currently arranged for my housekeeper to attend school, learn to drive and intensive English programme. It appears she is smart just that economic hardship forced her to leave school and find menial work; however only time will tell. I have approached numerous graduates with the offer of a job of housekeeper with pay of 10k live-in or 12-15k live out, however none of the grads want to take work as "maids" (no matter how I dress it up!) when their families have put them through Uni and expect them to get a professional job. sigh....

[nikisue]

Nikisue, if you only want someone for 4 hours per day then maybe it would be better to enroll your child into a pre-school for that time? St Andrews International School is in Rayong and has an excellent pre-school facility....

Finding a good housekeeper and child carer is always a problem. I've currently arranged for my housekeeper to attend school, learn to drive and intensive English programme. It appears she is smart just that economic hardship forced her to leave school and find menial work; however only time will tell. I have approached numerous graduates with the offer of a job of housekeeper with pay of 10k live-in or 12-15k live out, however none of the grads want to take work as "maids" (no matter how I dress it up!) when their families have put them through Uni and expect them to get a professional job. sigh....

[nikisue]

If you see again, although I agree somewhere like St Andrews would be a good option. But I am going to be travelling around. As I have to go to various places for my reserach project. So what I am looking for is someone to work approx 4- hours a day but I need flexibility, someone prepared to travel with us. This is the reason for not putting my daughter into a nursery, although I agree would probably the best solution if I did not have to travel.

[chanchao]

4000 baht/month

Or minimum wage, even, when everything works out.

[t.s]

I have just set on my wife's aunty who she trusts with a 3 month old baby. She is on a 5 day week with occasional night time babysitting (perhaps once a week), food of course and she is on Bt4000 a month an a bonus after Xmas / New Year. I envisage bonuses being Bt8-12000 per year and thus making her salary Bt5000 or so per month.

She is poorly educated and worked previously in a hairdressor for a similar salary but for 6 days a week. We substituted an extra day off for the nightime babysitting.

She will be no good to educate the baby but she does cooking and cleaning and the laundry. My wife and I are often up late and it gives us the opportunity to have a lie in.

She lives nearby but she lived here in Pattaya anyway beforehand. I originally considered a live in.

very similar.

5k per month, 6 days per week, 9 to 9, or whenever i get home from work.(usually erlier) mother works evenings until midnight.

she stays over friday night and gets an additional 200 for every other night she is asked to stay over

[sonicdragon]

Well, we finally found a nanny. 32 yrs old. Graduate of Mahidol. Speaks mandarin fluently (one of our main criteria). We are paying her 13k. She has her own room, with meals paid for, weekends off and weekly travel costs to her home in Bangkok.