[Closed] Are you paying your cleaner?

Ah, the lesser spotted humblus braggus...

Presumably you trust him/her/xer so you could just ask if he/she/xey are getting paid by the government, if not offer 50% or whatever.

We've got one full income and one 80% furlough. We are still paying our dog walkers. The point of furlough is to keep the economy going, it's not so we can tighten our belts and bolster savings.

#peakstw

I offered to pay ours the full amount.
She refused.
She'll get a pay rise when she comes back.

Presumably you trust her

Did you just assume the cleaner's gender? 😉

Ah, the lesser spotted humblus braggus…

😀

No the wife is still doing it for free I did offer he cup of tea once she’d  dishes but only if she made me one too.

We’ve got one full income and one 80% furlough

#Elevenerife

No she's not paying the bloody cleaner.

Though having cleaned the inside of the landing windows this morning, I probably don't deserve it.

But ask the cleaner what they are doing, and take it from there

We’re just paying them. They’ve worked for us for 10-15 years. We’d already budgeted to pay them. The goodwill and knowing they’ll be back after lockdown is worth more than the cash is for us. And doing the right thing is worth something in itself.

Our cleaner told us that if we didn't want her in our house during the lockdown (she wanted to continue) that, in order to retain her services after it ends, we'd have to sign a disclaimer that we wanted her to keep us on her books and if we subsequently reneged on the agreement that we would have to pay her £100 a cancellation fee. I don't think she took legal advice on this, but I admire her balls.

I paid mine in full for March even though we’ve been self isolating since 10th. I offered to pay a 50% retainer but she wouldn’t take it. As self employed they will be able to claim from HMRC.

CaptainFlashheart

Did you just assume the cleaner’s gender?

I did, don't worry I've self flagelated, said three hail Marys/Marios and edited the post.

We don't have a cleaner but i would still pay them if you can offord to.

Yeah, we are paying ours. It’s £15 a week.
We made the call the week before the lockdown; wife works in A&E, cleaner is in her late 60s, didn’t seem fair to expose her to the risk.
She thanked us profusely and told us that several of her other clients had just cancelled for the foreseeable future with no mention of payment.
Dog walker is a bit different, due to wife’s shifts and my work we usually have 2-3 walks a week but not regularly. We are paying her for 1 walk a week (again, £15) and she had to be persuaded to take it.
The way I see it neither of them are earning massive amounts of money. They will hopefully get a small amount from the self employed persons payment at some point in the future but I doubt they have massive reserves.
The total we are paying them both is probably about what I might usually spend in the pub on beer in a week and I can’t do that at the moment.

I've furloughed my butler.

He's still working though as he lives in the gatehouse on the grounds. He's presently cleaning my shotguns so that I can enforce social disatncing should any of the lower orders wander onto the estate

I have a feeling that since they’re not PAYE and perhaps not fully fledged business that they may not be getting gov money.

They will still able to claim Universal Credit (even if they're established S/E). If they subsequently receive any money from HMRC then it's just taken into account and if they don't, they still have an income ticking along.

The point of furlough is to keep the economy going, it’s not so we can tighten our belts and bolster savings.

perhaps not fully fledged business

Still paying the gardner which is fair as he's still coming round. I have offered in writing to continue paying him if he can't come due to the current unpleasantness.

But there's no such thing as society just individuals and their families.

Unfortunately not going to be able to carry on paying. We are down to a single income now, and on a mortgage holiday.

But there’s no such thing as society just individuals and their families.

Don't have a cleaner, but we're continuing to pay our dog walker 100%, as we've been fortunate enough to keep both our jobs at normal pay for now.

The help for self-employed is probably not going to be paid out until June, so some people are going to have a big short-term cash flow problem.
Also you can only get it if 50% or more of your income is from self-employment, so someone who has a part-time job paying them 51% of their income will get nothing. If they have been furloughed from their part-time job then they may find themselves trying to survive on 41% of their former income. Universal Credit will then be their only option, but I've no idea how long that would take to come through or how much they would get.

This reminds me of the alleged story of a pupil at Eton who had to write a story about poor people.

"They were a poor family, the father was poor, the mother was poor, even the butler was poor.....".

I’ve furloughed my butler.

He’s still working though as he lives in the gatehouse on the grounds. He’s presently cleaning my shotguns so that I can enforce social disatncing should any of the lower orders wander onto the estate

😂 😂 😂

If this situation goes on for too much longer I might have to make the awkward choice between my lifestyle consultant and private jet pilot ☹

Did you just assume the cleaner’s gender?

but I admire her balls.

I'm not sure there's any assumptions to be made .....

For all the HMRC bods out there - if you're still paying your cleaner, even though they're not coming round to clean, does that count as a gift rather than taxable earnings?

Are you paying your cleaner?

Of course not, our man takes care of the staff

her balls.

I’m not sure there’s any assumptions to be made …..

Depends whether she was born with them. Even then you’re on dodgy ground.

I admire her balls.

I assume you have to pay extra for that

I await a flaming for this but...

Ours are still coming in. They wear gloves and disposable shoe-covers, we stay in the back garden, or a room they don't enter (the office, they never do the office anyway) with the door shut, until they leave. They offered to not come if we weren't happy with that approach, but we figured there was no (well, very, very little) harm in it.

Still paying out childminder even though the boy isn’t going at the moment. We’ve used her for the last twelve years and she’s been very good. I think she’s in a high risk category due to asthma so although she said she’d still have him we said it wasn’t necessary.

Our cleaner told me that they would not be coming, and said we could cancel payment.
We are both still working FT with no loss of earnings.

We are still paying her the full amount we would have.

I pay her what she asked for, that frankly isn't a great deal. Ive been messed around by cleaners before, and would rather continue to pay her, and hope that helps her in a difficult situation, even if it's only temporary cash flow.

If we had a change in circumstances, we would reconsider.

I'm paying my self employed guitar teacher for lessons I can't attend, a pitiful amount I know but it feels like the right thing to do as working for the NHS I. I'm one of the lucky ones who are getting a regular full wage

I assume you have to pay extra for that

Only if it progresses to cupping.

Teabagging is a further supplement.

I don't have a (paid) cleaner. I'm sure if I did, I would be taking all the following into account: has my household income dropped? is the supplier a serious company with someone raking in the cash and paying minimum wage or an individual truely self employed? what was the cleaner saying about government support schemes? did I like the cleaner and would I be upset if they weren't available when lockdown is lifted? but probably concluding that unless I was struggling I would be paying them in full.

perhaps not fully fledged business

is that a euphemism for tax evasion? 😃

The Self Employed stuff is based on average of the last three years tax returns. I'm pretty sure, you don't make the first return until the Jan after the April of your first year's work. i.e. someone who have been your cleaner for 12 months or more may not yet have lodged enough evidence to make a claim.

For all the HMRC bods out there – if you’re still paying your cleaner, even though they’re not coming round to clean, does that count as a gift rather than taxable earnings?

No i think you'll find it is a retainer with the expectation that at short notice you can call them up and they return to duties.

We don't have a cleaner, or a childminder anymore thankfully.

I'm still paying the window cleaner.

I'm paying my daughters Gymnastics club 50% and they're doing the odd session with Zoom.

I will admit cancelling a few things I was paying to come more corporate sized places - £90 a month for a Gym.

We are are continuing to pay our cleaner. Haven't actually spoken to her about it, just let the standing order run. I hope she'll be willing to do a few extra shifts when things go back to normal as the house will definitely need it, but am not going to stress over it.

My wife and I have both taken salary cuts but we're saving shit loads on childcare, trains, petrol, eating out, weekend activities etc.

Yes, half pay. She doesn't do online banking and lives miles away so it involved a slightly awkward text conversation of "what's your address? And what's your actual name?", and a lot of trust that the cheque'll get there, but it seemed only fair

Sacked mine, along with the cook, the butler and the driver. Peasants. However, Her Ladyship insisted we keep the young, handsome gardener because, apparently, there are "things she needs him for in the orangery". Seemed fair enough to me.

She doesn’t do online banking

Pro tip; she doesn't need to. You do.

You just need to get her to read the sort code and acc no. of a cheque / card / statement

😉

Anticipating where we are now we gave our cleaner (cash in hand, known her for years) 5 weeks pay 3 weeks ago and said not to come for a while and we'd review late april. Place is now a dusty mess. I think she is thinking of returning to Brazil sadly as this has been the icing on top of the brexit cake.

We’re still paying the dog walker as we’re still using her when we’re working. Albeit less than usual, I think she’s doing 6 days this month.

It depends on our shifts though so some months we don’t use her much at all and others she does a lot.

I might have to have a look at our roster and work out the extra if this had been a normal month and make up the difference.

I’ve just checked and we’re 3 shifts short of a normal month so I’ll make the difference up at the moment. We’d be a bit stuck if she wasn’t still around after all this.

The cleaner we sacked ages ago as she was rubbish, seemed to play “see how many door frames I can smash the hoover in to” every time she came.

Only Singletrack could have a thread like this! Okay possibly Mumsnet as well.