Maternity savings

[toadabode]

Hi all

I'm brand new to mumsnet so I'm sure this question has been answered countless times before, but I was just wondering if anyone could tell me how much money you saved for your maternity leave? Since finding out I'm pregnant I've been thinking about this a lot - I want my partner and I to both be able to really enjoy my maternity leave.

I'm being paid 90% of my salary for 6 weeks, then half pay+statutory for 12 weeks, then statutory for the remaining weeks.

Any of your insights/ experiences would be much appreciated, thanks.

It depends on your outgoings. I only had 3 months of SMP to deal with.

My partner was putting more into our joint account to cover the majority of bills etc, so i could save more.i put in £250 a month instead of £700. i then saved enough money so I could pay all my personal bills and have my usual £50 a week spending money, so around £1500 in total to cover me for the 3 months.

Don't forget you'l have £82.80 every 4 weeks of child benefit.

I wanted a year off so aimed to save £3000. I then relied on OH to pay all bills etc but this gave me a nice pot to dip into. I hardly spent anything though when on maternity leave so my outgoings were low.

I didn't save at all. Just about to start 3 months of SMP and hoping to make some cut backs.

I planned on 9 months off and saved about £3500. Was only receiving SMP. But I'm expecting DC2 now and after going back to work part time and paying hundreds a month in nursery fees, we can't afford to save a penny. Fortunately we've become accustomed to budget life now! SMP is shit but no nursery fees so income isn't hugely affected.

Luckily my work gives an additional payment about SMP (25% of gross salary) so that will cover me so I can still pay my share of the bills.

We are planning for my OH to take over from me after 6 months, as I earn more. He will get 65% salary during these months, he will receive about £450ish less so we would need to save to cover that as he earns less than me.

So technically we need to save a minimum of about £1500 to keep the status quo, but I will look to save more than that to act as an extra cushion for spends with baby etc

I saved £5k, didn't need all of it but I was especially frugal

Surely it's more of a question of how much you need to pay all your essential outgoings plus extra for spending and how much less your income will be while you are on maternity leave?

The answer would be very different if you are the main earner, your normal salary is £100k and your mortgage is £2k pm compared with your normal pay being PT NMW and your DH being the main earner?

We saved the difference between usual salary and maternity pay plus extra so that I could go out and about. I spent more on maternity leave as bills go up with being home and we did lots whilst I was off so as not to get isolated.

I saved about 5k but found I didn't need to use most of it.

I save £20K whilst TTC.
Then spent the lot on IVF obviously well before maternity leave 🤷🏻‍♀️

Nothing

We are used to being poor though. I think it depends on your outgoings like everyone says.

I had full pay for 6 months then SMP then nothing for last 3. I managed to save about £7500 for the last six months and it's run out at month 11, am borrowing from family now! However I am a single parent so have to meet all running costs of a house etc from that, no maintenance payments etc.

I only get statutory and we have pretty high outgoings so we’ve saved £20k to cover us. Hopefully won’t need it all! As others have said it’s completely dependent on your outgoings

When I was pregnant with my first we saved around 18k. I got shitty maternity pay but didn't spend a penny of the money we saved. I think you just manage with what you get within reason?