How much did you save for Mat Leave?

[PotteryParrot]

I’m 24 (F) And me and my Husband are starting to plan for a family.

We currently both work full time, he is self employed as the owner of a business and I am employed 40 hours a week. Each month our income to bills ratio is around 1:1 and we are used to saving to pay for home renovations, our wedding etc.

I have calculated the amount I would be down by taking maternity leave each month from SMP and plan to save enough to cover the difference so that I won’t be “down” any money whilst I’m not working.

My question is for those who have already taken maternity/paternity leave. Do you spend as much as if you were working, or do you spend more? I know I won’t have to worry about commute costs or daily lunches but am also aware of the extra costs a baby brings.

I just want to be prepared but don’t know if I’m being “too prepared”

Thank you for reading if you got this far!

Edit: we can increase my husbands salary slightly but also don’t want to take excess money from the business if it is needed there.

Hi, I don’t think you will ever be ‘too prepared’. I found I spent less on maternity leave but at about 10 months when I went back to work there was a tonne of things to pay -childcare (even if it’s free it’s only 22 hours a week plus add ons), child seat (got a free baby seat from a friend), different lightweight buggy etc etc. Still in nappies. Loads of food wasted because toddler doesn’t like it. You will be grateful for everything you save now in the long run.

Imagine using those savings to get a cleaner once a fortnight when you’ve done 5 loads of washing that week and the toddler has weed and pooed on the floor again.

I would say it’s a 4 year savings scheme.

I did the same as you and saved enough to cover the shortfall. I spent less over the year off, but then paying for nursery fees afterwards was obviously huge and the remaining saving were needed to help towards that.

We put aside £300 every month once I got pregnant so by the time the baby arrived we had about £3k to help cover maternity alongside my good Maternity Pay (NHS).

Can you tell I wish I’d saved more?!

But do do lovely things eg days out/holidays. I wish I’d lived within my maternity leave pay for 6 months by not doing cafes/takeways/makeup/clothes and could have afforded a cleaner earlier!

And also I changed clothes size and shoe size and my skin became dryer so a lot of waste.

What is with the (F)?

I didn't save anything.

I saved the difference between my mat pay and annual salary, but I then had pregnancy and mat leave during Covid.

Costs were significantly down, so I saved more and spent nowhere what I thought.

Your initial post keeps saying I need to save…..

a baby is a joint thing, and as you have a husband, you both need to be saving.
please tell us you won’t still be paying your current contributions to the household when your income is vastly reduced.

now is the time for the conversation about all money in one pot, and totally shared out between you. Or a joint account you contribute to proportional to income, if you want to still keep money more separate.

please don’t make the mistake a current thread poster has made, where her husband has three times the disposable money than she does, and she then pays for kids stuff out of her personal spends. And gets cross and abusive when she asks for a more equal split.

you are now married and having a baby, which makes you a family. Time to move to a family way of managing your joint money.

We saved 400 (additional to other savings/debt etc) a month whilst pregnant and whilst I was still on full pay mat leave, this meant that when I did go down to smp our finances weren't massively affected.. as PP have said its a joint venture so you both need to contribute

Totally agree with @isthewashingdryyet

I don’t understand the 1:1 thing - I would have thought that meant all your money was going on bills but then you say you have money to save?

You don’t do anything really the first three months of Mat leave so that’s cheap. The you start venturing out but there’s plenty of free things you can do - library’s often have story time etc and sure starts have play times if there’s one near you. Or church play groups. Then if you have spare money you can start thinking of paid for things and coffees/lunches etc. If you have NCT friends you can visit each others houses for coffee etc so that’s cheap.

I would figure out if you can cover your bills on SMP along with your partners income, then see what’s left over from that joint income, then figure out how much you’ll both want for spends and save that difference (jointly) so you both have it to spend.

Also do think about childcare costs when you go back to work. We were rolling in it on mat leave and absolutely boracic when I went back after paying £1.2k a month on nursery 😱

Prob spent more money than I should have on kids clothes, coffees out etc. You have control over those things though.
Petrol went up and I heated the house more so baby wasn’t cold.

We didn't save anything for maternity leave. I was lucky in that I had full pay/90%/half-pay for quite a while so didn't have too long on SMP. I went back to work after 6 months. You spend a lot less on maternity leave too.

I agree that you shouldn't be saving. Any saving should be from your joint income.

Personally I didn't save in advance other than the usual saving I was doing anyway. I told my DH that as I was on maternity leave taking care of our child with less pay it was his responsibility to take care of us.

If you're in a marriage/partnership and planning a baby it's a 'we' thing when it comes to money not 'I'. Your money should be pooled together each month and then worn out from there.
Personally I was 36 when DS came along and had some reasonable savings but not necessarily for a child. I used my own money that I'd saved before marriage to buy the big things - buggy, cot etc. But that was my choice. On a day to day basis we just stopped saving for the 12 months I was off work and cut back a lot . I had 100% pay for 3 months, 50% for 6 months and then SMP for 3 months. It all netted off in the end as we accumulated in the first 3 months.

I spent £12k in 14 months
I barely got statutory mat pay as I had an expensive company car and still had to pay BIK.
The 12k meant I could pay some bills (husband took the majority of the weight of these) and not sacrifice any of my usual treats, nails, hair etc.
I also had twins so it was very expensive in terms of clothes and formula.
I could have pulled my belt in. But I didn't want to :)

Same here. We both saved. It's not just up to the woman to fund maternity leave.

I only got SMP so saved £7k for MAT leave. We however could just afford pay for all bills to come out of DP wage and my SMP was for food/other bits. Tbh we left MAT leave with 6.5k left.. was very careful. We budgeted life as if we were on SMP from month 3 of my pregnancy. It helped us budget for the huge childcare fees that come with going back to work. Having DS made us realise how much money we wasted on random stuff.
If you earn under 50k each you will get child benefit. I used to get this in and spend the lot in one go on that months formula/nappies/wipes. The actual baby stage didn't cost loads tbh once you have your pram/cot etc.

We didn't save, dc1 was a slight surprise pregnancy. But when we did the calculations we realised the difference between my wage and SMP was basically what nursery would cost when I returned to work. So we just started living off of the lower wage!

It's great that you're planning ahead for maternity leave. When I was on maternity leave, I found that my spending habits changed. I saved on commuting and lunches, but other costs, like baby supplies and more frequent grocery trips, did increase. It's wise to save enough to cover the difference in your income, as you've planned. However, it's also good to set aside a little extra for unexpected expenses. Everyone's experience is different, but being well-prepared will give you peace of mind. How did you calculate ratio for your income-to-bills?

I think it totally depends on the person/baby
I spent a fortune in the first 6 months on lunches, baby cinema, coffees, petrol for days out. Plus buying clothes that would fit me and baby stuff the internet swore would make our lives easier! we also went on holiday
My partner took the next 6 months off and barely spent a penny as he just wanted to go for walks with the baby im the carrier. By then we'd got all the baby equipment needed and we're in the swing of things so weren't tempted by any gadgets etc
So just think about what sort of person you are. Do you know you'll be buying lots of baby clothes and going to loads of classes or are you happy with Facebook freebies
Do you prefer free activities like walking or do you want to meet friends for lunch etc...

Can i ask briefly what band you are in the NHS and how much roughly you got over how long please

Well everyone is different in my baby's first 3 months I went to visit relatives in Spain, and Wales, went to wedding and spent loads of time in cafes/ pub gardens. It was was April to July to be fair so a lovely time to be out and about. Had to reign it in in the Autumn. FWiW I tried to spend the equivalent to my OMP in pregnancy to get used to a lower income. I wasn't married at the time and DH ( then DP) helped a bit, but the vast majority of that 1st maternity leave was on me.

It really depends where you live as well. There were no free baby groups etc where i am. The cheapest were £8 plus extra for a coffee, and i would have needed a car or pay the bus fare - so easily £15 for one activity. Even if only done twice a week, that is £120 a month.
And while groups don’t seem necessarily, if you don’t have friends with kids and a lot of family around, having no adults around every day all day isn’t great.
Add nappies, food, additional heating etc and it sums up quickly.

We had thousands saved and also made cuts to our outgoings in preparation like selling expensive car with finance and replacing with cheaper second hand car paid in cash. Baby things were bought second hand, bf instead of formula etc.
I had a cheap mat leave with lots of free activities. The biggest financial shock was the cost of childcare when I went back to work.

I didn't save and didn't really spend anything either we just lived off my husbands salary. Surprise pregnancy on the pill!

If I'd of been in the position to save we would of saved it all for nursery. That's the whopper of costs the rest you can do free or cheap. Depends what kind of maternity leave you want to have/can afford to have.

Clothes for me were important because its rubbish when your body has changed and you don't feel good. All the baby stuff you can get for free off Facebook. I breastfed so that saved money. Nappies obviously. We got a local photographer for £80 to do a newborn shoot. Lots of the baby stuff they are only in for a few months so getting free or secondhand stuff was definitely the way to go for me. The amount of people who spent 1000s on a pram that they used for one month because actually they found it wasn't even that practical for them.

We saved 10k which kept me off work until the free 30 hours kicked in at 3 years old. Very frugal lifestyle and moved to a much cheaper area.