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| IN THIS ISSUE: Message from Kathy| Announcements | Calendar MBF in the News | Health Corner | The Counselor's Column Tax Tips From Breedlove and Assoicates | Ask the Expert MBF Superstars | What Clients are Saying Serving the Community Welcome to our Spring Newsletter ! We pride ourselves in having the highest quality nannies and sitters in the Houston area. However, we are always looking for new ways to add value to the services we provide and, as we enter a new season, exciting changes are afoot. We have started offering a service that we believe no other household staffing agency in the country has ever offered before—ongoing monitoring of nannies' and sitters’ background checks. This means that background checks will be rerun through the sitters' entire life of service with our agency and moving forward, their entire tenure with your family if placed permanently.On a regular basis, we will be refreshing background checks on all pertinent records and reporting any relevant results back to you. We are incredibly excited to offer our clients this service since it means an added measure of security, ensuring that, no matter what occurs, you can remain ever confident in the safety of your household when you rely on our agency. And as we move forward, we are committed to continuing to find new ways to add value to our services for you because, as always, we believe our work on your behalf does not end at placement. Yours,
 Summer is Coming! As you start planning your summer, remember that Mom's Best Friend nannies can be a great option to provide full time care, including taking your children to a variety of activities such as parks, museums, water parks, art exhibits, and more! You can also use our temporary nannies (sitter service) to supplement care and provide transportation to camps and activities. Reminders about Agency Fees and Payment
Don't forget to book your backup childcare!
 As a parent, one of your primary concerns is your child’s health and what they are eating and drinking greatly impact their well being. With a multitude of products that advertise to be sugar free or low in sugar, it can be hard to differentiate between products that are nutritious and those that are not. Tina Pepi, an Applied Clinical Nutritionist, describes the different types of sugar, the affects of sugar on children’s bodies and the sugar alternatives we can choose to ensure that our children are happy and healthy.
Read the full article.
KVUE News Austin turned to Mom's Best Friend in a story about how to avoid nanny hiring issues. 
Mom's Best Friend Gives Back How are Austinites Connecting with each other for child care?
By Claire Flynn, Child Development Specialist, founder of For Kids' Sake, and is a nationally recognized author of three books for parents. It's spring! Now is the perfect time to play with your kids outside! Click here for a great list of suggestions for ways to be active with your children this season.
Q:The nanny I’m about to hire doesn’t have health insurance and would like to have it be a part of her compensation package. How does that work?
Here’s how the tax math works. Let’s say you pay your employee $2,000 per month in “straight” (taxable) wages. Her “take-home pay” after taxes would be roughly $1,700 per month (it may be a few dollars higher or lower depending on her personal tax situation). If she then buys a health insurance policy and pays $300 per month, her after-tax “disposable” income is $1,400 per month. Alternatively, if you pay the same $2,000 per month, but it includes the health insurance contribution (i.e. $1,700 in taxable wages plus $300 in health insurance contributions), her after-tax disposable income is $1,475 per month. So, in this illustration, your nanny sees a real gain of $75 per month (or $900 per year) and your employer taxes are reduced by about $25 per month (or $300 per year) – simply by having healthcare contributions managed through the payroll process. It’s a win-win situation. If you have any questions about health insurance or how to set it up so you can take advantage of these tax breaks, just give us a call. As a client of MBF Agency, we’re happy to provide a complimentary phone consultation and guide you through all the financial and legal aspects of being a household employer.
A: This a very good question, as I’ve mentioned before in this column as well as in my blog. Since nannies are in your home interacting with your children, it can be very hard to draw lines and set boundaries with them as you might more easily do with another type of employee. This is one key reason why household employment is very different than almost every other type of employment. I have met household employers who, either because they were new to town or for some other reason, were looking for a new friend as much as they were looking for a new nanny—some of them have even admitted as much. However, while I think you should try to keep your relationship with your nanny friendly, you will likely run into trouble if you try to actually become her new best friend. This will make things much more difficult if you ever need to confront her for some critical reason—say, for instance, she constantly comes to work late. Interestingly enough, I know of employers who have fired their nannies rather than confront them and try to work out their issues because they had already allowed that important boundary between employer and employee to completely break down. Consequently, they either felt betrayed by someone they had come to see as their friend, or else they could not bear what they saw as an increasingly contentious relationship. So, with respect to drawing lines, try to start off on a good foot and maintain clear boundaries throughout the course of your relationship. To do this, I suggest, from the very beginning of your nanny’s term of service, you avoid participating in social activities with her outside of work, such This brings me to the subject of one-on-one meetings. I have written here before that it’s actually a good idea to conduct your monthly one-on-one meetings outside of the house (to avoid everyday distractions and little ears). I think it should also be added that these meetings can really help out with the issue of boundaries by giving both of you a regular opportunity to talk about your issues in an established context in which your respective roles as employer and employee are clearly delineated. Honoring these meetings will help keep boundaries clear in your communication with your nanny and, if you ever find those boundaries eroding, they will give you an opportunity to pull back and reestablish them. Hope you found this helpful!
Each quarter, our staff looks forward to our  time with the girls at The Settlement Home. In February, we worked with 25 girls on an afternoon when they were off from school. We decorated and transformed shoe boxes into fabulous keepsake boxes! The creative juices were really flowing as the girls spent over an hour creating little masterpieces to keep in their rooms to remind them of fun special memories.
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A: Health insurance premiums are a non-taxable form of compensation, meaning neither you nor your nanny would have any taxes on that portion of her compensation. Therefore, there is a significant financial advantage to both of you if part of your compensation to her goes toward a health insurance premium.
Founded in1992 — by household employers for household employers — Breedlove & Associateshas served more than 10,000 clients and processed more than $1 billion in household payroll. By focusing on the unique needs of household employers, Breedlove & Associates’ expertise and efficiency has been recognized in The Wall Street Journal, Kiplinger’s, Business Week and SmartMoney.com. For more information or a free phone consultation compliments of MBF Agency, call 1-888-273-3356 or visit www.breedlove-online.com.
as going shopping, sharing clothes, and (especially!) sharing drinks together. Now, I think some activities, such as meals and coffee, can be handled on a case-by-case basis, and I definitely don’t think your time with her must always be confined to the house (I’ll come back to this in a moment), but I do think it’s generally a good rule of thumb to make sure that the time you do spend with your nanny is mostly always, in some way, work-related. 
I want to thank you so much for all your help, patience and understanding, and all the great jobs which you considered me for. I am very impressed with the way you run your agency and will not hesitate to recommend anyone to you. Your professionalism is beyond comparison and whenever I need to get back on the job market I will contact you. Again thank you and your staff for all the cooperation you gave me."