Financial help for maternity leave

[AK1980]

Hi. New joiner to Mumsnet here.

When my second child was born, my wife and I had a conversation that might sound similar to some of you. We were trying to figure how we could afford for my wife to take the full 12 months of her maternity leave entitlement. The issue is that she only qualifies for statutory maternity pay, which is not enough to cover our living costs for an entire year (even with my salary). With our first child, we fortunately had enough savings for my wife to take the entire year (and with the help of significant belt-tightening). Definitely not the case this time around, so we figured that she could only take about 6 months.

Just wondering, how other families manage their parental leave when savings isn't enough, government benefits are not sufficient and the budget can't be stretched further? Also, I am wondering if an affordable loan/credit card product could help parents cover their costs while on leave so that they can take their full entitlement.

Full disclosure: our situation motivated me to start developing an idea for a socially-responsible enterprise that would provide flexible and affordable financing for new parents to help them cover living costs while on maternity/paternity leave.

To be clear, there is no actual business at the moment..I am just interested to hear from people. In general, I see greed as the main problem with the finance sector, but there has to be some financing solution out there, no? Am I missing something? Anyways, thanks for hearing me out.

Sorry my question wasn't relevant to your situation Blue - I wasn't sure if you were back working full time.

I'm hoping to be eligible for tax credits from when I start my mat leave in April. Chap on the phone said they will ask me my predicted earnings for the year (probably only £10k for me for Apr 17-18) then they take into account the SMP before calculating what I can claim. It looks like i could receive around £200 pcm. Every little helps!

Taking out finance to cover maternity leave is a bad idea and irresponsible rather than socially responsible. What if you lose your job when you go back.a sharpe if nursery fees are very high and you can't repay.

There is no 'the full year'. It's not a thing or an expectation like people seem to believe before they actually have a baby. Many many mums go back much earlier. So that's what you do if you have to. Or else you save enough in advance of baby. Or you make sure you get a job somewhere with good mat leave.

mouldycheesefan that's all well and good in theory, but it seems a little idealistic to me - have you ever taken out car finance? Or bought a sofa set on a repayment scheme? Or take. Out a mortgage?

Having a baby is not always something that can be delayed a few years. I'm definitely not saying that it's a good idea to take out a loan to cover maternity leave, but for me at least it was the only way I could have coped. I had savings, but they had all been wiped out by the extensive fertility treatment I opted to have in order to have my child. Yes I chose to have him, and yes I knew going in that it would be incredibly expensive. I believed (and still do) that it was worth it. Sure, if I lost my job it would be hard to stay afloat and I'd likely have to sell the house to be able to cope, but that would be exactly the same if I hadn't got the loan and still lost my job - the house wouldn't pay for itself. That risk, to me, was much more acceptable than the risk of never being solvent enough to even attempt to have a baby. There was never going to be a 'right time' financially speaking.

OP, if you are still reading, sot down with your wife and budget for the next couple of years, check out what loans are available and then what the repayments would be and work out what you could afford to be paying back and whether maybe instead of the first year, what if your wife only takes 9 months. It's not fun to have to confront, but definitely worth doing it now rather than closer to the time. You could also start putting money aside now whilst you are both still earning g.

Blue - you and I are in a similar boat. I've spent what would have otherwise been enough savings to cover maternity leave, on IUI to become a mum. I would have loved to have enough savings to cover fertility treatment and the initial costs (maternity leave and purchases) of having a baby but fertility doesn't wait for you to have all your ducks lined up in a row.

If you're careful about how you finance a loan (I'm going to keep transferring my 0% credit card balance to new 0% deals) you can defer paying that money back until free childcare (nursery or school) kicks in which I imagine is the point that finances ease up for most parents.

The thought of paying back an extra loan, plus crippling childcare costs makes me feel quite weak.

IVF here, but yes, sounds like we're treading very similar paths, Shoes

I think with clever money management and restraint it's totally possible not to get into unmanageable debt whilst borrowing money. I got a loan rather than a credit card just so I wouldn't be tempted to keep dipping in once the initial amount ran out. It's a fixed amount going out of my account at the beginning of each month (the day after payday), so there's no chance of my missing a payment. Credit cards are where I know I could fall afoul of debt issues as I would see them as being too easy to spend 'just a little bit more', so have cut up the card I currently have outstanding and am paying it off monthly, with the aim to transfer any remaining credit to a 0% balance transfer card at the end of the payment term.