Baby finance prep!

[AAR25]

Help please!

We are planning on TTC next month and want to be as prepared as possible.

Do I save as much as possible or pay my credit card off so I don't have to worry about this when on SMP??

That depends, is your credit card 0% interest or could you move it to one? How much debt is there?

You'll need to work out current income/outcome, then what will still need to be paid during the smp period + new baby costs and work from there. There's all the usual stuff of prams etc at the start, but then nappies/wipes/milk as well as indirect costs such as an increased heating bill to think about from being home more/needing a constant temp for baby.

Assuming you have a partner, ensure they are included in the finance discussion. Babies/children can be expensive and it shouldn't just be on one parent.

Hi @Clydie89 !

Yes it's 0%, around 5k. Stupid early 20s credit card. Learnt my lesson but it racked up to about 8k in the end. I have managed to get it down to 5k since December so doing well with it but can't decide if I should now save everything and then pay off a chunk when I come to the end of 0% or do 50/50 to save and pay off?

DH is a good earner and we've looked into the costs and he has already agreed to pay my car payment for me whilst on SMP which will leave me with some spare money to enjoy maternity leave.

Wondering also how much people roughly spend on all the baby stuff first time round? Want to set a reasonable budget so I don't get too carried away as I'm sure it will be tempting

We saved up £5k and I made sure my credit card was paid off. I’ve now got a 0% for 20 months credit card. I get full pay for 10 weeks, and then 29 weeks at £151 so the money we’ve saved will cover those 29 weeks fully, including what I usually put in savings.

Anything left will go on me having extra time off.

We also bought a lot of stuff off of Facebook market place which saved us a lot of money. The car seat and mattresses were the main things we’ve bought brand new.

I’m not sure if any of that helps

Once we found out our pregnant we worked out what my maternity pay would be each month. Thankfully my company paid you equals amount each month which made it a lot easier to budget.
We then worked out what our monthly shortfall was and then saved that over 9 months so that when I went on maternity I was "earning" the same take home.

So you can either work to pay off the cc or work out how much you'd need each month to cover all payments inc your monthly CC payments and work to save that.

Good luck.

@Sansa87 did you save the 5k while you were pregnant or before conceiving? It does help thank you, lots to think about!

@williowrosenburg thank you! Think I will do some adding up over the weekend and see. Suppose I could get the credit card down to 2 grand and save the rest to cover the shortfall

We saved enough to cover the shortfall in my earnings so that I still had the same amount each week.
Plus saved about 2k extra to contribute towards childcare costs after return to work. Nursery was £800 a month so we paid some out of salary and some out of savings so that it wasn't such a huge outgoing for the first year back at work.

WRT to upfront expenditure, it really depends. If you’re buying a brand new travel system with car seat and isofix you could be looking at £1k for that alone. Second hand you could probably do it for half that.

Then there’s nursery furniture- could be £100 or £1k depending on what you need. Clothes and other stuff- maybe £100-£200? You also might need some maternity/nursing clothes or formula/bottles etc. Disposable nappies in the smaller sizes are cheap, but reusable ones have an upfront cost.

At the lower end you could probably do it under £1k, at the top end £2.5k- £3k?

Could you move the 5k to a different 0% card at the end of the current interest free period? If so I'd do that and potentially save as much as you can before giving birth and putting half towards mat leave /baby and the other half towards the debt?

@TheMagicDeckchair brill thank you, I had in my head 3-4K so good to know it can be done for less.

I will get most things new as I work for a big retailer and get hefty discount so might aswell make use of it while I'm still there. Especially on prams, they often do 10% off then I get my discount on top. Will definitely look at second hand clothes etc though.

Thanks for your help

@Juno231 thank you I think that's what I might do. Maybe get the card down to 3k and then pay a regular smaller amount each month.

SMP would cover my outgoings including car finance and credit card repayment exactly so if my partner helps with the car payment while on SMP that should leave me a couple of hundred spare to enjoy and will have my savings if needed

@AAR25 we started saving when we started trying, however we did fall straight away. The plan was to have more savings just incase (oh’s brother saved 10k which personally I think is a bit ott if you’re getting maternity pay of any kind) we’d saved up by second trimester, and then started buying everything we needed, (& splurged at Xmas as it was the last one just the pair of us)

We were very lucky that we had minimal debt though, & that stamp duty was put on hold so when we bought a house last year what would’ve gone on stamp duty went straight to the baby fund.

We’ve also had to take into account I’ll be back in work at 8/9 months, so whilst we can get grandparents to cover one, maybe two days, we do need to find money for nursery. I’m only just above minimum wage, so my daily wage pretty much goes straight on nursery fees. (I honestly didn’t realise government childcare vouchers didn’t start until three!)