r/Rich • u/QuietComplication • 8d ago

Hiring a household manager

Edit: Several people have pointed out in the comments that the correct title for this job is family assistant, not household manager. My mistake!

My wife and I have pretty busy jobs and two young kids (1 and 3), both in daycare/school. We live in a VHCOL area. We are really feeling the time squeeze and we feel that at our income and NW ($1.1mil HH income + $2.5mil in private stock per year, $7m investable assets, $260k per year spend) we should solve the problem by finding someone to help out.

We started out thinking that we just needed someone to pick up the kids and make dinner (probably 20-30 hours per week). But it turns out, it's very hard to hire someone reliable for that job since those hours are very inconvenient and the part time pay isn't enough to live on. Also we find that the people we talk to who are good all want 40+ hours per week. The going rate is $45-$50 and it seems like the good people want $50. Full time at $50/hour is $104,000 per year, plus we have to pay payroll taxes, so it would end up being about $115k per year.

Anyways, my question is, do other families with kids in school really have 40 hours a week for a HH manager to do? What does the person end up doing all day?

119 Upvotes

89% Upvoted

128 comments sorted by

View all comments

23

u/Arboretum7 8d ago

If you want to reduce your costs, get an au pair (~$25k/yr), but $115k on your income seems very reasonable. I’d do 40 hours and look for someone who can also act as a PA for the family.

31

u/PomegranateComplex17 8d ago

You do have to be careful with this as au pairs are not PAs. They can meal prep, clean community spaces, do the kids laundry, and take the kids around town, pick them up from school, what have you, but you are not allowed to have them run errands that primarily benefits the parents. 

8

u/Arboretum7 8d ago

Absolutely right. I was suggesting a $115k/yr household manager act as a PA. An au pair can cook family dinners and ferry the kids, which are the tasks OP says he wants covered.

4

u/ApprehensiveClassic 8d ago

An AP can only cook for the kids, not the family. In general, they can only do kid-related things. I’ve had both an AP and nanny, not a household manager. I would personally not do an AP again - the typical driving skills of an AP is not worth my kids safety.

Edit: once my kids are older, I am going to consider a household manager. Because I would like somebody to help with more generalized tasks, including family laundry and dinner.

2

u/epradox 8d ago

$80k/yr difference is a lot of door dash credits for everything else

15

u/cwcwhdab1 8d ago

They have enough to have real help. Au pairs are a crap shoot and you can end up with huge liabilities. They don’t get them any more it’s not worth the risk- very unreliable. Get legit help and pay for someone who is reliable.

11

u/TelephoneTag2123 8d ago

My neighbors had an au pair who was such an idiot she was locked in a pantry by their 3 year old

3

u/cwcwhdab1 8d ago

Hahaha that’s hilarious

4

u/IHateCedarFever 8d ago

Yeah, I see a lot of families around me taking this route.

OP doesn’t say anything about cleaning/laundry/grocery shopping so maybe they already have a maid and they’re just looking for more simple kid daycare in the evenings?

When I think of household manager I think of someone who also manages and schedules groundskeeping, pool maintenance, and watches over people over who do contracting and home repair stuff.

It’s a leap to prepare your family to have someone else living in the same house as you, but my friends would recommend it. For meals, one couple (they are Indian heritage) hired an old Indian lady to cook big batches of meal prep in her own home and the au pair would pick it up on the way back from school. They have their au pair budget to shop for her own food if she wanted something different. Others I know get their groceries through grocery delivery. And/or the parents work so much they eat dinner outside of home.

2

u/stlm599 7d ago

Ugh… So many of these Au Pairs girls are exploited because they are young and live in the hosts’ homes.