A mom who posts on TikTok as @amypolwarth filmed the last few hours before her family’s au pair landed, and in between showing the finished bedroom and stirring dinner she laid out exactly why they hired one. “There’s a couple of different reasons why we’re getting an au pair,” she says, “but mainly it came down to cost.”
The video is the third part of a series she calls her au pair journey, and its on-screen title reads “PREPPING TO PICK UP OUR AU PAIR,” with a Spanish flag, a plane and an American flag. “Our au pair arrives today, so we’re picking her up at 9:30 tonight,” she says, standing in a bedroom with a “Welcome Home” banner strung across the wall, balloons at the head of the bed and a gift bag and treats set out on the covers. “I’m pretty much done with her room.”
@amypolwarth PART THREE | AU PAIR JOURNEY Stay tuned for our airport pick up video! ✈️🇺🇸🥰 @claudia #aupair #hostfamily #aupairlife🇺🇸❤️ #aupairusa
The finishing touches are small and practical. She got the au pair her own keys to the house and put them on what she calls “a little America keyring.” There is a key to the car and a lanyard to go with it. She bought a new picture frame. And she made a welcome poster with the au pair’s name on it, which she reviews honestly. “Is this good? No, I made it in like 20 minutes because I had a baby screaming at me,” she says. “I think it’s just, you know, cute enough, it shows effort.”
Dinner is planned around the late flight. “I’m also cooking her my favorite American dinner, which is Marry Me chicken pasta,” she says. “I figured she’s going to be starving when she gets home.”
Then, while she cooks, she gets to the reasons.
The first is money. “We were paying $2,600 a month for part-part-time care,” she says. She adds that she does not want to use daycare. The number that changed her mind came from next door. “Our neighbors always have au pairs, and they let us know the price, which was $1,787 a month for full-time help.” The au pair, she says, will work 45 hours a week. By her figures, the family goes from part-time care to full-time care and pays about $800 a month less.
The second is her job. “My work has been pretty busy lately,” she says. She does social media for work, and “in order for me to like ramp up,” she needs more help than she has now. She also rules out the obvious free option: “I obviously don’t want to put that burden on like my parents or my husband’s parents.”
The third is her husband’s schedule. “My husband works crazy long hours, so this would be like my first winter truly by myself with kids,” she says. “To have someone with me all day is gonna be really nice to not be so lonely, and edit videos, and respond to emails and stuff like that.”
She also explains how the match happened. She found the au pair through Cultural Care, and it went quickly. “I think it was day three of me looking through the profiles, and we just matched right away.” She says the family was “pretty thorough with our questions,” and that she was looking for something specific: “I really wanted someone who is going to be like a friend to me, because her and I are gonna be spending a lot of time together.”
The video ends in the entryway with her shoes going on. “It’s finally time to go get her. We’re about an hour out,” she says. “I honestly think I might be just as excited as she is.” She grabs the poster on the way out: “Gotta grab her sign. Like, how cute?” Her caption promises the airport pickup in the next video.
For a family weighing the same decision, the most useful thing here is how she frames the comparison. She did not compare an au pair to having no help. She compared it to what she was already spending, and found she was paying more for fewer hours. Any parent can run that same check with their own numbers: the current monthly childcare bill and the hours it buys, set next to the monthly cost and weekly hours of the alternative.
Her figures come with limits worth keeping in mind. The $1,787 is the price her neighbors gave her, and she does not break down in the video what it covers. An au pair also lives in the home, which is why this video features a furnished bedroom, a house key, a car key and a seat at dinner. A family pricing this out should ask the agency for the full list of costs and count the room, the food and the car along with the monthly fee.
Her second and third reasons are a reminder that hours matter as much as price. Part-time care did not give her enough working time, and her husband’s long hours meant the gap would fall on her through the winter. Writing down the hours of the week that are not covered, and who is alone with the children during them, shows what kind of help would fix the problem.
She is also clear about what she wanted from the person, which is a good question to settle before reading profiles. Someone who will be in the house all day with a parent who works from home is a different fit than someone covering school pickups for two parents at an office. She wanted a friend, said so, and asked thorough questions before agreeing to the match.
The welcome itself costs little and is easy to copy for any live-in arrival: a set of keys ready on day one, a made-up room, a hot meal timed to a late flight and a sign at the airport. As she says of her 20-minute poster, the point is that “it shows effort.”
