Affording maternity leave. How are you planning on affording it?

I’ve got 3 months left of maternity leave. I got:
4 months full pay
5 months SMP
3 months nothing

When we were trying and 9 months pregnancy, we tried to save at least £300 a month so we had lots of savings. I saved a lot on petrol throughout maternity (£200 a month) not going to work and just have to be a little tighter with things.

Work out what your outgoings will be and then yours and your DPs pay then work out what you’ll have to have saved to get you through.

We saved for my half of the bills while pregnant. I worked as long as I could (finished at 38 weeks), I saved holiday so I'd be paid for it half way through my leave, I did my KIT days which funded two further months off and our lifestyle dramatically changed anyway! Fewer nights out/weekends away meant we felt like we had more money than we did.

The biggest thing for me though was I'd done my sums beforehand I'd even got pregnant to ensure we could afford everything plus childcare when I went back to work. I'm panicky about having no money so for me I had to make sure it was at least sorted on paper before we started TTC.

I only received SMP too.

We are putting away every single penny. It’s quite miserable! I’m due in July. We need to save about £6-700 a month to suppplement the stat maternity. We live in London so housing is extortionate. I am fortunate to be able to save this amount. I will never be able to do it again if I have a second child. I’m going to have to get a job with a edecent maternity package.

The worst thing is it will only get worse when I go back to work as I’ll actually be poorer paying out for childcare.

Interesting thread. DD is now 12 so my maternity leave was a while ago I saved up from TTC so I could take the max time off (then six months and your holiday didn’t accrue then) and all the onus was on me to save. I had a half decent package but it was still a struggle. I see a good number of others are still doing this, although sounds like there are some DHs willing to help out financially.

On the plus side if you get used to frugal ways and cutting back it means it is less of a shock when you have to go back to work and discover you’re still no better off due to exorbitant childcare fees. .

Good luck ladies.

I'm on statutory so 90% of my pay for a few weeks then it dropped right down, it's been very hard and will continue to be once ds is at nursery :/

I only get SMP but I'm going to rejig my pay so my bonus is paid later than usual so its taken into account for the maternity pay calculation.

That means my 6 weeks at 90% will be higher than my normal monthly pay and I'm only taking 3 months off - 4 tops.

I'm saving up my holiday this year so I can return FT but use holiday so I'll be working PT on my full salary for a good few months. Our holiday is generous so I can do 3 months at 3 days and 3 months a 4 days a week and still have a couple of weeks of next year's entitlement to take.

We always kept essential costs to DHs salary (not a high salary either - 20kish) and didn’t upsize things like cars/house etc until I was back at work. This meant SMP + CB easily covered food/clothes and other bits.

I'm very lucky in that my mat package is good (20 weeks full pay then statutory).

I'm going to start mat leave on my due date and use holiday before then to stretch mat leave out as long as I can. I will work as late as I can (will try to negotiate working from home to enable me to work later, if I can).

I've always saved - not specifically for a baby but DH and I have always been savers rather than spenders. We're both mid-30s so that has given us time to get into a decent financial position.

All my maternity clothes are second hand and we're hoping to go to NCT sales and get some baby stuff second hand. Will sell my maternity clothes on via Ebay once I am finished with them.

My day to day costs will go down when on mat leave - currently commuting works out at over £30 per day (petrol, parking at £7 per day and train at around £24 per day). I always spend more than I should on lunch in somewhere like Pret and at home we rely on Marks and Spencer easy to cook meals due to DH and I both having long working hours and long commutes and being rubbish at cooking . So these costs will go right down when I am on mat leave as I will be able to attempt to home cook, use the car less etc.

Not sure how long I will have off - it's my first baby so no idea how I will find it - but my job involves long hours, international travel and 3+ hours per day commuting into central London, so personally I doubt I would be able to go back at 3 months, although who knows!

Had a surprise baby! No savings, no plan! Just muddling through. You survive on what you have- you just do!

Had mine 4 years ago and on my own completely but thinking back, I think I did save a lot of money - a few things below that helped me, in terms of money going out as well as what you have coming in:

• pregnancy was accidental but luckily I had been saving all my life, so I had the house deposit as back up
• didn't begin maternity leave until the day I gave birth - which it turns out was 2 weeks after the due date, so didn't use up any leave before baby arrived
• was on 90% for 6 weeks, then SMP, then nothing - returned to work at 11 months (but with hindsight I could and would have waited until 1 year because I missed baby's first steps this way)
• while pregnant cut lifestyle back to an absolute bare minimum - no eating out, no holidays, no going out - tbh I mostly slept outside of work!
• moved to a much cheaper part of the country when baby was born, which meant I knew I would have to move jobs but living costs were so much lower (there were sacrifices - I lost my whole people network and was very isolated, and bored - still am sometimes but life is affordable!)
• put together a list of things I thought I might need when pregnant and asked friends with babies/children to look over it and indicate what I would need and how many etc, versus the nice to haves
• didn't buy maternity clothes except 2 pairs of jeans which I lived in, and a couple charity shop dresses
• sourced ALL baby stuff, clothes second hand and for free - asked around so that family, friends, their friends were looking out for any bargains, and visited NCT sales endlessly in second trimester before I got too big and tired. This resulted in for example an entire travel system for £50 and a Mamas & Papas cot for £45
• used a sling library and a local toy library for some of the bigger toys that babies really don't use for long, like a doughnut ring - which also means I didn't have to get rid of big items at a loss later
• the only things I bought new are - cot mattress.. 2 nursing bras..
• later on I bought a couple more things new - a back-facing car seat, and a cheapish toddler bed - I have continued to get stuff second hand and cheap
• walked everywhere with baby during the first year, so didn't use fuel and got fit
• continued to be very frugal with lifestyle during the first year.. very limited new clothes for me for example, still no holidays, people understood I couldn't buy expensive gifts for them

There are ways to do it.. it depends what you are prepared to sacrifice to some extent. Even now I am amazed at all the stuff that is marketed to people having a baby for the first time, versus how little you actually need.

For example, you can spend hundreds on cutesy outfits they will wear for 5 minutes, throw up on and grow out of in a matter of weeks.. or not.

I’m a teacher in Ireland and standard public service maternity leave is 6 months full pay.

Your maternity package sounds really good to me. I got SMP which is worse.

During your leave you won't have commuting costs (assuming you normally do) and you won't be buying lunch and coffees at work (again, I'm making the assumption you normally do).

You also won't be able to go out lots during the evening with a small baby. We saved on cinema, meals out etc because we couldn't go out of an evening anyway while was ebf.

I didn't buy new clothes for myself for a long time (even after went back to work, as went back part time). We've had a lot of hand-me-down and charity shop baby and toddler stuff. We've not been abroad since we started a family. My DP takes pack lunches to work instead of using the staff canteen.

Write down everything you currently spend money on then work out what you can cut out.

Doesn’t seem that bad to me

Mine was 6 weeks full
Then 4 months 50%
Then SMP
I also got my bonuses in that time.

How we afforded it though was my husband (divorced now) was a very high earner and my salary (decent, £50k 8 years ago) was not meaningful to the household income

I’m actually better off on ML, even though I only get SMP, than we will be when I go back to work and have to pay 2 lots of nursery fees and extortionate train fares for my commute. Something else to think about.

With my first, the council I worked for offered 12 weeks half pay which could be spread across your leave up to week 39 which was a great way of spreading the money.

My current council offer the same money but it must be taken between weeks 7 and 18 so more management on our part. I'm starting mat leave on 31st but have been off 2 weeks already. We've saved as much as we could and I will have 12 months off with my last month covered by leave so I'll only have no pay what's so ever for 2 months. Unfortunately we haven't timed this pregnancy well and I'll have no pay in December when it's Christmas and DD1 birthday but we'll manage.

I’m living abroad and get 45 calendar days fully paid, which works out at about 5 working weeks! Nothing thereafter, unless you have a doctors line that allows you to take a further 100 days unpaid for medical reasons. Haven’t told my employers yet, will be interesting to see what happens when I tell them I want to take 6 months off (although beyond the first 45 days I don’t expect to be paid, and am lucky enough to be in the situation where I can afford to ask for the rest as unpaid leave). For most, there is no option but to go back after the 45 days paid leave.

I am a senior level staff member in a technical role but because we're an SME with an all male board we only get SMP.

I saved and saved and saved to have my first baby - took 6 months off but had to return to work to pay the mortgage.

My second child was more challenging because I was already working part-time and paying nursery fees so saving up was particularly difficult. However because I was able to plan my maternity leave so far in advance I was able to save £5k to take 10 months off.

However I've been back at work a year and still paying off a credit card bill from that time - I hadn't accounted for birthday or christmas presents when i was saving.

With DC1 I got my then-employer's maternity package, which was the legal minimum. With DC2 I was self employed so I got something like £50 a week IIRC for 6 months. Because I wanted to stay home for a year with each of them, I ended up using up all my savings, which was about 4 grand with each child.

@Aki23 male seahorses give birth.

And shared parental leave only works if the mother is able to give up some or part of her leave (and pay, if the father is going to claim shared parental pay)

Males seahorses just care for babies they don't have them - this is also a possibility for humans due to shared parental leave - that's how we managed

We were lucky and were given a lot of baby stuff. We didn't bother with redecorating a whole room for baby - needless expense. We saved and I returned to work when DS was 8 weeks

I'm due in July and only entitled to maternity allowance because I'm self employed. It will be a pittance too because I've barely earned anything in the last year due to a major family crisis.

We're only going to be able to afford it because a) We have a tiny mortgage and have delayed moving up the property ladder to keep it this way b) We got rid of the car c) We saved like mad for a year, gave up alcohol, going out, all other luxuries etc d) My parents are in a position to help us out.

Worth having a quick look now as then you will have 2 options instead of just one. It might be better financially for you.

You have to start mat leave the week the baby is due/born. I saved holiday and took that first so I had 3 weeks holiday before he was born. I also took holiday after mat pay ran out as you still accumulate it whilst off.
I did a PPI claim and ended up with a few thousand. I also saved my mileage payments from expenses as I travelled a lot.
Now I'm part time, don't travel, have no more PPI to reclaim so no hope of saving for another. We're TTC for the last year and all I can do is put £100pm away and try not to spend a lot. Tbh another child isn't looking likely so it probably won't matter