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

I got 8 weeks full pay then dropped to half pay. I went back to work after 4 months (3 months mat leave and one month annual leave).

I'm self-employed so will only get maternity allowance. Working from home, though, and being entirely flexible with hours and workload means I can probably go back to work sooner than I might otherwise.

My partner's salary covers our bills thankfully, although only just.

I'm on the same package as you, and I'm 3 months into my maternity leave. We saved our arses off from finding out I was pregnant, and hopefully have enough saved to make ends meet despite the drop in income until September, so 10 months in total including a month annual leave. It's going to be tight though.

I have friends who work in the civil service who get 6 months full pay...lucky bastards!

I'm bricking it about mine (due same time) and I'm actually on a very good package (much better than my previous employers, which proudly stated they offered 100% for the first 6 weeks, rather than 90% - cheers).

We are saving money in unexpected ways - we aren't really going on holiday this year, because I'm basically grounded from April

I only qualify for maternity allowance. No 90% for 6 weeks at £140 ish thereafter.
I’m only taking 3 months leave.

I can only afford to have 3 months off work. We will take a mortgage holiday for 2 months.

That sounds like a fairly good Maternity package actually.

I only get Statutory, despite working for my very large healthcare company for 3 years.

My DH will be covering the mortgage and bulk of the bills. I will put in £400 a month. That leaves around £100 + child benefit of £80 which should tide me over for bits and bobs.

I’m worrying about my maternity leave. Baby due end of July and I’m being made redundant first week in May. So I’m going to be using up a lot of my mat leave before baby comes and I worry I’ll need to find another job before I really would have wanted to. That said, a lot of my expenses will go down and my DH is on a good wage which should be able to support us. I am also very thankful that my mat leave will still be covered by my employer, as if I was a few weeks earlier in my pregnancy I would not have been entitled to it in my redundancy package.

Hi there I'm on maternity leave at the moment but luckily on a good maternity package.

If I were in your position I'd be asking your employer when they last looked at their maternity policy to see whether there's any possibility of it being improved upon.

Yeah, so that's actually not a bad package.

Statutory is 90% for 6 weeks then max £140 a week until week 39, then nothing.

That's not to say it's not difficult. In my experience, most save a bit beforehand, and agree a way of sharing expenses with the father