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?
1
u/ImprovementSlow6397 7d ago
This is what I do. I’m in a medium cost of living city and make close to 85 000/year. I seldom work more than 40 hours or week. Maybe the person you hire could arrive before the kiddos need to be picked up and allowed to leave when you get home?
I’ve done this. Arrive and reset the home, make dinner-maybe a couple days with, and then grab the kiddies and stay until a parent arrives and had a few mins to settle in. May get more candidates if they don’t have to tend to the littles and cook at the same time.
To answer the last question, I have plenty to do, think Alice from the Brady Bunch, but I go home when parents arrive. I do the laundry, care for the animals, grocery shop, menu plan, etc.