Savings for baby - how much?

[jazzcat28]

Did you have the chance to save before having your first DC? If so, how much did you save?

We are officially TTC and know we need to save to fund my maternity leave. I'm thinking if we had in the region of £7000 in savings by the time I gave birth we'd be ok.

What did you do?

Bump

Well, how long is a piece of string?!

It depends on your outgoings and what saving you already have. Do you know how much your outgoings are? You need that much, plus some contingency (maybe plus 20-40%?).

If you go back to work after maternity, will your wage cover outgoings and childcare? You might need to save for the too.

Is that any help?!

2.5k, which was the drop in my pay, plus a little extra.

Am on my last months pay now, and I still have £1400 of it, despite having christmas, cars breaking down, and various other disasters.

Whats your share of outgoings plus any personal expenses? Multiply over the 12 months and add some contingency.

Bugger all, quite frankly! We didn't go nuts on furniture/clothes/gizmos etc, but we have just cut back on our outgoings.

We saved 7k but haven't used any of it yet, 5 months in. But we bought 2nd hand or borrowed everything, we live quite frugally and I received about 3k extra maternity pay.

We worked out a v tight budget before ds arrived estimating our outgoings. By sticking to this budget which in addition to mortgage etc allows us to buy groceries, nappies, a few cups of tea out each week and save 200 a month for holidays, baby stuff and ad hoc bills, we won't need to use the 7k at all.

I breast feed and only buy nappies (in bulk) on great special offers.. There are lots of free mum and baby groups you can attend too.

I worked out our minimum costs per month and how much we'd be short due to maternity pay. For us around 5k got us through each time. I do get quite generous maternity pay though.