What costa did you split during maternity leave?

[rrrrrreatt]

My partner and I are hoping to start trying for a baby soon so I’m really interested to know how people managed their money and split costs during this period. We’ve spoken a lot about how we’ll share the practicalities of having a child (childcare, work, etc) but not really about money.

My work offers 6 months full pay, 3 months statutory maternity pay and 3 months unpaid. We’re both good earners so I’m more concerned about agreeing something fair rather than how we’ll cover the basics.

My partner’s lovely and I know he’ll want to be fair but I have no reference point for what other people do to start the conversation. My mum and most of my extended family had partners who made minimal financial contribution (maternity or otherwise) and my sister stayed at home so they took everything from my brother in law’s salary for years. My friends don’t really talk about how they’ve done it either.

We’re in the process of buying a house now so will soon have a joint account for all our house and general family expenses, what other costs should I consider? And how do people split the rest, especially personal debts? What do people do about student loans, do you overpay or take the hit of not paying for the lower paid maternity leave extending your overall repayment period?

Normally I wouldn’t consider letting my partner pay a penny of either because I made those choices but missing out on half a year full pay, and the progress of paying things off with that, is making me worried.

I was stupid and ran up significant personal debt when I was younger and I’m still paying off my large student loan. I’ve been overpaying my debt the past few years and would be rid of personal debt in 30 months and student loan free in 5.5 years without maternity leave.

I’m aware I’m incredibly privileged to worry about these things but my childhood has made me very anxious about having my own financial security, independent from my partner, after we have a child and being debt free (except our mortgage) asap has become a big goal due to that. My judgement could also be clouded by these insecurities so I want to understand a bit more about how other people approach maternity leave to be fair and equitable.

The title should be costs but autocorrect has intervened and I can’t change it! I’m not worried about splitting lattes while on mat leave.

Don’t do it without getting married op.

having children is always of financial detriment to the mother - however you try to mitigate it. Get married (even if just on paper and no ceremony as such) then talk children. If not you need a watertight signed agreement by a solicitor where he compensates you for loss of earnings, future earnings, pension et al.

Maternity leave is there primarily to make sure the child is with the mother (or if shared paternity leave a parent) and covers childcare. It therefore means that you should not have to cover the costs of doing so because you are in effect covering childcare.

Is the latter an option for the final 3 months unpaid

But in effect you pay what you can and he covers the rest - I assume childcare would be split so why the difference.

DH and I have always had everything in one pot though

We got married, opened a joint account and every penny goes in there.

If you take more time that the 6 months full pay you must split the cost equally between you. As otherwise, where does it end. You choose to take the baby to a £3 playgroup? You want the child to have swimming lessons? The school child needs an after school club because you want to work full time (ignoring the fact he also works full time). He gets to go cycling or play golf for 5 hours every Saturday because he has a busy, demanding job and is soooo tired. Paying for the children and your drop in income MUST be a joint expense. Your children must be a joint responsibility.

Also, seriously consider him taking some paternity leave when you return to work, so he understands what it means to parent. DH and I did this and it absolutely set the baseline for our family life - and stopped us adopting a 1950s model of ft dad and pt mum who does 90% of things with and for the children.

Lecture over, brilliant that you are thinking about this now. My advice is to think wider than just money, but think about roles, responsibility and what you want your lives together to look like. Exciting times!

Put it all in one pot. It's crazy to me that people say they are a partnership but yet obsess about dividing money , especially when there are children involved. Would he see you have less money than him, would you see him have less money than you?

Ever since DH and i lived together (when he was still DP), we had a joint account for all shared expenses - rent / mortgage / bills / food / going out together etc. Each month we both put the same amount in and then anything left over from our individual salaries we kept in our individual accounts. Anything spare at the end of the month from the joint account got swept into shared savings. This way, we built up joint savings but we also both had our individual savings / spends too (so eg. If he wanted a night out with the boys or i went out for brunch with friends, it didn't come from the joint account).

When DD was born, after my full pay mat leave ended, DH upped the amount he paid into the joint account to cover all household expenses. We kept money in the joint account for baby classes etc from when i was getting full pay so that i didn't have to worry about "asking" for money. It meant he didnt have any individual savings / spends for that period, but we looked at it as it being his share of the sacrifice for having DD at home longer.

When i went back to work part time, we pro rated the amount we pay into the joint ac to reflect my drop in income (so he pays a bit more in compared to pre kids, I pay less). Although obs the total amount that gets paid in his higher as we have around £1k of childcare costs every month. I'm going back full time in 2023 so we will go back to 50/50 then.

On student loans, i actually kept paying mine whilst I was on mat leave but that's because it paid off during that period so i only had a few months left to go.

As pp said, I won't do it without getting married. I rely on my husband not only financially but emotionally and marriage gives me a huge sense of security.
I have always worked hard and loved my financial freedom, but the baby changed everything. I really cannot bear the thought to put my 8 months old into nursery and I think the costs of nursery in this country is insane. (They will never give rid of the gender pay gap if these costs doesn't allow women to get back to work and continue their careers). I decided not to go back to work for an other year (I work from home part time but it isn't much) so we basically have to live of my husband salary.
If your partner wants baby he has to be ok to put everything in the same pot even if it's means paying out your personal and student loans.

Financial independence is very important to me too and I have always wanted to have my own separate finances. For maternity leave, we worked out the difference between my usual annual salary and what I'd get on maternity leave and then divided that in half and each saved a portion of it. There were lots of spreadsheets involved! We do also have a joint account but that's only to pay our mortgage really.

I worked out what I’d earn over the year then averaged it out to each month and my DH gave money each money to top that up so we were even in our income. So rather than act as normal when I was on a good amount then expect a lot more from him when I was unpaid leave it had less of an impact but was fair and also prepared us as a couple for paying childcare and him paying more when I went part time. We have two DC now and he pays a higher contribution to our bills and mortgage but our own money is still separate as I prefer it that way.
In my opinion the debt should come out of your half once it’s split and isn’t his to have to contribute to. I didn’t think too much about my student loan; they decreased it when I was on less pay and I just went with it. My student loan is quite a long way off being paid though

We get paid into the same account and pay all the essentials (debt, housing, bills, essential spending like food, clothes, sports equipment etc.) out of it. After that, we just talk to each other about other things that we'd like and if that seems like a reasonable thing to spend on. Financial independence went out the window for both of us when we decided to have children together and get married.

Currently on maternity leave. We just pay household expenses from household income. No stressing or quibbling about who has paid what, it's all just family money to pay for our family.

From my own experience, I'd also recommend thinking how you'd split finances if your DC had significant additional needs and/or your DH works away for a large part of the time. When my DC were born, we were a typical family unit, but over time our child needed more time from us and at the same time my DH was required to work away for about 30% of the time, mostly on an ad hoc basis. The 'plan' should be able to withstand stress tests like this imo.

Being on the same page about finances I've heard is a very good predictor of marriage longevity so it's good to discuss it now :)

Thank you (and everybody else who said get married!) for this advice. When we met getting married first was non-negotiable which he agreed with but just recently I lie in bed late at night thinking “maybe we should just have a baby ASAP”. I’m 33 and my cousin’s recently had fertility treatment which has worried me a bit. We don’t want an expensive wedding so it’s something we could easily afford before start trying - we’re very much social club and sausage rolls vibes! It’s on the list (as unromantic as that sounds) but buying a house took priority.

You don’t need a big wedding to get married. It’s more the benefit of your children that you are married.

We share all finances, we get the same amount of ‘pocket money’ each a month and the rest comes out of the family pot.

Agree wrt to marrying first.
Honestly, I think the easiest, fairest and best way of doing this is to have one pot for all income, and it is considered as family money. DH and I personally just take as needed out of there after bills and savings (we have a joint savings account and I have a personal savings account) but friends have systems where they have equal ‘fun’ spending money out of the pot allocated etc.

All money is family money. Its the easiest and fairest way,

You can agree to both keep the same amount of fun money in your own accounts to do what you want with, but absolutely everything else is a joint cost.

If you're going to share raising a child, you need to be sharing money. There are so many things that could go wrong, or unexpected costs that come up, delays with returning to work - you need to get on the same page right now that you're in this together and will pay for it together. I have been the higher earner for most of my relationship but we split all money jointly - we are a team.

We got married then pooled everything. There are so many times that when one parent is working the other can’t be that your careers and earning potential are completely intertwined with one another’s. You can act as if they are separate, and many people do, but they aren’t.

We’re a family so all money is joint regardless of salary. All money into one account with the same amount of money transferred back to our personal account. Couldn’t be in a relationship where one person has less personal money and access to the family account.

How have you had discussions about having children but haven't discussed money?

Normally I wouldn’t consider letting my partner pay a penny of either because I made those choices but missing out on half a year full pay, and the progress of paying things off with that, is making me worried

Why on earth would you not let your partner contribute to a cost of their own child?

The reality is that even if you go straight back to work women pay a maternity tariff on lifetime earnings. At the point at which you start compromising earnings to have a family then you need to consider money to be joint within the family and act accordingly to protect the longer term interests of the child and parents.

Similarly childcare is not your expense singular to be calculated against your earnings, its a joint expense which also protects the primary carer's future financial independence should anything happen.

I also echo the advice to get married before children - even if its just the paperwork to be followed by a big party later on on finances are better.

Get married then pool everything. Need to consider the longer term. Otherwise you are in for many years of endless spreadsheets and arguments. A classic example: you are working 3days a week, you have two kids so between you you have two lots of childcare costs and two lots of mat leave, he continues working full time, your pay progression is restricted by needing a job where you can be close to childcare/school pick up so you can't move roles/seek promotion easily because you need to be near home and the promotion would mean more travel or unpredictability, so he ends up earning more than you and also btw as a result less is going in your own pension. So in that context, for example, how do you split the cost when you decide to book a family holiday if you have separate finances? Much easier if all money is joint. Obviously not all couples are like this there are many where earnings and childcare are more equal or the woman earns more but it's a pretty common scenario

Also obviously you need to budget for plenty of costas

Totally agree with all PP have said about marriage and sharing. We nominally keep our finances separate - I'm the higher earner and would be happy to pool, but DH prefers it this way. However, we pay for everything in proportion to our earnings so in practice it works out as if we'd pooled it.

I'd also reiterate the point about considering shared parental leave - we did it roughly six months each and a) it means neither of us is "default parent" with all the mental load and b) DH has a really strong bond with DC and truly understands what it takes to look after them. Even if that doesn't work for you, a month for DH at home solo would be enough, plus means you can go back to work without having to settle DC in childcare at the same time, which makes it much less stressful.

We also both went part time for a bit after leave ended - DH is still part time and I eventually went back to full time. I give him some money each month so our overall pot is still split as if we were both full time. He also makes extra pension contributions so he doesn't lose out there.

Don't assume it has to be you who makes the career sacrifices - it may make sense for that to be the case and you will need to take the initial part of maternity leave at least, but it's not necessarily the default and longer term you're a team raising your family. Whoever is working less at any given time should be compensated financially by the other for the childcare they're providing enabling them to work (and this includes thinking about pensions and any career progression given up).

Good luck - this is absolutely the right time to have these discussions and make sure you're both clear about how things will work.

And yes, @crochetmeahat not pooling does mean a lot of complex spreadsheets to work out finances - one of many reasons I'd be happier to just pool! 😂