Having a baby in Taiwan is an incredible experience – the perfect combination of high quality and low prices.
First we had 20 days in a postpartum center aka a luxury baby hotel. Then we had 20 days of in-home rent-a-Grandma.
After 2 weeks completely on our own, we have formally entered Stage 3… we hired a full-time nanny.
Hiring a Nanny
Hiring a nanny wasn’t something we were too sure about… is it a good idea? Justifiable? Reasonable? Will we be shunned by civil society or lose frugal street cred?
But then after a few sleepless nights and subsequent rough days, it became obvious that it is a GREAT idea!
So we signed a 3-month (extendable) contract with a Canadian-Taiwanese mother of 2. She had already been in our home a few times when we first left the postpartum center, so we were already mutually familiar.
Now she spends the full day with us, Monday – Friday 9 am – 4 pm. Her primary responsibility is caring for our baby, but she also helps out with laundry/dishes/etc…
We will all evaluate in 3 months if we want to extend. At this point Jr2 will be 5-months old and potentially (hopefully) sleeping through the night.
Cost & Alternatives
Total cost for our full-time English-speaking nanny (plus Mandarin, Cantonese, German) comes to 38,000 TWD/month (~$1,325 USD/month.) In addition, we either provide lunch or pay 100 TWD/day for food (~$3.50 USD.) This comes to about $7.65/hour.
According to the Internet this is around half the cost of a daycare center in San Francisco (data) but is 25% more than childcare at Jr’s Montessori school (30,000 TWD or $1,050 USD/month.)
Alternatively, a small in-home childcare (4 kids / 1 caretaker) might charge 20,000 TWD/month ($700 USD.)
Another common practice in Taipei is a 24/7 live-in nanny. As I understand it, this also costs between 20k-30k TWD/month ($750-$1,050 USD) plus room and board. Often these nannies are from from a nearby country (Philippines, Indonesia, etc..) and may have overstayed a visa…
And of course the ultimate alternative is to do everything ourselves, which is priced right but has it’s own cost. (This was our default with Jr as we were traveling extensively – he has now been to 40+ countries at age 5.)
Rest assured, whichever option we chose we can offset the cost with a nice $2,000 Child Tax Credit.
So Far So Good
Our main goal in hiring a nanny was to ensure adulting and childcare aren’t mutually exclusive. The idea is that we get to be nearly full-time parents and empowered individuals with lives, both.
This rules out childcare outside the home… we want to be together. Case in point, I’m writing this on my laptop on the sofa while the nanny is playing patty-cake-type games with the little one from a book she brought from the library (in Mandarin.) The closest thing I found in English is Miss Mary Mack… (Amazon affiliate link.)
Schedule wise, this is sort of how we spent time last Monday:
Time | Dad | Mom | Jr | Nanny | Baby |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
6 am | Bike Ride | Eat | |||
7 am | Sleep | ||||
8 am | Breakfast & Bike with Jr to school / Get groceries | Bake bread | School | Poop (before nanny arrives) | |
9 am | Hang with baby (feed, change, bathe, play) | Eat | |||
10 am | Art class | Cry | |||
11 am | Maybe write some stuff | ||||
12 noon | Lunch | Lunch | Sleep | ||
1 pm | Nap | Eat | |||
2 pm | Gym | Paint | Sleep | ||
3 pm | Bath | ||||
4 pm | Pick up Jr from school Go to park | Park | Go home | ||
5 pm | Jr drum class (bike to/from) | Drums | |||
6 pm | Dinner | Dinner | Dinner | Cry during dinner | |
7 pm | Eat | ||||
8 pm | Bedtime stories (English) | Bedtime stories (Chinese) | Bedtime stories (both languages) | Sleep | |
9 pm | Bed | ||||
10 pm | More poop | ||||
11 pm | Bed | Bed | Cry some more |
Time outside the home highlighted in blue – total during school/nanny hours is maybe 2-4 hours/adult, with some overlap.
Because Winnie is breastfeeding, her schedule is less flexible and she is awake more often at night. My schedule is now revolving more around Jr’s activities.
* baby still not following the written schedule, will bring up at next family meeting
Final Thoughts
Having a nanny is really nice – we are able to have the best of both worlds, spending time as parents while also having some independence.
Things are a little more complicated with 2 children… with just 1 young child, we were able to roam the globe without limitation. If we didn’t sleep at night, we just napped during the day. Now our schedule is more rigid – Jr’s school doesn’t appreciate me napping past the end of the school day.
As we get more settled and the baby is able to sleep through the night, flexibility probably isn’t as important… we will assess in 3 months. But at these prices, I wouldn’t mind continuing for much longer.
We did something like that in Beijing but 24 hours A-day for a few years it was very nice
Very nice indeed. Super popular with all of the Taipei expats as well
I honestly checked my calendar thinking it was April 1st !
Same, actually
$1,325 USD/month – wow – we pay more for part time day care in Colorado. And that’s an awesome looking daily schedule. Isn’t 8 PM sleep time for the baby too late?
I will tell you the same thing I told my brother, if you want to sleep through the night, their schedule needs to line up to get most of their sleep when you want to. If you put them down at 6, expect them to be up at midnight when you want to go to bed. Doesn’t always work, my second is a night owl, even at 14 she regularly lands in a 3rd shift sleep schedule, but far better than a “peaceful” evening to get things done.
He is awake every 3 to 4 hours so doesn’t really matter what time we think he should be in bed.
Definitely reasonable prices… that is a big part of what sold us on the idea.
I have always found the idea of having a child and then hiring out care to be fascinating. I am sure many people will read this and assume that I am saying it is ‘wrong’ to do this. I am not. Everyone has to decide for their own situation if it is ‘wrong’. It simply fascinates me.
begs the question, what is ‘right’ , non-fascinating, and non-comment-worthy?
“It takes a village” is a saying for a reason. There are many benefits to not having parents be the sole adult figures in a baby/child’s life. Now that we’re in a global society parents find themselves living far away from their family, their “tribe”, so we pay for the experience of having other adults help, when in the past extended family would fill this role.
This is something we struggled with quite a bit too as there’s a lot of guilt associated with shipping your kids off to someone else. Fact is, we live far away from any family – if we were closer to family, it’d just be family stepping in instead, I expect.
As a mother of three( all grown) I can attest to the exponential components of adding just one more child to the clan…It is probably one of the most exhausting times in my life.. With regards to the nanny I am assuming that her children are school age yes! Have fun.. it goes by fast!
Yeah her 2 kids are in pre-school/school. Not home during the day in any case.
Since Jr has a fixed schedule everything else revolves around that – not a lot of flexibility… sleep seems to be the first thing to go.
I’m not envious at all!
How long do you think you’ll keep the nanny? A couple of years?
Dunno… probably just through spring. 2 years would be perfect though.
I think that’s awesome. My husband likes to argue that having a small child would cramp our ability to fully enjoy FIRE and traveling, and my response has always been that we can still live our lives however we want as long as we’re willing to pay for a nanny some of the time. So thank you for validating that! I’d much rather spend money on a nanny like you are than on two ginormous car payments.
Part of our original plan was travel with 2 kids and a “travel nanny”, a 3rd responsible person to help with kids. This allows the occasional nice dinner out or quiet museum tour.
You’ve probably heard of an au pair. At least in the US, they can travel with you.
I am profoundly jealous. In the US right now we are drowning. I am working at the hospital and trying to figure out how to care for and educate my 3 boys at home. Every spare minute is spent reading, organizing and correcting curriculum, and they’re still behind. We’ll be lucky if my boys are fluent in one language by the time they graduate. Exercise, gym and personal time are fantasies of the past. You have definitely found/created a better system.
Sadly I think the better system is just money.
Interesting article on HBR recently: To Take Care of Others, Start by Taking Care of Yourself.
“This rules out childcare outside the home… we want to be together.”:
Aus: childcarer minimum wage ~$A20/h.
Ill-afordable even with subsidies for vast majority.
So many stay home ‘alone’ to minimise or eliminate costs.
CoVID-19 restrictions harmed the commercial viability of childcare operators even with JobKeeper subsidies.
Tele-commuting is increasingly possible / viable for many.
Same in the US I think – too expensive for in-home care
Aus: http://www.kindercareers.com.au/childcare-wages/
USA: https://www.bls.gov/oes/2017/may/oes399011.htm
Child care labour cost roughly:
= ($A20 * 0.7) / $USA9
= Aus ~1.5 times more expensive than USA.
Found this really interesting. I like following the movement and aspiring to a goal of more freedom, but I also have two small children, and know they need some consistency and their regular school schedules. Curious to see how Jr 2 and nannys have an impact on future travel.
I think we have moved on from “travel the world” to “home is nice.” Maybe some summer travel in 2022 to visit family in the US and escape the heat… probably no more epic multi-month trips
Sounds like a perfect solution and well worth the expense. Your wife sounds like she is having a difficult time, as a mom of four, and someone that suffered from postpartum depression after my fourth, your nanny sounds like a wonderful help. Take care of Winnie!!
When our kids were young we found that having a nanny was a necessary expense.
I so wish that it was safe enough here to hire a nanny when number two makes the landing. We’d be more than happy to spend the money in exchange for some help for the first time in several months! Our friends and family in Taiwan told us we should go take an extended stay there and after seeing your baby hotel I was sorely tempted. :)
We can’t, with our obligations here, but it was awfully tempting.
There are a surprising(?) number of Taiwanese returning here from the US due to the pandemic. Competence is truly a wonderful thing.
As a US citizen, I wish it was just incompetence of leadership here in the US. That can eventually be fixed. The pandemic has shown a good subset of the American people are selfish, self centered and don’t care about their fellow citizens! You are best to make your permanent home in Taiwan.
The Aus cavalry sends regards:
“the latest review of Australia’s contract tracing measures to [be provided to] Joe Biden’s team and the current US administration”.
We are looking to hire a nanny. How did you do it?
We had a Rent-a-Grandma just after kid #2 was born. Our nanny was someone she knew and introduced us to.