Help with parting gift/bonus to nanny

The short version:

We won’t be using the nanny we were using for our kids anymore. We want to give her something to mark how happy we are with her. How much (or what) should we give her?. She was paid $80 a week. She helped us for just over two years.
The long version:

There is this lady who has been taking care of our kids. We took them to their home while my wife was at work and I was, er, well, that depends on when we are talking about. About 8 hours a day, on the average.

We are very pleased with them, and the only reason our kids won’t be going there is that the boy (3) is starting school and the girl (2) will now stay at home with me since we decided it wasn’t worth the heartache for me to keep getting crappy jobs.

We are keeping an option to send the girl there twice a week (for me to run insane errands on government offices and the like), but the main motivation for that is to weane them slowly from the income that caring for our kids meant for them.

She is a stay at home 30-something who is, well, let’s say unmarriable and unemployable although a professional wouldn’t diagnose her with anything that made her elligible for disability. She lives with her parents and her sisters all live in houses built in the same lot and all the families eat together. They all live on welfare.

This meant that she was always paid under the table, of course, and has nothing anywhere similar to benefits or social security. We paid her $80 a week. When you convert this to an hourly rate it is only half a step above slavery, I know. This is still after about a 50% increase from what she asked for, after some extras and bonuses we have invented over this time. We agreed to give her $30 a week now that it will be just the girl, and only twice a week.

They are wonderful people and somehow related to my MIL. They have taken excellent care of our kids for just over two years. The kids just love them all and call her parents “grandpa” and “grandma”. If we ever go on vacations, they get all soft about not seeing them for too long. They are really special. I can’t imagine what this time would have been like if we hadn’t arranged our kids care with them.

We plan to keep contact with them and make sure the kids don’t ever forget the people who practically raised them.

We really want to do something special for them, now that the kids won’t be spending their days there. We are not made of money, though.

Our Christmas bonus has always been about a month’s pay ($300 or so. ETA: which she mostly spent on presents for us :rolleyes: ) and we normally give her $100 and a little something for her birthday and mother’s day. We still paid her even if we didn’t take the kids there because of vacations or whatever.

What is appropriate to give her/them?

I was going to say about $200 but your Christmas bonus is higher than that so maybe a little higher but not necessarily. I think the best gift would be personalized. A gift certificate to a well thought out location would be good but so could a DVD player if they don’t have one. I guess it really depends on what the nanny needs or likes and doesn’t have enough of.

Normally I’d say a gift was classier, but, in this case I think they could probably use cash.

How about some nicely framed portraits of the kids, or a family portrait? Sounds like you’ll probably want to give them something else as well, but this would personalize the gift.

Framed pictures was one of the ideas we had at some point but we had forgotten. Thanks for the reminder.

She is impossible to gift. As you may have guessed, she has some mental handicap that means she doesn’t go out. At all. Movies, dinner out, vacations, those are all foreign concepts to her. Ditto for clothes beyond Walmart fare, accessories, parfumes and the likes. Doesn’t read, doesn’t watch movies, no media of any kind.

This is why we normally fall for some pretty soaps, some chocolates and cash. We know most of the cash goes to groceries (besides presents for our kids, that is). Still, it is something that is needed on that house.

Matching our usual Christmas bonus (and knowing she can’t just go and spend it all in presents for our kids) was our original idea but it feels kind of blah.

I would pay a fortune to give her a day off at a spa where she doesn’t have to do any chores and people are all trying to please her instead of demanding stuff from her. I also know that it would make her terribly uncomfortable.

This is not easy.

Here’s a gift idea from Indonesia – make up a big, practical gift basket for her. This is a traditional Indonesian gift that employers give employees for Idul Fitri (big celebration at the end of Ramadan) and I used to have great fun preparing them for all my staff at home and the office. More details:

The container doesn’t have to literally be a basket. It can be something practical, like a plastic basin or box with a snap-on lid - in other words, something she might get use out of later. But make it BIG, so you can put lots and lots of varied goodies inside.

Now, fill it with practical items you know she’ll use: in Indonesia this would depend on the social class of the person receiving the gift, but for the lowest-level employees would involve rice, oil, sugar, chili and soy sauces, tea, etc. For people slightly up the economic scale, it might include more “treat” types of items like special cookies.

My guess is that you could easily adapt this list: you probably know what sorts of food items she and her family use and enjoy. Flour, sugar, tea, coffee, macaroni, tinned soups? – Whatever. Start with that, and then add some treats you think she’ll like (candy or chocolate if that is not a health concern) and some fresh, hardy fruit like apples or pears on top for looks and so the basket isn’t totally junky. It also doesn’t have to be all food items, if you know other things she might like: socks, mittens, towels, flashlights, small sewing kits, shampoo – take a walk through your local drugstore or K-Mart looking for ideas.

If the total expense doesn’t seem enough, get a nice thank you card with a colorful envelope, put a nice crisp $50 or $100 bill or whatever’s appropriate into the card, and add the card to the gift arrangement.

Wrap the whole thing in cellophane, tie a big bow around it, and – voila! Practical, thoughtful, fun gift.

A gift card from a grocery store in the area. As much as you think is appropriate.

CairoCarol’s idea is very similar to how my parents handled Christmas while they were living in Africa. They too paid what, by US standards, sounds almost like slavelabor, but it was well over the average pay for a guard or domestic help. Mostly it was every day long lasting foodstuff. Rice, flour, sugar, tea, oil. Add a couple of nice shirts. Maybe a few books or art supplies for the guard that liked to draw. Some sweets to be shared with the family.

I think CairoCarol’s idea is lovely! Including something like some nice quality soap or hand cream would be nice too - just because she’s not super sophisiticated doesn’t mean she wouldn’t appreciate soft skin or smooth hands. Ditto for nice smelling shampoos or whatnot. There are some things that everybody uses, you could just get nicer than usual ones to put in the basket.

Reported.

And dealt with.

Nm