Finance, Babies & Beyond with Lisa Segner

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Speaker 1: Hi. This is Laura Vandercamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist, and speaker. And this is Sarah Hartunger. I'm a mother of three, a practicing physician and blogger. On the side, we are two working parents who love our careers and our families. Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about how real women manage work, family, and time for fun. From figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals. We want you to get the most out of life. Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura. This is episode two hundred and fifty five, which is airing in late June of twenty twenty two. I am going to be interviewing Lisa Segner about working mom ambivalence. Not that Lisa is an ambivalent working mom now. She's actually very into her job, her career. She has a wonderful career in finance, going on, a lovely family with two young boys. But she wanted to do this episode and talk about ambivalence because she found the first few months back at work after she had her first child incredibly challenging, and as part of that challenging, she really wondered if she was cut out to be a working mom. She sort of assumed she would be, but this transition was so difficult that it had her questioning that and whether she should, you know, stop working, you know, talking with her husband about whether that was feasible. But then after the first few months, things got a lot better, and she talks about how happy she was that she hadn't made any life altering decisions in that state. And so that's probably a message that I think a number of our listeners will be very interested in hearing that, you know, those first few months can be incredibly challenging, but that often things do get better, and that if you are somebody who really does enjoy your career that you did before kids, the fact that you don't enjoy it for a couple of months is not necessarily a sign that you need to stop doing it for the rest of your working life. So just a little food for the Sarah, how about you, did you know you always wanted to be a working mom as you are now? Like the poster child for working mother herehood here, best of both worlds. Oh wow, we are poster children? Huh you I don't know that I am, but you could be well, yes, I think I always assumed that I was going to work. I don't think I ever entertained the idea that I would be a stay at home mom, and yet I absolutely always knew I wanted children. So even though I'm not sure I used the phrase working mom in my head, if I knew I wanted to have a job and I knew I wanted to have kids, I guess that's what I was aiming for. I recently published as I was turning forty two. I found a blog post, my first birthday blog post published on my blog when I was turning twenty five. I started the blog at twenty four, just missed that birthday by a couple months anyway, and I mentioned having a job that I love and having two to three children. So clearly, at least for quite some time, that was my plan. I did entertain the idea of working part time at various times in my life. I think, I, you know, especially once I met Josh, I was a little bit overwhelmed at the idea that we would both have, you know, big careers, that whether that would be a manageable thing or not. But you know, currently I'm more of a full time person and plan on continuing that. So yeah, that's pretty much was the plan. Yeah, excellent. Yeah, I mean I guess I sort of mostly assumed I would have kids at some point in my life, and I've always wanted to be a writer. Of course, that's a very sort of different career concept than something that's more straightforward job description. So I'm not sure that I really thought it through of exactly how this would all fit together. But one thing I do know. I mean, I remember very well when I was pregnant with Jasper hearing a lot of narratives about how everything changes once you become a parent. You have absolutely no idea how you will feel, and so you know, you just have to see how it goes and see, you know, you like, even if you think you want to continue in your career, like everything changes, you know, you never know, And in my case, there was not a whole lot of working mom ambivalence. I have to say that, you know, I didn't like that narrative of like everything changes, but I was willing to acknowledge, like, I don't have a kid, what do I know, So we'll wait and see how it goes. And then I had my baby, and I felt like me with a kid. So I mean, it's like I didn't have a whole lot of desire to do anything differently than what I was doing, only also hang out with my kid as well. And I mean that's where I sort of developed the whole one hundred and sixty eight hours concept because I realized as I started looking into it and doing the math, that there was quite a bit of time to be hanging out with my kid and doing all these other things that I wish to do as well. So you know, I kept singing in my choir and running regularly and you know, writing and certainly trying to build my career in that capacity. So yeah, I guess, I mean, I don't know. I guess I didn't necessarily think working mom either as a as a kid. That wasn't my particular aspiration. But since I felt I would probably have kids and I wanted to do something, you know, in terms of having a career, I guess the two went together. So there you go. I wonder how many men get asked or told you have no idea how you're going to feel after this baby comes. Well, the crazy thing, I mean, even if they do feel very differently, they're not allowed to write like you know that they and in fact, in many cases they're expected to step up. And I mean putting in quotes here, be a man and like work more, take a higher paying job so that their wife or partner can work less or whatever. And I mean there's there's all sorts of issues there we could unpack as well. So you know, for women everything's supposed to change, and for men it's not allowed to change. And if anything, you need to like step it up, step it up right. So many many bad messages out there, narratives that limits us all anyway. So we're going to hear from Lisa Sagner here on her working mom ambivalins and why she's glad that she pushed through it and has built her wonderful career in finance with her growing family. Well, Sarah and I are delighted to welcome Lisa Sagner to the program. She is a longtime Best of Both Worlds listener, which is also commented on our blogs. We appreciate all her comments there. So, Lisa, can you introduce yourself to our listeners? Sure? Great, Thanks, it's nice to meet you, Laura. I'm excited to talk to you. My name is Lisa Sagner. I live in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and I work for an asset management company. I work in finance. I'm a CFA charter holder Excel bond NERD extraordinary, I guess, and I have two children. My youngest is almost eighteen months and our oldest is four years old. Wonderful and so one of the reasons we really wanted to talk with Lisa's she had some experiences with coming back to work after having her first child that I think I've probably a lot of people experienced, and so we really wanted to talk about that. I mean, when you were pregnant with your oldest son, I mean, what did you think your experience with working parenthood would be. I mean, did you have a picture for what this would look like? Yes, kind of. I mean through my conversations with friends, I had children later in life. I was thirty seven, almost thirty seven when I had or just past thirty seven when I had our first child, So you know, my friends had kids. In the Midwest, people tend to get married younger and have children earlier. So I was, you know, able to see what my friends' careers were like after they had children, and you know, there was kind of two stories like we had. I had friends who were very excited to come back from attorney to leave and very relieved to return to their day to day life at work. And then I had you know, a couple of friends who decided to stop working, you know, went back to work for a while and then stopped working. As some you know, planned to not return to work, I didn't have as many conversations with people who were you know, struggling with their return to work. It seemed like they were either happy to be back or they left the workforce. And similarly, I had a you know, a sister in law that went back to work and then it stopped working. So I kind of had these two ends of the spectrum, but not anyone in the middle who you know, said they had a hard time and then eventually, you know, it got better. So I kind of I love my job, I love my coworkers, so I expected to be fine with the transition back to work that it. You know, it's hard to envision before you have children how it's going to impact your life. So I went into it expecting, fully, expecting to go back to work. Never would have thought i'd be a stay at home mom, and then you know, it was kind of surprised by how much of a struggle I had return into work. And I was fortunate my company provided sixteen weeks of maternity leave. I was able to I got four extra weeks using paid time off, so a twenty week leave. So the baby was almost five months when he started daycare. Our kids go to daycare, so you know, I had an older baby. I wasn't returning at twelve weeks like a lot of my friends and family members have, but I still found the transition back to be to be really hard. Well why don't you talk about that a little bit? I mean, what were the sort of practical aspects that were hard? I mean one thing you mentioned is your son maybe not napping as much during the day, so going to bed early at night, so you know, going to an office because that's what people did. Then I meant you weren't seeing him that much during during the work or and various other things like so why did you talk about like those first few days back and you know why you were suddenly thinking like am I going to do this? Sure? So you know it's interesting, you know, the first day of drop off at daycare. I didn't cry. I wasn't you know. I felt like I was in the minority in not crying at drop off. I totally trusted the daycare. Our kids go to a Spanish immersion daycare, and I know they an excellent job there. But I struggled with just how little time we were getting with him. You know, we were leaving the house at six point fifty, we were getting home at five o'clock at night. At the beginning, I remember in that that summer when he was five months six months, he was barely sleeping at daycare. The art well. The son ended up being just a horrible napper during his time in the infant room, So for a while there, we were putting him down for another little nap when he got home from work, when we got home from work, and then we'd wake him up and we'd feed him, and then he'd go back to bed like an hour or two, probably an hour later, so we got maybe an hour with him in the evening. And of course we had our weekends together, which you know when when you look at your whole week as a span. And I was a follower and reader of your blog at that time, but you don't really realize, you know, it's hard to have that perspective that, Okay, well I'm still getting these long days with him on the weekend. So this short period of time on weeknights, you know, in the grand scheme of things, isn't a big deal. But in those early weeks, weeks and months after I returned to work, it was really hard. And I really enjoyed my maternity leave. I also had, you know, talk to friends who just were miserable during their matorney to leave. They're just so it kind of is monotonous, you know, every day is kind of the same day over and over. But I think because my attorney leave was in the summer, and summer is a great time in Minnesota, I really enjoyed, you know, taking walks with him and all of all of that kind of thing that we did together. So I enjoyed the time I had with him, and then so jumping back into being gone, you know, ten hours at least a day getting an hour with him. And then he was a horrible sleeper too, and he had you know, I ended up getting tubes at nine months, so he was up like three to five times a night in the fall, so my husband and I were splitting those because I was exclusively pumping for him, so that helped that, you know, we could split the nights, but I was exhausted. I was getting very little time with him. He was sick all the time, which is probably you know, one of the biggest downsides of using a daycare approach to childcare. But you know, we're on the other end of that spectrum now and he's much healthier and doesn't get sick nearly as often. But those are kind of the main factors that you know, made it difficult. And I also came my organization had gone through some changes while I was out, so there was a lot of uncertainty, and so I came back at a time when people weren't sure like if there was going to be layoffs or you know, things of that nature, which is just very common in the financial services industry, were an industry that's contracting. So add in sort of some of that uncertainty and stress and then missing my son during the day, you know, loathing pumping, which you had a blog post about, you know, the decision to pump or nurse for your child, and you know, I decided to stick to it, and I was pumping, you know, three times a day for most of that you know, summer and fall. But that confluence of factors just made me wonder, am I really meant to be a working mother? And you know, am I fighting my career is fulfilling as I should or does this mean that I should leave the workforce? And I had a lot of conversations with my husband about it, and he was like, whoa, whoa, whoa. This is like a very short period of time, and you can't make a decision that has such impact on our lives over such a short period of time. So why don't you just like stick it out, work through it. You know, there's not a lot of finance jobs in our area, in Minneapolis's and you know, a large financial sex you know center like New York or other areas where it might be easier to find a job if I regretted leaving the workforce. So you know, he was just like, don't make any rash decisions, just you know, talk about it with your friends, talk about it with coworkers that you trust, and you know, get through it. And then one thing that I did that I think was really helpful, and that I've encouraged other people to do. Is I strategically used paid time off to get more time with him. So for the final three months of that year, I took every other Friday off so I would get, you know, just a little bit extra time with him, and I could really enjoy that you know, extra day at home with him, and that seemed to really make a difference in how I felt about how much time I was getting with him. Yeah, well, we'll talk a little bit more about you know, yeah, that specific conversation and what you were weighing in that at that time. We're just going to take a quick ad break and we'll be right back with more with Lisa and her sort of early ambivalence on unworking motherhood and how that all played out. So I'm back with Lisa Segner. We're talking about her you know, early working motherhood journey and the sort of ambivalence she had with going back to work and sort of coming through that. I want to play back to our listeners a little bit about those conversations you were having with your husband. You mentioned he was like whoa were you being like, I can't do this? How are these conversations coming to be Yeah, basically it was just you know, end of the day, we always had time. You know, we sit on the couch and we'd watch a show together and talk about our days and and I you know, I was actually a little bit like afraid to tell him that I wasn't happy at work. We have a very open, healthy relationship. But you know, we both work in the same industry, and we both you know, we both got our CFA, which is a very difficult program to get through. We both have our MBAs. Like we both invested a lot of time and money and hours into our careers to get to where we are. And you know, we've made decisions. I mean, we we're a very frugal company, but are sorry frugal couple, but we rely on a certain level of income in terms of you know, forecasting how to pay for things, and you know, especially after having children, thinking about paying for their college education and things like that, and having a dual income family is you know, as part of being able to do the things that we wanted to do with our lives. And I was just a person that genuinely enjoyed working. I didn't you know, dislike working. So I think he was a little surprised because work was always such a huge part of my identity and it was a very driven person. So you know, I started to say, like, ah, I don't know if I can do this, Like this is grueling, I'm exhausted. I miss Paul. Our son's name is Paul, and you know, he is a very my husband's a very logical person, and you know, he's very good at having perspective, and he was you know, he understood and was compassionate towards me for how I felt, but also said, I think when you get further down the line, you would regret being home full time, just knowing your personality and how much you like work and how hard you've worked to get to where you are with your career. So he was like, just keep plotting along and see if this gets better, because it's been you know, we were having these conversations when I was probably back about three months. So he's like, that's a very short period of time in comparison to how long you've been working. You know, it's a majority of your time as a parent, or you know, a big, big chunk of time since you've become a parent, or a good percentage of that. But just give yourself some more time to adjust to this new role of being a working mom. And so you mentioned you had, you know, taken some PTO. You decided to strategically deploy that to get some more time with your son. Anything else that you did to sort of make those few months easier on you, that was the main thing. I mean, we made changes in the way we split our division of labor. You know, prior to having a child, I did all the grocery shopping and then the meal planning and then the meal prep because I'm the cook of the two of us. And then at the end of my maternity le we started using you know, grocery delivery and he hated it as I hated it. So I said, okay, well we can either use this or you can do the grocery shopping. And so he opted to take on the grocery shopping. And that was because I used to enjoy going to the grocery store on Saturday morning and getting out of the house and doing that. But then when that meant giving up time with our son, I didn't enjoy being away and doing those those jobs anymore. And so we you know, really looked at how we were splitting our time. He now you know, like I said, he does all the grocery shopping. He also contributes to the meal planning. It's not just me coming up with what we're going to eat. It's a discussion together and that mental load of trying to think of what we're going to eat. Distributing that between the two of us makes a big difference. So you know, there's changes we made in that division of labor too, to make sure that I was getting as much time with our son as I could and making sure that, you know, the distribution of things you need to do within a marriage was more evenly split. But the main thing was the time off and you know, just having that extra day every other week that we didn't have any plans. We weren't going anywhere. It was just you know, going to the park and spending time together, going on walks. You know, a lot of that was in the winter months, so it's not a great time of the year in Minnesota, but it just gave me time to connect with him more one on one. And you said that things did start getting better that you know, when he was let's say like ten months or so. Yeah, that I mean, although it sounds like he may have also had some medical issues that were then solved at that point, which really helped matters too in terms of the sleeping. Yes, but but that things you became more comfortable with this role and with you know, maximizing the time that you did have with him, but then also having this other aspect going on in your life. Yeah, I think, you know, his social skills started. You know, it's when he starts to become more social and actually appreciating being around other kids. And I could see the benefits of him being with other kids and watching what they're doing, and you know before that they're just not as aware of their surroundings. I mean, he would smile at other babies, but he started to have these little friends in his room. And yes, the you know, having gotten tubes, he started to sleep much better. He still didn't sleep the night until around a year, but our sleep was much much better once he had that surgery in late November and then but yeah, it was just right around ten months when I also could see that I was not really made to be a stay at home mom. And like God, bless women who have that calling, because it is it takes a special person to do that job. And I don't think that I, you know, would have taught my son nearly as much as he's learned from his teachers at the Spanish Emergent school. As he learned, I wouldn't have thought he was capable of learning what he's learned. And so I think just recognizing the benefit he was getting from being around other kids, and then just me, you know, probably settling back into my role. You know that I came back in late July, so come January is when I started to really feel a difference and remark to my husband, like, gosh, I'm really glad that I didn't make a decision because now I can see that I would get kind of bored if I was home with him. I think I just wouldn't feel as challenged, and I would miss the interactions I have with coworkers and you know, the feeling of accomplishment that I get at work. That was when I really started to feel a shift in that decision, and then I started to talk more about how I felt, you know, in the fall with other women at work. It's kind of a scary thing to share, you don't, you know, you don't want to be put on the radar as someone who's not grateful for their job, or especially working in an industry where again, we're just always contracting. It seems like there's always layoffs and consolidations and things of that nature. So you don't necessarily want to speak up and say, I'm not very happy right now, and I'm questioning if I'm meant to, you know, be a working mother. But as I felt more comfortable sharing, especially once I was on the other side of that feeling of needing to make a change in my career, I shared my story more and from other women I heard, yeah, I went through the same thing. I had that same struggle. I'm glad I pushed through it because I would not be happy as a stay at home mom. But no one really talks about it. There's sort of this taboo sense of around the sharing that you're questioning if you're meant to be a working mom. Well, it's interesting because I mean, I think there's there's a couple of things going on. I mean, one is that the length of maternity leaves in for many people, taking even had a quite long one I'm compared to many people. But because of the need to go back to the office, that a lot of people have. This is obviously sort of different in the COVID era, and we'll talk about that too, But it forces people into hard decisions at a time when if that decision could be postponed, like another four or five months, would probably be a lot easier to make. The second thing is just that well, just you know, I mean, it's too bad also though that work in many cases, there's less flexibility about that. You know. It's like you can't try out both roles and then see what you like. You know. It's it's kind of in many cases do have to make a decision on some careers. And I wish that weren't the case too. I mean that people could come in and out and decide how they how they're doing it, they'd be right. I mean, it's hard to do that. And my industry is not open, and it's not really possible to work part time, you know, So had you know, said, if only I could work you know, like three days a week for a period of time until I felt ready to get back in and yes, at this time, this was pre COVID, where nobody was allowed to work from home. There was no flexibility whatsoever. It was you know, if you took you could take some time off, or you could work from home on a day when you get a doctor acquintment, but that was it. You couldn't have a recurrent work from home schedule. So it was just a very different work environment back then too. But yeah, it is too bad that you can't kind of test the water, because that was the other thing that my husband was worried about, is, well, what if you're you know, what if you're miserable after two or three months and then you can't undo that decision, You're never going to get a job. I mean, it sounds negative to say that, but it would be very hard to find a similar job to what I have now at the same compensation level. And you know, I have great coworkers and a great boss, and that's you know, those are irref replaceable really, So it is too bad that you can't kind of test the waters. I have some friends that their maternity leave is like a phased return and where they come back for like one day a week for a week or something like that, and then it's two days a week, and then it's three days a week, you know, and it gradually increases back up to a full time schedule and that just is not going to happen in the finance industry. But so it's kind of like you go from being completely home to being, you know, completely back at work, and it's kind of a I think also that shift that you know, very drastic shift in time spent with your child really makes it hard as well. Yeah, but it sounds like, I mean, doing these strategic paid time off, I mean that people do you know, there are ways to kind of get some of that time that you may be be craving. So I think that was a really smart thing that you did then. But then things were sort of different with your second child. So then you had another baby, you know what two and a half three years later, right, and this was during the pandemic. You're working from home, right, Like, I mean, how is that a different experience? Then? Yeah, it was completely different. I did not struggle with my return to work. I was actually really ready to go back to work at twenty weeks and our son was born in December of twenty twenty, so I was returning to work at the end of April, but I was still working from home full time. I didn't return to the office until March of this year, so I had, you know, his first fifteen months, I worked from home, and it's just such a more gentle return to work. You're not rushing out the door. I mean it was my husband that was mostly rushing out the door. He was back at work, you know, three to four days a week, so he was doing the daycare drop off and pick up and I was, you know, so we weren't having And also there's just been a little bit of a relaxing in the schedule since COVID, you know, especially since not everyone's back in the office, and so we didn't have this pressure, or my husband didn't have this pressure to be at his desk at a certain time like he might have or I might have pre COVID. So I think there's just been more of an understanding for the balance of work and family life since since COVID, and we my company is recognized that we had a tremendous year in twenty twenty and twenty twenty one despite you know, the workforce being at home. So yeah, it was just a lot more gently return and that I did pump. Luckily, my second son did nurse, so I didn't have to exclusively pump for him, but I pumped at my desk. I didn't have to deal with like hauling things back and forth, and you know, I just worked through my pumping sessions. I was able to do that. So it's just overall, everything just felt a little easier. And then I also, you know, it's different having one child versus two children, obviously for many reasons, but there's not really a true break when you have two children. You know, their naps never seemed to line up. So you know, after our son was born and I returned to work, the weekends were different because it wasn't like we had anytime the baby is napping was our time to use as we would like, because we had the three year old who then eventually dropped his nap in the summer and fall period. So you're never really like fully off when there's two. So I think that's another part of it that made it easier going back with the after the second, because I find being at work is easier in many ways than being home with two children. And that's not to say that I don't enjoy my time with my children. I do, but they're very young and so it's very hands on. It's very physically taxing, So I appreciate being able to sit at my desk and work on an Excel spreadsheet or have conference calls with clients or with coworkers. I think I have a new level of appreciation for how easier that how much easier that is for me. I can eat my lunch and no one's asking me for anything or throwing food on the floor, or you know, unless you have a particularly angry client, I guess yes, unless you know who knows. But it's overall, it's just somewhere, you know, I have complete control over my day, and that is just not the case when I'm home on the weekends with two children. And I think I'm very fortunate in that I like my job and I really like my coworkers, and that is you know, I haven't always liked my job or my coworkers in my various roles that I've had in the past, so I think that also makes a huge difference. I think if you didn't like what you were doing for a living, and then you know you're spending forty fifty plus hours a week doing that, then you know that it might not be as enjoyable to be away from your children. But liking what I do and enjoying the time to focus on something I'm interested in without being constantly interrupted or what have you with you know, a one and four year old. Yeah, no, it's very true that people who like their jobs can still go through an ambivalence, and it's helpful for people to hear that and to hear that they might not feel, you know, gung ho about work during the first few months back. But if you did like your job, and you know, you still like your colleagues and your cowork you know, your boss and all that, probably you will get back to that at some point. As you said when we were talking earlier, you could always push forward the decision a little bit and say, well, if I still hate this when my kid is one one and a half, you know, I can decide to leave then. Or if I have a second child and I'm still feeling the same way, I could make the decision to you know, opt out or scale back significantly. Then you can still make that decision in the future, right, Yeah, that was kind of the decision. You know, back of the mind thought I had is that you know, see how I feel it a year or you know, when we have our second child, make a decision about the different decision about the return to work. But luckily I work through those feelings much faster than I thought I would. Yeah, well that's great, well, Lisa. As you know, as a listener, we always end with a love of the week, so I can go first to you know, give you a minute to think about it, though I guessing you probably already know your since again you're a listener. Mine for this week is somewhat of a random one. We moved three four months ago, about four months ago now, and you fill out a change of address form on the post office website and it's been you know, it's just amazing to me how that works. I mean, there's some places I've had to write and say, by the way, my address is different now, But a lot of stuff just seems. You know that they have alerts with the post office, and so when the post office sends back a note from you know, they put a forwarding address on it, it gets changed in the database somewhere deep in Excel, I guess, and it's really quite exciting. I love when things just work. So that's mine for this week. Yes, I remember that from our last move. That's nice that that all just magically falls into place. So my level of the week, it's I would say, it's taking our kids to the library again. During the pandemic, we played it, you know, really safe because I'm a high risk person for COVID, so we really did very little in the way of you know, taking our children out to places and things of that nature. But now that COVID levels have you know, come down, and we're fully vaccinated and I'm boosted and et cetera. I've started taking our boys to the library on Saturday mornings because we've had a horrible spring here in Minnesota. It's been so cold and windy, and you know, we've had snow and all manner of weather in the month of April, and so every Saturday we go down there. We can walk to the library if it's nice enough. Otherwise we drive, and we have different toys out for the kids again, and the four year old loves to pick out books. So it's just nice to have them out and about again. After a very long period of just kind of being cooped up in our house when it wasn't nice enough to go to the park or go for walks. It is so good to be able to go to places again, and you know, yes, the children are picking up dermy toys and books, but you know we're there are vaccines. Now we're feeling better about it. It's yes, yeah, I mean they're already exposed to everything. That's true. And day care so your children, no doubt how robust immune systems. That was My oldest child went to daycare when he was little, and I got to say, he's the one who gets sick the least. So there you go. Yeah, we've paid our dues. You paid your dues exactly. Well, Lisa, thank you so much for joining us. I know you are not on social media, but is there anywhere that listeners could connect with you if that was okay? Yes, yes, So I have a blog. It's Lisa's Yarns. So it's Lisa's Yarns dot blogspot dot com. I've been blogging there since two thousand and eight, so I'm I don't go as far back as you know Sarah does, but I'm very the old school blogger though. No you know, product pitches or anything. It's just kind of what's going on in our lives on a day to day basis. You know, the experience of being a working mom, et cetera. But that's where you can find me. Wonderful, We'll have people look for you there. Thanks so much for joining us. Yes, thanks, Laura was great talking with you. All right. So that was a great interview with Lisa. She had so much wonderful idea to share. We also love reading her blog, so please go check that out with Lisa's yarns. So this question comes from a listener who has thinking about childcare here. For the last four years, her sister in law has been her nanny and it's been wonderful, but it's time for her to go back to school and build a different career. She has friends in her neighborhood with whom they have been in conversations about doing a nanny share with her existing nanny. She says, I know this could potentially get dicey, especially if expectations aren't clear. We'd like this to be a good experience. We'd like to preserve our friendship. We have very similar perspectives on things like food safety expectations and lifestyle factors. But are wondering what you can think of that we haven't considered. We know that we need to consider where the kids stay, which they're saying the neighbor's house food, do we bring their own or use theirs and pay them? Vacations each family and the nanny, sick days, backup plans, pick up and drop off times, how to handle medical appointments. Can you think of other things we are missing? And do you have recommendations for real sources to look at? So, Sarah, let's your thought. Yeah, I think she's thought about a lot of details, which is great. My first thought was just to make sure everything is in writing and not just a conversation, because I can imagine a scenario where everybody has a meeting and agrees to everything, but then when there is stress and someone's sick, everyone remembers a slightly different version of a policy. So I think it's very important for everyone to agree on one that is signed by everyone, Even as that sounds formal, I just think it's probably a good idea when you're basically mixing two families and a nanny in one kind of business agreement. I think specifics need to be identified, in particular around sickness, like you all have to decide can a running nose kid show up? I mean, I don't know what the right answer is to that they're probably all going to get the running nose and maybe everyone's totally fine with that and that's great, or maybe everyone's not. But it's just got to be fair and clear so that there is not a lot of ambiguity. Now we're even go into like have about CONJUNCTI by how about this that Obviously you're not going to come up with every single solution, but you can come up with guidelines similar to what daycare might have, like you know, fever over X have to wait twenty four hours, things like that. Screen time, So families have very different ideas on that. Some might think it's totally cool to have the three year olds, you know, watch a Disney movie for some downtime, and another family might be horrified by that. And so since they're together, I think that probably is something that should be discussed or included. And then yeah, just being really clear about vacations and time off and like who's allowed to make changes and by what time, because I can imagine there might be a lot of things that can get sticky in that realm as well. Yeah, I mean, I would suggest having a conversation with another set of families who have done a successful nanny share because they can come up with these things that you just aren't going to think of off the top of your head when you have two people who are somebody's employer. And that is where we get to the back that you are both her employer. So I looked into this when we had a question from somebody else come up about a nanny share a couple of years ago. So my payroll company, which is GTM, has some literature about how to do a legal nanny share on the books, which is that both of you wind up being her employer. You are both hiring her for X number of hours, You are both paying her a certain number of you know, for hours at a certain rate, and generally what the idea is is that each of you pays about two thirds of what a nanny would earn for per hour basis, and so then she's getting you know, four thirds of a salary as a sort of you know, bonus for her of taking this job on of managing two employers, and you are all getting a little bit of a break on what the child care costs would be for you know, the the hassle, as it were, of sharing your childcare with with someone else. So you know, that's that's how you do it. The only thing this would ever be an issue with you know, obviously both of you have to pay more than minimum wage because you're both legal employers. Now, I think for most people listening to this, you're paying your nanny a professional rate and so that it would never come into you know, consideration. But just as you think, as some municipalities are going into like fifteen dollars per hour minimum wages, both of you are going to have to pay at least that, right, So that's something to consider that. You know, the rate may wind up being a little bit higher because of that, but you are going to to pay legally, both of you have to pay over whatever your local minimum wage is, and both of you are withholding taxes and you know, so forth. So I really encourage you to check out that at GTM. Just google GTM and nanny share and that will give you a lot of guidance there. Awesome, very practical. Yes, well this has been best of both worlds. I was interviewing list the segment about working mom ambivalence and how we sometimes need to push through that and can reach working mom happiness after the initial ambivalence which is certainly where she is now. Anyway, we will be back next week with more on making work and life fit together. Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram, and you can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This has been the best of both worlds podcasts. Please join us next time for more on making work and life work together.