How did you manage on maternity pay? Advice please.

[AliceRR]

I’m due to go on mat leave early next year.

I get 3 month full pay, 3 month half pay, 3 month statutory and final three months (if I take a year) would be unpaid. I also have about 20 days hol to take before I go on leave and would have around 30 days leave to take at the end of my mat leave as our financial and holiday year ends one April (and I’d be back at work early 2020). Hol would be full pay. Also get up to 10 Keep In Touch days which attract full pay on top of mat pay.

I am also lucky to have just got a pay increase of about 20% which means that I will have a bit more than I would have.

Overall seems not too bad but interested in others experiences and advice as currently DH and I pay 50:50 for all household expenses etc and I hope to keep that up while off. Our expenses are quite modest as mortgage is low but we may move and then of course everything will be different and financially more difficult.

Did you find you spent more or less than you had bugeted for?

I’m just trying to plan in terms of savings (now I’ve had a pay rise I’d like to save more) but also accounting for money to spend on baby (first baby so will need everything).

While on leave I obviously won’t be spending on things like travel expenses to work (£100 per month) and money I spend on buying on lunches every day (easily £100 per month) but there will be other expenses I don’t have an idea about such as baby food and nappies and groups I might attend with baby??

Also wondering if it is optimistic to think I can take a full year mat leave plus holiday but would like to as it’s precious time with baby!

Why are you making all the financial sacrifices for the baby? Still paying 50:50 when you are on maternity leave and so sacrificing your pay to look after a child that presumably you both want?

I managed by being married to a decent bloke who agreed that my maternity leave benefitted both of us and most of all the babies that we chose to have.

(We have a joint bank account.)

Gosh your maternity pay is good- I’m having my maternity pay being a teacher and it goes down a lot quicker :( we are trying to save now- which is hard lol- we have a joint account and always been both our monies go together- no 50:50 it’s all ours to spend on bills etc...
I’ve taken up a selling job to hopefully be able to do while on maternity leave for a bit of extra cash :) just budget well- and I’m having 6 months off- with my first I had 8 months and it crippled us :( xxx

I also don't get the 50/50 idea - once we had kids on the way ( and even before) , all money was joint. We were always broke whilst on mat leave though and I went back when my first 2 were 5 and 4 months old and the last was 6 months. I only went t back part time though so it wasn't too bad.

Our mortgage/bills stayed roughly 50:50 but husband got more of the shopping while I was off.

Baby has older cousins so I bought very few clothes and things for him, which helped, and I decided to do a year without buying new clothes for myself. Probably both helped.

Take advantage of free baby activities (we went to a breastfeeding group and weekly ‘rhyme time’ at the local library).

We were fine, went on a couple of short U.K. holidays (camping/staying with family or friends mostly) and I paid for weekly postnatal Pilates sessions which have been amazing for headspace and recovery from a slightly body-destroying delivery.

Surely any costs for baby items/activities would be 50/50? A baby is a joint responsibility

I'm a teacher too and mine was rubbish compared to yours. We used savings for dc1. Dh earned more by the time dc2 came along so we managed ok.

We have a joint account for joint expenses like house, car (we are sharing a car at the moment but not sure how that will work when we are on mat leave) bills etc but then have our own money. It’s just the way we have done it since we got married (which is also when I moved in with him).

He is paying off some debt and he has CSM to pay for two older children so I have more money than him after we have paid the bills.

This means:
(a) I don’t think he’ll have as much money to spend on the baby and I have to accept this (although will be annoyed if he is spending money on himself while I am struggling to buy things for baby etc)

and

(b) he tends not to have spare money once he has paid off his financial liabilities from month to month whereas in a normal month I have more spare money to spend / save (but haven’t been saving as we’ve been doing up the house for 18 months and before that I saved for our wedding for two years)

My family will probably buy us some things which will help and my parents will probably offer to buy one of the bigger items eg cot but obviously I’m not expecting anything so just budgeting to buy everything. I don’t want to buy things too early (I’m due in Feb so thought I might take advantage of Jan sales) but I’m shopping to see what I like and how much things cost. DH would naturally spend less than me (id probably buy more expensive stuff) so I probably need to bear that extra expense IYKWIM

We spent on a car seat and, a bit later, a really good back carrier as we like hillwalking. I also got a reasonably decent breast pump new.

Everything else ‘baby stuff’ wise is either cheap-and-cheerful IKEA (cot, high chair), or second hand either off eBay or passed down by friends with kids.

It’s worked well for us and I don’t feel we’re ‘missing’ anything.

Crikey, unless you normally earn a lot more than your DH, intending to keep contributing 50% of the shared income whilst being on maternity leave/ reduced income seems masochistic! There is no way I would consider that fair. Does your DH?

All the time you are on maternity leave you are also incurring no childcare costs which surely your DH would be having to help pay for otherwise.

If you didn't want to pool your money, then I think the 'fairest' solution (though there isn't really a fair solution seeing as how it is only the woman going through pregnancy, birth, reduced income on maternity leave plus providing a lot of unpaid childcare) is to contribute the same proportion of income each to a shared pot - which while on ML would be less than your DH's share.

Please have a think about your finances/ responsibilities once you become a family. It's different and 'fair' is not necessarily a 50/50 split of everything.

I had a similar package to you. I saved up before hand and spent around £10k savings on mat leave. Living in London.

Do you work for the NHS? They do the full, half, SMP thing. If you do, or depending who you work for you can ask for your pay to be equalised over the 12 months. They can only do this with your ordinary pay, not the SMP part but it means that you don't have to do the last 3 months unpaid as you will have had a lower monthly amount but spread over 12 months. Does that make sense?

Otherwise things like travel systems, cots, high chairs, sterilisers if needed, clothes can be picked up really cheaply second hand - I did buy a car seat and mattresses new though.

Baby groups tend to be very cheap, there's usually a few going on a week and it's the stuff like baby massage, sing & sign, swimming that cost more.

@ovenchips Until I got a pay rise this month (which I haven’t even been paid yet) we earned about the same. He actually earned £1k more than me so I considered it we earned the same. We pay for all household expenses equally and food etc and then keep our own money. He pays 20% to ex for CSM and then his credit cards which I think are now paid off but honestly never understood why he has no money left at the end of the month! I often end up paying a shortfall as he’s run out of money!!

Hence I don’t think he’ll have extra money to pick up a larger percentage while I’m off or have money to spend on the baby.

I think he has paid off his credit card now and his loan is about £250 per month which isn’t huge.

Now I earn slightly more but obviously won’t get more than him while we’re on mat leave - for that year he’ll be on more

I feel like our finances are complicated and trying to keep it simple but it has been a contentious issue for us in the past as he always thought I had “more money” than him even when he earned more just because he had to pay CSM! But that’s another issue...

I saved like a demon to make up some of the shortfall - smp only

We have joint finances now. Really if you’re going to go part time, pay for childcare and child stuff it’s just easier to have joint finances. We both get a little judgement free cash in our own accounts but most stuff is joint account.

Also I took 8 months, not a year.

We saved up the difference between my mat pay/ statutory maternity pay and what we would have had if I was on full salary for the time I had off. It was still tight then. We started saving when we started ttc so used to surviving on a bit less each month.

@Verbena87 Hadn’t thought to look at IKEA but will have a look.

@ImogenTubbs Gosh that is a lot but I’ll put that down to being in London partly 😬 (I hope!)

@Polkadotdelight No I work for a private firm. I’m lucky as I joined this place 3.5 years ago when it was a smaller firm which offered no mat pay but then a few months later it was taken over by a national firm and the mat package is quite good

There is a silver cross factory outlet 5 mins from our house so hoping to get a deal there maybe (I do like silver cross prams!) or just shop in jan sales but I am trying to be careful about what I do actually need

Eg I want a snuzpod / next to me type crib so might just buy one of those and not bother with a cot straight away as I probably won’t need it for at least 6 months...

I’ve only just started looking at things to work out what I might need and costs as otherwise had no idea and didn’t want to start looking too early. I’m 20 week’s now so seeks a good time to start shopping even if I don’t buy immediately.

I mentioned he reconditioned prams at the factory store to my mum earlier and she wasn’t keen on the idea of anything second hand! (superstitious)

@RockinRobinTweets Yes I suggested that as a way towards a complete joint account eg we pay all our money into a joint account and then have, say, £500 each (or 750 or whatever). We didn’t agree on this as at the outset I had said I assumed CSM would come out of the amount he withdrew and could make sure it’s enough that he still had enough spending money (obviously we share all other expenses of household and his kids including food and going out and gifts and everything). He didn’t think that was fair so we didn’t do it. He’d still be better off as he currently seems to have nothing left. That’s probably another issue altogether but that’s why we didn’t do that. I think you would need that spending money though rather than just a joint account as I’d want some ability to spend without worrying he’d be keeping an eye and vice versa...

To be honest I think things like next to me are a waste of money if you have a big bedroom. We removed the drop side of the cot and cable tied the cot to the bed with a rolled up sofa through to bridge the gap. You can use a moses basket in the cot initially if you prefer but I think lots of people find that their babies outgrow the next to me cribs.

We got the IKEA gulliver cot which is stable even with a side off (it’s designed to convert to a little bed), raised it on blocks, cable-tied it to our bed and made a foam block to fill the space created by sliding the mattress over to meet ours. Health visitor was happy with it when she visited and as he was huge when he arrived he’d have outgrown a crib quickly. He went straight in there (and stayed. He’s still having a feed most nights and I refuse to do any unnecessary being-vertical at night!) and it’s worked well for us, plus when he finally does move to his own room it’ll hopefully last him a while.

I work part time and DH pays all household bills and I pay for groceries, things for the kids and savings.

When I go on mat leave I'll have 18 weeks full pay then the rest statutory (will be going back after 39 weeks as can't afford unpaid). My pay when it goes does down to stat is basically minus what I put into savings so I just won't be saving for a few months.

I think a year is really difficult to cope financially.. I took 5 months but I am a teacher so luckily only had to do 3 months and was off again.

Otherwise I found I didn't spend much really. Got nappies in aldi didn't spend much on petrol etc.

Your pay increase will probably only count for maternity leave if it occurred during weeks 17-25 of your pregnancy. If you are only 20 weeks now and haven't received it yet it sounds like you may miss that window?

I took a year too and my package was similar to yours (90% rather then full, but the rest matched)
I also had 29 days holiday and accrued some more by the end.
I worked out what my full maternity pay would be over the year, and then I equalised it myself - so divided it by 52 weeks and then gave myself that allowance each week. This meant that I had exactly the same at the end as I had at the start.
Obviously this doesn't give MORE money, but made it so much easier to gauge and manage

Oh and you need 'joint finances' from the point you go on maternity leave. That doesn't mean you give up your financial autonomy but it does mean that bills aren't 50/50 any more unless you are getting paid for providing x months worth of childcare and house keeping somehow.