Maternity pay

[nadiamumoftwo]

No but really, how do people afford to go on maternity??! I’m 28 so beginning to think about babies and the future and I just can’t fathom how anyone survives on SMP? I get 3 month full pay (luckily) but after that it’s SMP. I am a teacher in Scotland and all my outgoings as pretty much accounted for. Do people save up for a year before going for it to ensure they have a “wage” for a year?

I moved jobs to somewhere that offers 6 months full pay. Then its 3 months of SMP, so i saved my missing salaries while i was pregnant and on then wilst i was off on full pay. I only took 9 months, couldn't afford to do the final 3 months unpaid.

My employer also has a discounted nursery on site so thenchildcare costs about 2/3 of usual costs

You do not need to be married and you do not need to combine finances (honestly what is this 1950?) if you don't combine finances even a little bit you have to make sure any partner pulls their weight in terms of time off work and costs for the baby.

Also check out if your pension contributions are affected.

Either save up or look at employers with better maternity benefits, when I had ds I got 6 months full pay and 3 smp.

It was much more expensive than I thought it would be. I was 35 when we had our first unplanned baby and I ended up going back to work 3mths early as work called and offered me a chance to go back before zero pay hit.
Plan for every eventuality. My DP had to take unpaid leave a few times as I was so poorly after the birth and also when our DD was hospitalised at a few weeks old. He also couldn't afford to take on my financial responsibilities as planned during maternity leave as we'd planned as his house sale fell through several times and then got caught up in lockdown when government froze house sales and he couldn't afford 2 mortgage payments.
We now have a second unplanned baby on the way and it will be tight as we now have a much more expensive house which also needs renovating .

Maternity pay (as in SMP) is still set at a level that assumes a woman’s wage is just pocket money, housekeeping, not half or more of a couple’s income. I didn’t get much of an enhanced package from work so made a huge effort to save a lot before getting pregnant and then during pregnancy. Even then I only managed 10 months off by tacking some annual leave onto it and using keeping in touch days to get some pay.

If you’re still young and still just planning, it might be worth considering a career move into the civil service or university sector, somewhere with a 6 months full pay package after you’ve been there a couple of years. I kind of wish I’d done that myself then I could have afforded more time off and not had to scrimp so much beforehand so we’d still be able to pay the mortgage when my income went down to less than £140 a week.

I did have DC in lockdown so there was nothing in terms of baby clubs/going out etc so that did bring costs down significantly. Maybe you'll have to be choosy with where you go. You would need to get out though its so damaging to mental health to not do anything outside the home imo.

You need to be able to survive on less than your wage before you start as childcare will eat into that.

I get 6 months fully paid but when I go back we will be paying circa £1600 a month for 2 kids in full time childcare...and I live in a cheap part of the country! So right now I'm better off on maternity than I will be when I go back.

Make sure you have a solid plan with your partner/husband. I see so many women posting here that they're expected to pay the whole of childcare costs, as if the kid is theirs alone

You don't need to get married or combine finances - you can keep your finances separate but he needs to pay more than 50/50 while you're on Mat Leave.

We have separate finances and aren't married.

I'm currently on SMP. I'm paying all the utilities, insurances etc and DP is paying for the mortgage, food shopping etc. He's paying nursery and putting money into savings.

We've planned outgoings for when I return to work so we have equal spends but we don't do the 'family pot' or whatever, apart from savings which we both put into.

My friend is a teacher and she said if your clever and can plan your due date for before the summer holidays or just before to extend your pauses bit this was a while ago so I don't know if they moved this loop hole !

@nadiamumoftwo

I’m not sure how teacher holidays accrue and the info online is outdated / very limited I’m a secondary teacher in Scotland if that helps anyone give advice?

Teachers in Scotland do accrue holidays, just not as many as you lose! The holidays are separated into ‘holidays’ and ‘school closure days’. You accrue the holidays but not the school closure days. If you are off for the full year you would accrue 40 days. In my authority (Edinburgh) you were allowed to take 20 days as leave and 20 days would be paid (might be different in other councils). If you are in a union they would be able to confirm that.

@candlelightsatdawn

My friend is a teacher and she said if your clever and can plan your due date for before the summer holidays or just before to extend your pauses bit this was a while ago so I don't know if they moved this loop hole !

Surely you can't base this on being clever - it's just luck if you manage to conceive at the right time and give birth at the right time?

I have the same combined income as my brother and his wife. DH and I earn roughly the same, whereas DB earns 75%. That means that during maternity leave on SMP our income is drastically less than them despite appearing on paper to earn the same amount. It sucks. Save and economise. I can’t afford to do groups with DS, swimming can be £20 a session, singing groups can be £5 a pop. Even once a week I can’t justify it, we have to pay our bills. SMP is the same whether I earn 20k or 40k, my mortgage is based on my salary, not SMP. I suppose I could take a mortgage holiday though. SMP is great, lots of countries have nothing (some have more) but I think it would be better that all employers had a duty of care. Agree with PP about childcare, nursery is like sending a child to private school.

We saved, but we also had much lower outgoings than you – tiny flat, tiny mortgage. Tiny flat cheaper to heat, cheap council tax, etc. No fancy phone packages, car loans, etc. Also had kids older, so were higher earners, so partner’s wage could absorb the blow more.

We’re also not married and don’t have joint accounts, but our finances are still “combined”: it’s not my half and his half. It’s a baby that needs paying for!

I would think about:

Where can you cut costs now to (a) allow you to save now and (b) ensure you’ve got lower costs once you’re on maternity leave?
Increasing income – are promotions or pay rises likely for either of you in the next few years?
Get an excel spreadsheet and document every outgoing in there and start budgeting.

The real cost hits a few years down the line when you have a second one and the first one is settled in childcare… that’s why lots of people wait for the funded hours to kick in, or even for DC1 to be at school before planning for DC2.

You need to sit down with your partner and work out a budget. You don't need a joint account as such but you do need to combine finances to an extent. Otherwise it will lead to arguments about who pays what. Do not become one of these women who is scraping by to afford shoes for their children while their partner is spending hundreds on themselves.

What do your personal spends go on? Is it just phone and car? Do you spend a lot on things like hair/nails/nights out? If so remember that lots of these expenses will disappear on maternity leave. If it just goes on phone and car and you have nothing left over each month with no wiggke room then you are not living within your means and should have a look at your budget anyway.

You don't spend as much while you're on mat leave. No commuting costs for starters. Child benefit will cover baby's basic needs like nappies etc

Could you get a mortgage holiday for a few months?

Also check your maternity package to see whether your employer pays your pension contributions. Mine does so that helped a bit.

Hi I'm a teacher too.

You can't realistically plan your due date (I took nearly two years to conceive). But what you can do, is return to work earlier than you'd like, but just before a big holiday. Then you get paid in full for the big holiday. All teachers do this after mat leave.

Eg my dd was born in August. I wanted the full 12 months of leave originally. But instead I went back to work just for a couple of weeks starting late June. So I got July and August full pay while still getting to be at home with dd. Similar applies if the birthday is, say, May. Go back to work in late March and you get the Easter break full pay

It very much depends on when your child is born. We are thinking of no 2, and I am a teacher too. Ideally, I’d love to wait until next December / January to TTC but I’m just too old.

I’m definitely taking the full year. I took ten months with DS and it just flew.

@girlmom21 I mean for me ttc wasn't easy so the thought that you could actually plan when you got a viable baby or something for a specific date is a bit bonkers (for me personally) but it's what she said and I'm assuming there was a degree of luck in it.

She said she avoided certain months but why I can't remember something to do with teacher calendar ect

If you think that's bad.. wait until you have to start paying for childcare!! Some nurseries offer term time only, but are few and far between. So you could be paying for childcare for 52 weeks of the year when you don't need it.

Some people do have a lot of problems TTC which is obviously sad, and stressful for them but I do think forums like MN can make you think everyone does and that clearly isn’t the case. I know a lot of people who got pregnant at the first month of trying. I did, and I was 39 at the time so not young. So you can plan, to an extent.

So you could be paying for childcare for 52 weeks of the year when you don't need it.

That’s not the worst thing, actually.

We pay half pay over the holidays which means DS can go for two and a half days a week rather than five. We haven’t used it loads - he had two days over the October half term and one over the Christmas break as we were on holiday for the week after Christmas anyway, but since you can’t get any time off in term time it is really helpful to be able to send your child to nursery so you can go to the hairdresser or dentist or similar.

@BrambleRoses that's true. I'd just rather not pay and do those things at a weekend when hubby is at home to save money.

@nadiamumoftwo

Yes I have a partner, we both earn roughly equal amounts so put equal into joint account. £600 odd maternity wouldn’t cover my half of bills never mind my person outgoings. Better get saving lol. It looks so easy to others who have multiple children, especially close together!

If you have a baby you need to stop having his and her money and move to our money. All income into one account and all expenses out of that. You pool your resources as a family.

And both of you should save as much as poss in advance to provide for the gap in income.

Yes you have to save and plan and that includes factoring in what your household income will be snd how you are going to split things. Also not married and also don’t have (or want) combined finances but when I was on mat leave my OH covered most of the bills. I understand you are saying your OH can’t easily do that but he has to start saving too as you shouldn’t be economically disadvantaged because you have to take mat leave to look after a child who you are both responsible for.

Also do find out about childcare costs in your local area otherwise that could be a shock. I’m also in Scotland and for 1 child full time we are just over £1,300 per month (I compared a few local nurseries and that was standard) so significantly more than £12k but we do use the government tax free childcare account which brings it down to about 13.5k. Still a pretty enormous amount of cash!

@iloveyankeecandle

If you think that's bad.. wait until you have to start paying for childcare!! Some nurseries offer term time only, but are few and far between. So you could be paying for childcare for 52 weeks of the year when you don't need it.

It's really hard to find term time only! I tried and tried