How much to save for maternity leave?

[MiaRosexo]

Hi ladies, my partner and I are planning on TTC for our first child - we have already experienced a miscarriage last year. My problem is I’m a real money worrier and I’m anxious about the financial aspects - my work only offer standard SMP and I am the highest earner, and will be losing approx £1600 a month, and although my partner is a very generous man, his monthly wage physically wouldn’t cover the mortgage and bills etc.

To prepare early, we are both starting to save now so my question is - what is a reasonable amount to save? My outgoings alone come to around £1k so we would ideally like to save £9k between us to cover my outgoings for 9 months. We also obviously don’t know how long it will take us to conceive so we may have longer to save. Let’s say 1 year of saving £9,000, that is £750 per month, £375 each.

Does this seem reasonable? Too over the top/too anxious?

Thank you 😊

Work out what your bills are and what you’ll have coming in monthly, how long you want to be off, and budget from there. It may be that you can reduce spending for those months to make it a bit easier, some things you naturally pay less for e.g. if you have a long commute then lower petrol costs, but I’m on maternity leave now and although everyone told me you don’t spend much on maternity leave I haven’t found that to be the case really!

Save your buffer so that your bills are all covered and then my advice would be to buy as much of the baby bits for year 1 as you can while pregnant so that there’s less to buy on maternity. Clothes etc buy some of all the sizes beforehand, buy weaning bits beforehand as I found at 6 months there was suddenly a lot to buy (clothes, highchair, cutlery/plates for weaning, bibs, new toys as developmentally she was ready for different ones).

I'd look at all your expenses and decide what is necessary and what you can live without (priorities change when dc come along).
Look at cost of childcare because you may need to pay a deposit/first month before you get your first wage after maternity leave..
Ideally enough to pay your outgoings every month plus remember you'll have extras nappies, highchair, maybe formula and bottles etc. You'll be able to apply for child benefit and that will help with these extra costs.
Maybe look on entitled (or similar) and see if you'd be entitled to any extra support (do two calculations one with both wages as you intend to be after maternity leave and one with the estimated figures during maternity leave). This will give you a better idea of your potential future needs and direct your savings.
Also don't go mad buying loads of baby things most things are not a necessity.

I would definitely plan for a full year off, everyone I know who goes back early really regrets it. Especially if you end up starting mat leave early, you might be leaving an 8 month old.

What is your plan for childcare when you do go back? Nursery fees are £80 a day here for a baby. Might be better to do shared leave and your partner take off some time if he earns less?

Everyone will say you can get everything 2nd hand and cheap but its not always possible and depends where you are. I'd say you want minimum £2k for baby stuff for the first year even with some bargains. Don't forget maternity clothes/ nursing bras etc- yes again 2nd hand bundles are possible but I really struggled finding anything in my size. Also potential pregnancy physio etc.

Do you want to do baby classes/ meet up for lunch or just go to church type stay and plays. That will change your spending hugely.

I’d save as much as you can so you have a buffer. Minimum would be enough to cover basic outgoings obviously.

You don’t need to buy new baby things (except car seat) - there is a huge mark up on new prams, cots etc (can buy new mattress) so can save there as well.

Save as much as you can, you might have to look at shared parental leave if you're higher earner.

You will probably notice some things get more expensive after baby - heating bill, needing to buy clothes, shopping - especially formula and nappies. Also baby groups got pretty expensive at like £8-£10 a class and you'll likely want some money towards that. If you have a velcro baby TV streaming subscription to watch while nap trapped. Nursery deposit.

Others will get cheaper - e.g. no longer commuting. You also will likely (depending on the timing of your leave with financial year) get a potential tax rebate and/or pay less tax when you go back for a couple months because you were getting paid less for those months.

You can adjust spending now to save more compromising on holidays, nights out, takeaways etc. You can budget carefully, use shared parental leave. You could look to make a job move to somewhere with better benefits.

And I hate bringing a downer on it but you do need to plan for the unexpected. You could end up with a miserable pregnancy and be unwell and off work for several months (happened to me)

Yeah this.

I’d also say as an aside from your “maternity” savings, you ideally need to have other savings for the usual emergency/house stuff/car stuff/repairs. One of my friends had saved carefully for her maternity leave to ensure they had enough to pay the bills but then only a few months into her leave had the oven break, issues with the heating & then a car needing repaired. They had saved for maternity but didn’t have any other real savings for these things- so the money had to come out of the maternity savings as it was the only money they had. It meant that instead of having say £9k saved suddenly they only had £6/7k which changed things considerably.

Depending on your age I would really say get yourself into the best position financially that you can before trying/having a baby, so saving for maternity leave yes but also making sure you have other savings there so that if it did come to it then any unexpected bills could come from there rather than money you desperately need.

Also agree that your usual bills go up after having a baby, mine certainly have! Even little things like pre-baby we never really had the heating on, we just put layers on, but now we have to have it on because the house has to be warm for her. More things plugged in using electricity like prep machine, red light for sleep, white noise machine. More washing loads being done than ever before with all of her clothes etc. TV on pretty much 24/7 because it helped keep me awake during the night feeds etc. So do factor in that your bills will be higher than they are currently, and if formula feeding then that’s an extra £50-60 formula monthly etc

Also to echo what @Mrsttcno1 said you could find yourself with a winter baby snd at home all day and if the weather is like today (ice and snow where I am) then the heat will be on which is a massive change from both of ye out of the house all day. We also had a massive car repair bill which happened the same week I ended up signed off work . To add to my good fortune the company i worked for went bust so I didn't even have a job to go back to after maternity leave and anything else on offer was paying lower than my previous position. However it was actually a lovely time in my life and we got through it and we managed.

Agree with PP to save as much as you can. I took a year mat leave but asked to be put back onto payroll/take my holiday days once my mat pay ended so I only ended up with 2 months with no pay. This may be worth exploring if this is an option where you work.

I fell unexpectedly pregnant after a contraception failure, and had no savings as we had spent every penny we had renovating our house. We managed okay - we didn’t save any money but I massively tightened my belt and it was fine. I did a few bank switch deals for some extra cash which helped a lot.

My baby was born in December and I didn’t spend much at all in those first few months. Plus I breastfed which was cheap. Looking back I bought way too many baby clothes - they really don’t need much at all. Best of luck X

Thanks so much. In terms of childcare, I know the free 15 hours a week is coming in soon which will help a little, but not much. I’d like to go back 4 days a week so if I’m correct, would only have to fund 2 extra days a week? Maybe that’s naive of me though as I’m new to this and I know there is extra food etc that they add on. I think fees are slightly cheaper where I am - I’ve looked at the average and I think it’s around £55 for full day.

I’d also definitely be keen to look into shared leave but if I’m honest it’s all really confusing, I don’t quite understand it! I need to do more research and get my head around it :)

thank you!

This is really reassuring, thanks so much for your kindness and I hope you are doing well! X

If you’re the main earner could you split paternity leave with your partner so he does more?

Remember if your company offers keeping in touch days during maternity leave those are paid. If you’re entitled to a bonus you’d still receive this on mat leave and many use accumulated holiday at the end of their leave so you’re paid for that as technically back ‘working’ or stagger returning full time.

I would save as much as possible to prepare without making your lives miserable. Childcare costs may also need to be paid before you return to work, for example a nursery deposit.

That’s not correct re. The childcare hours sorry OP! They aren’t actually free hours, it’s easier to look at them as “discount” but they aren’t actually free and you don’t just pay for the hours you use, it’s a full day or half day. So as an example even if you only need baby in nursery 9am-4pm, you need to pay for a full day which (at our nursery) is 7:30am-6pm so basically 11 hours for funding purposes. It doesn’t work out as anywhere even close to 15 free hours, it is a discount but you still have to pay top ups and consumables as well as an admin fee for using the hours usually!

Remember though if you are both eligible you can use tax free childcare to save 20%

Oh crikey that really is confusing haha thank you for explaining, there’s a lot to consider!

Just to give you an idea re childcare.

My 8 month old is going to go 3 days a week and with the 15 hours I still will be paying over £500 a month (he will be doing 30 hours a week).

I'd say you need to save enough for your bills and any other spending. I'd suggest saving for the whole 12 months so you've got a good buffer!

You’d be best off having a chat with a nursery to get an idea of fees.

I’m on maternity leave now and my daughter starts nursery in March when I go back to work, I had done all the research, thought I’d worked out what the nursery fees would be. I was wrong- by £100’s a month, because the nurseries all apply the funding differently, they all have different admin fees/consumables charges, term time/non term time splits etc. It is a minefield!

Definitely save as much as you are able to. Plan to utilise your KIT days wherever possible during maternity leave to boost your pay. Save your annual leave to tag on to maternity leave. I finished work at 37 weeks and booked in two weeks of holidays, then had my 39 weeks maternity leave, and my workplace carried over the remainder of my holidays to tag on to the end meaning I didn't need to take the full year (with 3 months unpaid) but I did get 11 months off.

My nursery is also £55 a day. For four days, with 15 free hours, the invoice was £710.50 a month (£569.40 a month using tax free childcare).

We send her five days a week, with 15 free hours, and pay £829.50 a month (£663.50 with tax free childcare).

The 15 hours only really covers one day, and it's only allocated for 38 weeks a year, so spread out over the year works out at one day per week, then there's the cost of food etc on top of that. Our meals are £9 per day (breakfast, morning snack, dinner, afternoon snack).

Oh my gosh this is mind boggling haha! This is totally different to how I thought it would be - clearly I need to start researching and understanding more! :)

Different nurseries apply it in different ways. I was pleasantly surprised with the way our £90 per day nursery applies the discount as we only pay £550 per month for 3 days. Funded hours are changing to 30 days in September 2025 from 9 months of age.

Before the funding our previous nursery was £1300 a month for 3 days!

Something to be aware of is that they need to be 9 months at a certain date otherwise you need to wait for the next term however. I have a friend who wished they'd booked a c section before the Easter weekend rather than after as it would have saved them thousands.

OP I'd recommend speaking to nurseries and getting a fee estimate, don't just go by the day rate as they all differ so much. Eg some nurseries will only discount across 5 days.

I would get fee lists from your local nurseries. They vary hugely and be aware fees will probably go up in April. They all apply the funding very differently. It's term time only and supposedly only 8hr a day I think. So if you need childcare 52weeks a year, it has to be spread around. If you're lucky they just apply a simple consumable charge, if you're unlucky they just take the government funding off their full price.

As an example my nursery is £79 a day for a 2yr old 8-6pm. With the full free hours and tax free childcare it would be £29.50 for the same day if we wanted year round childcare. Whereas I've a friend who only pays like £7 per day after funding at a different nursery.

Thank you for everyone's lovely comments and advice, if anyone has any more thoughts and advice on saving for maternity leave firstly that would be greatly appreciated! :)

I’m on maternity now and we saved enough that we actually have the same amount of money available as we did when I was working as a safety net (if that makes sense), we also have separate savings for other bits so that any other unexpected expenses didn’t have to come out of the “maternity” pot, we bought all the big bits while I was pregnant (pram, nursery furniture, clothes for different ages rather than just newborn and 0-3) and this has worked well for us BUT I have found that from about 6 months+ maternity/baby has got more expensive. For the first few months they sleep a lot and are only awake for a couple hours at a time so can be easily entertained in the house mostly. From about 6 months ish she is active, she gets bored and it’s much easier to entertain her if we get out & about which then adds up, plus the weaning/food expenses, and all the new toys for the developmental leaps like sitting etc so if you could buy some of those bits in advance it would save you on maternity x