To ask if you’d get into debt to take more maternity leave if…

[AS28]

You knew your childcare bill was only going to be £200 a month?

When we began TTC we factored in that childcare would be about a grand a month.

However… the 30 government funded hours are being applied for 9 month olds from September 2025. Our baby is due in November.

We have enquired with two providers, both childminders, in time for my return to work next year. Their day rate is £45 for a 10 hour day, and we will require 3 days a week due to compressed hours. In term time the funding the childminders receive covers their day rates. Both have confirmed this to me. There is an optional £5 a day consumables, but you can avoid this if you send your own food. Obviously the funding is term time only: our preferred childminder then spreads the cost of the holidays across the whole year, meaning that our bill will be only around £200 a month if we opt to pay the consumable charge. On top of that we will get tax free childcare so another 20% off.

I was under the impression we’d be paying £1000 plus a month for the next 5 years, but £200 feels like nothing.

Mainly because of childcare costs, I initially factored in that I could only have 9/10 months off. I am now wondering why don’t I take the full year, as borrowing 3k on a 0% credit card would be paid off in several months after returning to work. Given we thought that money and some would be going to childcare, what’s the harm in using it to buy more time off? Everyone says you never get that time back.

(We haven’t saved to cover the extra time off as we didn’t think we would need to).

Tell me if it’s silly!

How much more? Eg how much time had you initially planned and how much do you think now? I think about 1 year is fine

Alternatively, you could find that adult conversation by being part of a new mum's group, and that would give you a friendship group to fall back on for years to come. Still in touch with my lovely friends after 40+ years.

I would and I did.

Different scenario in that I knew I could earn extra at work but yes, it was the right decision for me.

Would you really need £3000 just for a couple of months? I'm not sure I would want to get into that much debt tbh - 10 months is still a decent length of time. But it would be OK if you were very confident you could pay it back quickly. Or maybe you wouldn't need to borrow as much money as you think.

I wouldn't make a decision until you've been on mat leave for a few months.

I took 10 months with DD1 and 13 with DD2, 2 years apart. Both were very enjoyable, long mat leaves to me. I wouldn't have got into debt to have longer with DD1 - we were quite comfortable with 1dc, but once we had 2dc, our outgoings were so high! But these were the days with only 15 funded hours from aged 3, so we did have high childcare costs for a long time.

Just remember new governments can change things on a whim.

Can you save money ahead of time? I had savings for IVF then fell pregnant naturally so used that money to take a year off then a month of annual leave, giving me 13 months at home, then using AL to work 4 days per week for the rest of the year.

I think it’s silly but 9-10 months would be more than long enough for me. I went back at 3 months both times by choice.

Remember you accrue annual leave so you could return sooner and use annual leave to take you up to the year mark. You could also look into phased return, some employers will let you work 'part time' using annual leave until it's used up.

Have you any savings to use? It’s fine in theory but I would be worried that other expenses would mean ‘only’ £3k turns out to be not doable. Can you also cut back so you don’t need to borrow so much?

Only you know your incomes, outgoings and job security though.

No I wouldn’t, I think it’s very silly to get into debt if you can already have 9 months off. How is that being funded? Is it through savings or an employer package? I wouldn’t use all my savings either, having children can be more expensive than you think and the government can remove or reduce the funding at any time. If you’ve not been able to save enough for maternity how can you be sure you’ll have enough to repay it quickly with the additional expense of a child?

I’m taking 10 months off but we can mainly live of DH’s salary so the reduction in our savings is small and still leaves us with well over 6 months expenses plus money for holidays in the pot. If this weren’t the case I’d be taking shorter, maybe 8 months or something.

I’d say no as I took 12 months with DS (6 months unpaid as he’s 20 now so no SMP 6-9 months then), but he really struggled to settle into nursery. So with DD I took 9 months off work (got 3 x months SMP this time) and she settled earlier. Though saying that DS loved nursery (after the initial month of struggling) and DD always hated it but more personality! They are 20 and 16.5 now and I don’t regret not taking that extra 3 months with DD

If you need to take a loan to be able to extend your maternity leave I'd say you can't really afford to.

How much a month and got how many months would you need to pay back that money alongside the £200 a month childcare

I was itching to get back to work after 6 months but appreciate I'm in the minority!

I'm sorry if I've got this wrong, but to me what stands out is that you've factored in paying £1k a month on childcare in a year's time (so I assume you have that spare currently), but yet at the same time you're saying that you'd need to put £3k needed for your extra mat leave on a credit card? The two things seem really at odds with each other.