How much did you save before maternity leave?

[katelewis320]

Hello! Quite a personal question but I'm just curious to know how much others have saved before finishing work for maternity. I suppose you never think you have saved enough but just wanted to reassure myself. I am starting mat leave at the end of December and have managed to save £1500 so far to supplement my income while I'm off. This doesn't include the money I have saved separately to buy baby things and pay for the nursery decorating. I know it's not much but I keep trying to reason with myself that I still have three full pay days to go, have a lot of stuff I can still sell and I will learn to live without payday luxuries like expensive make up and meals out. Would love to hear what other people did and if you have any tips!

I get 9 months full pay. Start mat leave next week. Have saved three months salary so I can go back after a year

Wow 9 months full pay - that's the stuff of dreams! Good on you! I sadly have no such luck but you have to work with what you've got!

I didn't save any as we could cover everything from DH's wages. But it's incredibly easy to live frugally on mat leave. Get a travel cup and take coffee with you, breastfeed, don't buy expensive nappies (Sainsbos Little Ones are great!), so free stuff like park and library. Good luck!

Ps the absolute killer is childcare costs when you go back to work. Start saving now from your OH's wages for that now!

20k and I didn't work for 6 years. We lived on dh's pay and used the savings for treats and emergencies.

I only received stat mat pay and so we saved £14k, but I take home about £5k per month. We managed very well on this, you really can save a lot of money on mat leave, between me and my DH we had 9 months off. Don't forget that you may be eligible for child benefit, you may also get tax rebates (depending on your situ and where you are in the tax year) and you can take up to ten KIT days (I think that's a national thing) and get paid full whack usually.

Zilch. But we managed on mat pay and DHs salary. Maternity leave is really easy to live cheaply unless you go for coffee/lunch every day, it's returning to work and childcare costs that are the killer.

I spent about £2,000 of savings over 9 months of maternity leave. Looking back, that was pretty good going as DP lost his job fairly early on!
How much you will need depends on what the overall family income and outgoings are. The best things I did were to overpay the mortgage in advance so I could take a payment holidayy for a few months and applied for tax credits while I was still on maternity pay. Although I didn't qualify for them while I was still being paid, all I had to do was call them when I started getting SMP and it got sorted quickly.
You don't mention a partner but if you do have one, you need to consider thinking about all income, outgoings and savings as family income, outgoings and savings - it's not just your responsibility.
If you're planning on paying for childcare when you return to work, maybe look into Childcare Vouchers now? I think the scheme is about to change. You can pay into it in advance currently.
Good luck and don't worry!
Babies are cheapish to run. Childcare is not.

Nothing either time.
This one I'll be better off as almost all my salary is eaten by DD's childcare and we're dropping that down.
I will add that we can cover almost all outgoings from DH's salary, so we're lucky from that PoV.
I also found to my surprise that lots of my outgoings decreased as they are associated with work. (Petrol, sandwiches, convenience foods when tired during the week!)

I'm seven months into (hopefully) a year of mat leave and didn't save anything in advance (surprise pregnancy) but so far as everyone else says, you don't spend that much whilst off. A massive saving has been using Aldi nappies which are excellent and cheeky wipes instead of wet wipes which are re-usable (both I and DH have excemza so wanted to be safe for our DS). Also we brought lots of things from eBay and gumtree in advance. You don't need to buy lots of toys etc as you will probably get lots when the baby is born. Also, DS's favourite toy is a plastic bottle with rice in it not the expensive Lamaze toys that we have!

I only get stat mat pay so had to save a lot. I basically worked out the cost of 9 months bills and deducted what our income would be on mat pay. Then saved the difference. Managed to actually save some additional as a contigency. I guess it's all relevant to your outgoing tbh

I saved about a grand and then spent it on a car and insurance which I barely drive

But! OH's wage covers the bills anyway so my mat pay is for odds and sods, treats etc!

Tbh I haven't spent that much, only thing we bought new was nursery furniture and cot mattress, and Moses basket mattress. Oh and bottles. Had tonnes of clothes given so not bought many.

I don't find I spend much more really. Only big expense is formula I suppose. Aldi nappies are the best I've used and v cheap.

I don't think you need a big amount of savings unless you need it to cover your bills, or you're planning a really extravagant mat leave.

Nothing here for either mat leave - DH covered everything once my pay stopped.

Also love Aldi nappies and recommend reusable wipes!

From memory it was around £3k which was more than enough for us at the time...challenge was finances post Mat Leave

I think we had around 1000, I had a year off and it was fine but I remember things getting tight around the last few months. DPs income just about covered all the essentials.

Thank you for all your posts. It's helpful to know and sorry for being nosy. I do feel a bit less panicked now!

I got smp. Saved up £4500. Took seven months off. Spent £2500. This was just on general spending as the smp covered my side of the Bills. I thoroughly enjoyed my maternity leave and this was ample savings.

Hi,

I had NHS maternity pay for both of my pregnancies but I saved up on-call money from the day I found out I was pregnant with each. It gave me a few thousand extra to play with.
We don't get on-call money now as we now work 24/7 shifts and get paid a LOT less :-(
No more babies planned though!

First time 6.5k, spent about half of that on my unpaid section. Finish for a second mat leave in 6 weeks, currently nothing in our savings and am hoping DHs and my bonus come in January which will give us about 8-10k in the savings for this time.

No specific savings for this but we save on a regular basis. Will be unpaid for 2 of 8 months ML. Nursery for DD1 will be cancelled after 2 months so going to use that saving from the joint account to cover the final 2 months lack of contributions from my side to half of general bills.

Plus hopefully lower general outgoings to balance as PP mentioned! (Less last minute food!! Or chocolate cravings )

I get 5 months full pay - but the 'full pay' is based on average weekly earnings over two particular pay dates. So i'm doing a fuck load of overtime atm, which will show on my Dec and Jan paydates (paid seriously in arrears) and seriously bump them up.

That means my 5 months of full pay will be about £500 net a month higher than my normal salary, which we'll save separately, giving us £2500 banked by the time I go down to statutory which will cover the difference for 3 months of stat pay. Then I have a bonus of about £4k due in March which will cover the 3 months unpaid, meaning 12 months of leave (hopefully) covered.

If my bonus comes in short, it just means going back sooner than 12 months.

But like a couple of others have said, it's after mat leave that worries me. Dc are 8 and 6 and afterschool childminder is peanuts for what we need, less than £150 a month. We'll need three days a week all day childcare when we're both back in work, which added to the dc's existing cc is probably going to be £600 a month...which makes me feel a bit sick!

Maternity pay was only for 14 weeks back in my day
and I had no savings at all, just debt

So far have saved £9000 (in fairness we have had IVF so have had two years to save... and it may need to cover another round in the future! Am only 6w so planning to save another £5000 and pay off my car.

Yep, maternity leave was only 14 weeks in my day (only 16 years ago), but was 12 weeks at 90% and 2 weeks unpaid, so you had to go back then. So, you didn't really need to save anything up because you couldn't have any longer off, anyway!