Total panic about financial situation!

[Lucynewmum2be]

I am in the early stages of my first pregnancy and already in utter panic about managing finances when my baby arrives.
My partner works away from home Monday-Friday and I work in a local residential school which requires me to sleep at work twice a week. We have no local family that can care for the baby for the 24hr shifts I will be required to do when I return to work and not working is financially not possible (I also don’t want to give up my job). I’m confused regarding childcare, is everyone entitled to 15hrs a week free childcare? How would I cover over night stays? Given I earn on average 32k a year, will I be paying that in childcare and earning nothing? I luckily do get all the school holidays off which is something.
I have never considered or understood maternity pay, I assumed it was full pay but I’ve soon learnt after 6 weeks this drops to £180 per week!! How on earth do people cope?
we have a 3 door car so will need to get savings together to upgrade, we also live in a 1 bed flat so will need to save to move somewhere bigger.
I don’t know how this is all possible with big cuts to pay and potentially not being able to manage my work rota!!
any help, advice or personal experiences of juggling this would be much appreciated.

Was your baby planned op? I only ask as I’m curious as to how you anticipated this to work? You’ll likely need a new job by the sounds of things?

One of you will need to change work pattern, or you employ a nanny, I'm afraid. There isn't really another option. The baby needs full-time care, and nurseries don't do the hours you need.

People usually cope with the drop in income by either going back to work after the full pay period ends or saving up in advance/depending more on the other partner.
Also, some employers pay full or half pay for longer.

It might confuse some people that you didn't think about this when planning your family. Overnight childcare can be very difficult to fund.

How do finances currently work with your partner. Is your partner planning to raise the child with you? If so, what are their views on how to pay for everything?

I really think you might have to look for another job OP, night time childcare through the night is really rare unless you can find a nanny or au pair that would be happy to do this but then au pairs aren’t ofsted registered so you wouldn’t be able to pay childcare costs if you were entitled. It sounds a hard job to do with no family support and a new baby. I’m a nurse and a single mum so I do understand how much of a juggling act it is.

Is there any scope for flexible working or changing shift patterns?

No, it wasn’t planned hence the utter panic and confusion around maternity pay and childcare. This is all new to me and I’m trying to navigate and plan whilst I still have time

Would your employer allow you to step back from the overnight stays?

I think I could potentially take on a different role in school that doesn’t require sleep ins or my partner would need to find work local. Let’s say my partner did, we would then require childcare 3 days a week, can this be done hourly as a pose to 1/2 days? For example some days we would only need childcare from 2.30-5pm.

Yes you’d need to find a childminder with flexibility

One of you needs to change jobs to have the baby overnight, unless you are very high earners and don't mind strangers doing bedtimes for your baby it won't work otherwise.

It depends on the childcare you use, you may find someone that does it by the hour but many don't. I'd start researching locally now

Mat pay - most people save up to cover the drop in income, have a DH / DP who earns enough to cover the difference or go back to work early. I went back at 10months for example. I've seen others on MN go back much earlier. But also many employers offer better than statutory maternity pay. Mine for example was 6months full pay. Have you looked at your mat pay policy at work? Is it definitely SMP only or do they top it up?

Nursery - yes, lots of people spend their entire salary on childcare in the baby years. Think of it as an investment in your future / pension etc until the DC are a bit older. Make sure you are using Taxfree Childcare and all the funded hours (not free as you'll likely still have to pay for the non funded hours / meals) you are eligible for. All info on what you can claim here: https://www.childcarechoices.gov.uk/ Funded hours start from 9months old. If your DP earns over £100k, you won't be eligible for anything I'm afraid. Some nurseries / childminders have extremely long waiting lists - if this is your area, you can consider signing up before baby is born.

Work - it sounds like one of you will need to change your jobs or you'll need a live in nanny (££££). Can you DP work closer to home to cover the nights? Otherwise, you have your whole mat leave to apply for other roles, so you can start looking around and seeing if there is anything else locally that would work for when you return after mat leave. Alternatively you can see if you can negotiate no overnights with your employer? Not sure whether that's feasible for you.

You’d either need to pick set days at a nursery - and they’ll obviously charge even if you don’t use it.

Or employ a nanny who is happy with work that changes each week but you’d give them a schedule in advance with the hours on and a guaranteed base amount. They are about £13-15 an hour though outside of London.

Were I am this is impossible. Both nurseries and childminders will only accept a minimum of a half day rate which is usually 7.30-1 or 1-6, if you need times that overlap you'd pay a full day rate anyway.

And with nursery in particular you sign up for set days and pay that regardless of whether the child is there or not. So if they're off for any reason or ill you still pay. It's a minefield. Tax free childcare is available which helps a bit, but ultimately I have found that 1 parent needs to fine flexible work or have set hours that you can manage childcare around. I dropped a day with each child at work, and moved offices to a more local location to facilitate drop offs and pick ups.

I found out I was pregnant a few days ago so it’s not something we have discussed at length or figured out as of yet. We are both trying to navigate how maternity and childcare works and how others manage in similar situations and then assessing our options and the best ways of moving forward.
I assume we will lean towards my partner finding local work and me hopefully getting a different role in school and then navigating childcare.

We also saved prior to and during pregnancy as I was the higher earner and ended up only having 12 weeks full pay and then 39 weeks SMP. You are also entitled to do 10 keeping in touch days at work while you're off on maternity leave where you can get paid your normal day rate. You also accrue all holidays as normal while you are off which for me meant I could receive normal full pay for 8 weeks at the end of my Mat leave. There are ways to boost your May pay if you are clever with holidays etc!

Thank you for the info! Much appreciated. I’m unsure exactly what the mat pay is at work, ive searched high and low for my contract documents but I can’t find them. As I’m only very early into my pregnancy I don’t want to ask any questions which might lead to work finding out about my pregnancy yet. I am hoping the mat pay is a little more generous, I just need to find out somehow without raising suspicion

So you are due around the beginning of the summer holidays, do you get holiday pay or are you only paid for term time & then your salary split over 12 months? Lots of women use annual leave to cover part of their maternity leave, either at the beginning to enable them to finish earlier or at the end to allow them to stay off longer, could you use yours to cover when your money finishes? Have you looked at if you will qualify for universal credit if you don't go back to work full time or change to a daytime only job as I imagine you get paid shift money for working overnights?
Can you go through all your living expenses to see if you can cut back on things, check everything to see if you can get it cheaper, utillities, insurance, can you extend your mortgage or overpay from now to you finishing work to cover your drop in money. Find out what your maternity package is, lots of employers pay either full or 90% of your salary for 6 months before dropping down to SMP level.

I just wanted to recommend the website Childcare. Co.uk.
If a Nanny is too expensive, try to find a local Childminder with some flexibility.

If you did have to stay over, Night Nannies do exist who would stay up all night looking after baby (but presumably you or DH would then have to be home some daytimes). I just came across a Night Nanny on the Bubble App today, charging £18ph (to give you an idea).

Good advice on childcare etc here. I just wanted to add that we bought our baby up in a one bed flat until 18 months then moved. It is doable, you just need to get creative with the space you have.

Your workplace should have maternity policy which will tell you what you are entitled to. I know you said you need a bigger car and flat and in an ideal world you probably would get those things. However given you haven't had a chance to save for this baby I wouldn't look to increase your outgoings. You will be able to manage in a one bed flat and life will be a lot less stressful if you have some savings behind you.

Forget about the car and flat. You can cope in a small car, you'll have to leave the car seat in situ and just put the baby in and out. Take the largest room in your home and turn it into a bedsit for yourself and partner. Baby gets the smaller room for their bedroom/toys.

One or both of you will need a new job. A great many people, usually women, lose their careers due to having a baby for the simple reason they can't afford to return to work until child is in nursery/school, then are limited in the hours they can do. This is often but not always due to men refusing to compromise their career progression at all so their partner can keep her career to some extent. The other factor is women wanting a few years as a SAHM over and above all else in her life. And lack of informal childcare or ability to pay for formal childcare, children have school holidays or teacher training days and they get sick, employees only have a certain amount of annual leave and often it doesn't stretch far enough, so one person ends up part time or not working.

Can you live solely on partner's salary, without him being financially controlling and considering it "his money"? If so, returning to work and spending all your wages on childcare means you earn zero, for now, but also means you keep your career and at some point in future you will stop paying it all out in childcare. It means if you split up you have your career still, this is weighed against losing those first few years with your baby as a SAHM and still effectively earning nothing. It's personal choice. Either way, money needs to go into a joint account (both sets of wages) and all bills paid from there, including childcare and some into savings for emergencies and pension contributions for you both, all big purchases talked through first by both of you, all money is family money from now on. If there's any left over you can divide it equally (either drawn out in cash or moved into personal bank accounts) and that's your personal spends for the month. If he won't do this, consider becoming a single parent (ie you live separately) because you may be better off (and claim child support from him).

Go on Entitled To website and enter your hypothetical details as they would be a) if you stay as you are once baby born, b) if you become SAHM once baby born and c) if you're a single parent. This will give you some idea of benefits you could claim in each of these situations and can help you decide what to do next.

Sit down with partner, draw up a budget and don't miss anything out. If you're left with a minus figure at the end of the month, you'll have to get really ruthless about what is truly an essential and what is not.

Hmm not generally in my experience as they may be unable to fill the space for the remainder of the day. You might get lucky but I wouldn’t bet on it

Bluntly OP, privacy and principles don't pay the bills. Ask for the information.

Everyone doesn't have to be told and work should respect your privacy about telling others, but either your line manager or human resources will guess when you ask for information, although I don't believe you need to confirm or deny straight away. There's a legal point at which you need to tell an employer.

You need the maternity information ASAP so you have as much time to plan and make decisions as possible. Consider it putting your baby first and setting aside your own feelings on it. There's going to be a lot of that from here on in! At the end of the day the world won't end if your employer knows about your pregnancy a bit sooner than you'd like, even if you ended up miscarrying.

Does your employer have an intranet or similar where policy documents are published? That might be a way of finding out your company maternity pay policy without asking questions.

Big thank you to everyone for the info!
I found my work place mat policy last night, unfortunately they don’t pay any enhanced rates, SMP only.
Given the information above, I think my partner will have to find a part time job around my full time hours and we will need to make it work. I would hope work would be flexible with the sleep ins but I highly doubt this, if they’re providing difficult I think my only choice would be to be a SAHM. I don’t want to give up my career, but I’m not missing out on so much of my babies first years for absolutely no financial gain.
We did plan to get a new car but given the circumstances and finances I think we will be staying put for a while!