i want

How much did I make as an au pair?

Zero. Negative dollars actually.

Okay so technically I earned 4,800€ in the first year. But wanna guess how much I spent? Anyone? Anyone? 

7,000€

And that’s not even including the money I spent before I started!

Here is a detailed list of all the times I had to pay to obtain something in relation to my au pair visa.

• First-time passport (already had one): $165
• Flight to and from California: $100
• Ollie’s flight to California and back: $200
• Pre-booked language class (necessary for visa application): $143
• BART transport to and from San Francisco: $5
• French visa application: $105
• Ollie’s paperwork: $200
• Air France flight from Utah to Paris (one-way): $1,156
• Ollie’s flight ticket from Utah to Paris (one-way): $200

Total = $2,274 before I stepped foot in France.

So yea 🙁

Add that to my first-year expenses and offset it by what I earned . . . and we have a grand total of about $4,500 of ‘debt’ after just one year of being abroad.

If you already have a passport and live near a VTS center and don’t plan on bringing a dog (like most au pairs, I guess), then your upfront costs shouldn’t be nearly so high. In this case, you only have to worry about the visa application, French course registration, and flight.

Still, being an au pair is not a profitable job. That’s really important to understand beforehand.

I thought I was ready

I read dozens of blogs and watched all the YouTube videos I could find. Some au pairs explained how they managed to save money by sticking to very strict budgets. I read an Au Pair Oh Paris blog where they said when they went out, they only brought 10€ cash and no cards with them, so they were limited in how much they spent.

To me, that’s insane. There is no chance I am leaving my house without an emergency card. Being my first time living in another country, I had no idea how much things cost. What if I lost my navigo and needed to buy a ticket to get home? What if I accidentally ordered something too expensive? What if I needed to buy toiletries while I was out? What if I got in an accident and needed to go to the hospital???

I dunno. There are a million possibilities, and I always plan for the worst, so I never left home without my debit card. Which meant sometimes I would accidentally go out and spend 50€ on dinner and drinks with my friends. Oopsie.

It’s not like I didn’t try! I promised myself I wouldn’t spend more than I earned. One of my big goals for myself is to never go down in net worth – as in never spend more than I am earning at a given time. 

I genuinely thought I could stick to that promise. But whatever, rules were made to be broken, right?

Moving on . . . the income

Au pairs in France earn 320€ a month.

Legally, au pairs who are not European must be paid 320€ a month. Whereas European au pairs only need to be paid 300€ a month. Don’t ask me why. I don’t know.

In addition, the host family gives them a room for free and pays for their meals.

If the au pair lives separately (which is quite frequent in Paris, where families don’t have an extra room in their apartment, so they rent out a chambre de bonne), the family must also give them money for groceries. The legal minimum for this is 290€ a month. 

However! A lot of families are unaware of this and will offer less. It is unfortunate, but many families take advantage of au pairs because they are foreigners and are unable to advocate for themselves.

What do au pairs spend money on?

I am a type A individual, so I can tell you exactly what au pair expenses look like. 

From day 1, I kept a Google spreadsheet of every single purchase. It looks like this:

I HIGHLY recommend this. You don’t even need to be an au pair! It’s quite simple to do and insanely helpful when I decided I needed to start budgeting. I could see exactly where I was overspending.

When I tell people about it, they all say they wish they had done this, but they just aren’t the type of person to keep track, etc. 

I completely understand.

It seems like an extra step, and it would be easy to forget. To be honest, I don’t know exactly how I was able to keep up with it. I think I was just so stressed about my spending that I remembered every single time I handed over cash or swiped my card. It became a stimulus that reminded me to whip out my phone and log it down. It only took a few seconds.

I also love spreadsheets. I am obsessed with them. It’s like Christmas every time I stare at this thing.

Let’s break this down

After keeping track for a year, I went back and sorted all of my expenses into categories. 

Here is what I ended up with:

• Groceries
• Socializing
• Candy
• Ollie
• Gifts
• Clothes
• Traveling
• Laundry
• Alcohol
• Medical
• Education
• Other
• Toilettries
• Navigo
• Phone
• Credit fees

You will notice there is no rent, because as an au pair, I did not need to pay it. Technically, I shouldn’t have had to worry about groceries either. However, I switched families halfway through my first year and moved into my own apartment. 

Obviously, a lot of these expenses could have been avoided. I switched my bank so that I no longer had to pay credit card fees, and I switched my phone provider to lower that expense as well.

I also managed to get a Navigo student card to split my transportation cost in half. (Navigo is the name of the French transportation card I use to get around Paris.)

I specifically highlighted alcohol and candy as separate categories because I knew they were a bigger drain on my savings than they should be. I was so excited to be abroad and try all of the French pastries and wine that I kinda sorta gave myself an unlimited budget in those two areas. And honestly, I don’t regret it. I had a lot of fun.

Also, every person is different. Some of my friends spend way more than me on socializing and traveling. Some spend less. Some au pairs prioritize personal maintenance and getting haircuts and their nails done. Some have their parents paying for a lot of their expenses.

So it really depends on your personal situation. I am just one example, not the rule, alright?