How much did you save and budget for each week for 2nd DC mat leave

[Jellybabie3]

I know it's a nosey question but I want to start saving for ttc DC2 end of next year god willing. This time round i spent alot of money on frivolous things which I enjoyed immensely but in hindsight I could have not spent so much. I had 13months with DS. I also allowed for pram etc which would be recycled for dc2. I am now only working 3 days a week so lower income plus childcare so need to put money away to cover time off. Seems mad so far in advance but I would like to make sure I can spend atleast 9m if possible with them of we can concieve.
So What is your weekly spend allowance after all bills, food, childcare etc on mat leave.....

Thank you!

I'm currently on maternity leave with my 4th and I've never saved a single penny for any of them

Ah OK thats interesting. I have 12 weeks full pay then 6 months stat before switching to no pay. We cant live off DH income alone so top ups from savings are required for me to be off past the 12 week mark.

With DD I calculated how much pay I would lose over my 9 months maternity (same maternity package as you but I wasn’t sure I could stretch to the full year) and added how much I thought I’d need to buy the first year’s worth of baby things. Took off 9 x my monthly spend on fuel and parking for work which wouldn’t be needed when I was off (quite a substantial amount which helped) and what we normally save monthly (we didn’t save anything while I was off) and then what was left was the amount we had to save before my maternity started. It worked well - we had to cut back on our spending a bit in order to get that amount by the time DD arrived but that was quite easy as there were no more boozy nights out for me anyway. It meant once she was here money wasn’t an issue, we didn’t need to cut back any further and I could just enjoy my maternity. The amount we needed to save per month was also similar to the cost of childcare once I returned so we were ready for that. We’ll do the same when we start to think about DC2.

I’m quite organised with my money and have budgets for everything. There was no way I could just wing it. However my best friend had absolutely no idea how much less her maternity pay would be and saved not a penny beforehand. They had to cut back on spending a lot more on her leave than I did but still managed fine and she has had another DC since with the same approach to her leave. So probably not worth stressing about too much!

Oh and in terms of a shorter amount of leave next time, I had no regrets about taking the 9 months rather than a year. I went off at 36 weeks without using any of my holiday allowance beforehand, and then took virtually all my accrued holiday before I went back so DD was over 10 months. Although longer would have been nice I didn’t feel that for the financial cost of those three zero-pay months I would have been any more ready to go back.

Thank you i appreciate your response.

I am doing similar calculations although am unsure what spending money to allow per week for non essential bills so the clothes, coffee, groups money.

I personally didn’t really set a budget for that. What we’d saved meant that we had pretty much the same per month as with my usual pay. Bills and food stayed the same and whatever was left at the end was our spending money - just spent on baby clothes, coffees and groups rather than meals and drinks out. No idea what I actually spent although I don’t think it was very much to be honest. I’m pleased I’m not alone in the advance planning anyway!

We didn't save.