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

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For all that are TTC or those who have already got your BFPs.....

How are you all planning on funding maternity leave? Is everyone saving now and if so how much is everyone trying to save?

When I'm lucky enough to get a BFP (one day soon I hope), my employers maternity package is pretty shocking so (6 weeks full, 6 weeks half, 27wks SMP....then nothing).

We are trying to save what we can but I am nervous about the cost of having a baby (mortgage and bill payments I mean as I'm sure you can actually get by with minimal "stuff")

Just curios about what everyone else is doing when we know that if all goes well we will be taking an extended time off work.

Sorry if I'm being nosy....hope you all won't mind me asking; maybe lots of others are wondering too?!? Xx

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

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.

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

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!

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 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.

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 :/

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.

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.

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.

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.