Saving before trying

[Tryingsoon]

I know I’m going to get lots of varied answers on this and the answers will be different dependant on people’s circumstances, but thought i would probe the question

Did/are you saving before trying/falling pregnant? Are you saving to cover your outgoings during maternity or is it more of a case of saving to buy baby bits?

[hellymum21]

I am 17 weeks pregnant, we just saved 'generally' like we normally do when trying but now we are saving specifically for maternity outgoings cover and using the more general savings for baby bits ☺️

[sophi1207]

I am 13 weeks pregnant, we have found that we have been able to save more recently as luckily our incomes havent been affected by Covid and we arent doing as much (going out for meals/holidays etc) so this has helped. We are mainly trying to make sure that we have more than the difference between our usual monthly income and what we will have on maternity.

[AriettyHomily]

We had no savings but earn well so stopped frittering it.

[gradetoolisted]

It depends how long it will take you to save the difference between your mat pay and usual income x months of mat leave you want to take. If that’s more than 7/8 months you might want to start early. We started saving once pregnant. Will start earlier next time and if we can’t conceive for some reason will use it for fertility treatment or just a nice holiday!

[RandyGiles06]

With my first we started saving once we were pregnant. I am planning my second and we have already saved to cover my second stint of maternity leave but won’t bother saving to cover baby bits and pieces as we kept everything from last time so should be minimal. If I could do my first again I would start saving beforehand but we managed just fine, somehow it seems to work out!

[MonkeyPuddle]

We saved before I got pregnant and then ramped up the savings throughout pregnancy. We put away £4k which will cover the short fall in my wages for 8 months at which point I will return to work. I will also be working kit days, planning on doing 2 a month when babe is 3mo.

[passthegin1234]

We saved as soon as we started trying. Estimated roughly the shortfall in wage and a little bit more to cover the expensive bits. When I returned to work, we actually had a decent amount left over and that has gone towards baby number 2!

[NamechangeTTC]

We’ve saved, firstly to pay off wedding and house expenses so we were debt free for trying then I wanted a pot to make up my % of the bills when on mat leave if I took a year. Meant we had to save a pretty hefty amount but couldn’t have budgeted on one wage

Since then dh job is precarious so we’ve saved more to cover that. Still no bfp

[Juno231]

We haven't save especially for a baby, just carried on saving as per usual.

[NamechangeTTC]

We saved specifically and I recalculated tonight.

Turns out I have a lot more than we need but if we ever get a bfp this will help with pram etc!

[zippityzip]

We started saving a specific amount every month when we started TTC - thinking that it would take 6 months + to fall pregnant. And then 9 months pregnancy.
The following month I was pregnant 😂
However - if we carry on we've got a pretty decent nest egg to cover my bills through Mat leave and whatever we get will decide how long I have off work.
DH will continue to give me the same sum that he was saving each month to help me out.
I've started planning for birthdays and Xmas early to cover the cost.