How to budget for a baby when you're the sole breadwinner

[Maya1804]

This is my first post so please be gentle! I've been searching for posts around knowing how much to save before starting a family, which I realise is highly subjective. I am in a slightly rarer situation in that I'm a self employed freelancer with a freelancer partner who earns money in chunks, every few years with in idea of when it might come in. Basically, if I stop earning money, then we don't have any funds. We have decent savings but given the nature of my work, I'm concerned that my clients might dry up if I take maternity leave. So I guess my question is to anyone in a similar situation - how did you manage? How many months of runway did you need to make it work? How can you plan for something that is impossible to plan for basically!

This was (and is!) very similar to my set up except I’m an employee rather than freelance. My DH earns (in a good year!) maybe 5/10k in a creative job.

Anyway I completely discounted his income and saved up enough to take a year off. So I just sat down, made a spreadsheet of absolute essential spend and saved that.

At a year I went back to work full time and DS started two days a week in childcare and 3 days with DH. It’s worked pretty brilliantly for us. DS started school this year and it’s been fantastic to have somebody with the flexibility to do all the pick up and drop offs. My work is actually pretty flexible and I normally manage a few a week but I don’t have to if work kicks off/ I have a meeting/ whatever.

I'm somewhat horrified by the level of sexism in the responses here. If it was a self employed father with a creative SAHM who wrote novels and for paid specifically for them then I can't imagine the OP getting the kind of responses she's had here.

OP- I think your plans sound great. Your supportive partner has agreed to be the main career to enable you pick up your career and you have plenty of savings.

This may not be helpful as I don't know how it all works, but in convential jobs the maternity leave can be shared, and they are getting more flexible around this. I don't know if MA can also be shared but it might be worth looking at whether your partner could claim it?

The sexism is shit but completely reflects the attitudes i often get in real life (as well as on here).

I would just caution against only having one plan. You can’t guarantee how you will feel after the birth - with birth injuries, Surgery wounds, PND, or even “just” the baby blues, there’s a whole spectrum of physical and emotional upheaval to recover from, even if you have a straightforward birth. Maternity Leave is also to allow the mother to recover, not just to provide childcare for a newborn.

It’s fine to share it, and even to plan for your DH to take on the bulk of the leave, but as PP says, try to plan to be flexible enough so that if you need more time to recover you can, rather than having to either let clients down or do the work while still bruised and bleeding!

Also it’s good to see you’re thinking about childcare options. Most babies really cant just be left in the corner of the room while parents work from home - as well as their physical needs they need attention and stimulation for their development.

Others have given good advice about how to use KIT days effectively - rather than doing a couple of hours a day could you save it up to do it once a week?

I think Cressida is right, to be honest.

I'm not a freelancer, but what we did was figure out how much time I wanted to take off, and then drew up a budget on Excel (fuel costs likely to go down slightly, but more money for baby paraphernalia and heating/electricity as I'll be home) and worked out the amount we needed to fund the deficit OR what we could cut out instead.

We use an app called You Need a Budget which has been life changing and makes all of this so much easier.

It seems like it's the norm to take a year off these days, but I'd suggest if you have a SAHP and time is ticking on then perhaps you could consider saving for 3-6 months instead? I'm only taking 4 off. My husband is the main breadwinner but I like my job and 2020 is set to be an exciting year for me, so we only had to save a little and then find ~£1000 a month in the budget for childcare when I return. A budget makes things a lot easier!

Without knowing more about your dh’s job, it’s difficult to say.

Putting how and when he’s paid aside, does he work in a sporadic way too? Or is he required to be working full time hours?

I think the focus here is probably on how to minimise your client loss. Can you take on an assistant or mat cover? Someone who can do the day to day stuff? If your dh’s working time is sporadic could he take up some slack between jobs?

Bottom line is probably that you won’t be able to take much mat leave unless your clients are very understanding, or your dh or someone else can take the reins or the bulk of the pressure off. And hope your birth and recovery is straightforward.

Do you have space for a home help or an au pair? That way you have help if you want to spend some time keeping the work ticking over. University student if you time it for the holidays? Depending on your field you might find someone competent.

I think the answer is probably to save as much as you can, and find ways to delegate - your work, housework, childcare, as much as possible, so you can free up time to minimise the impact on your business.