Maternity pay

[Polkadot123]

Hey all. Bit of a personal question so apologies in advance, please don’t reply if you aren’t comfortable but massive thanks if you are happy to share.
I’m currently expecting baby number 1 and I’m interested in what people generally spend their mat pay/ allowance on or are planning to do. I’m on maternity allowance due to being self employed so will receive around 600 a month. Just trying to work out my budgets etc. Do people contribute a small amount to home bills and mortgage etc out of this or do you expect partners to cover that? I know everyone’s situation is completely different and that some people have separate accounts than their partner, some have joint etc. I’m just trying to gain some perspective. Thanks in advance x

I think it will depend hugely on your partners income.
My DH income covers all bills and savings. I spend my pay and now mat pay on things for me and maybe small bits for the kids.

Before may leave me and DH paid 50% each of the money needed for joint account. This covers mortgage bills food mobile phone bill. The rest of our pay is ours to do what we want with I’ve been on maternity leave now for 7 months. We work out the percentage of my normal wage that I have been paid via may leave and I then pay that percentage of my usual joint bill if that makes sense. So for example if I usually paid 600 into joint account and my mat pay was 50% of my usual pay I would pay £300 into joint account? My DH has topped up the rest. I never wanted to be in a position where I had to ask my DH for money. Ever.

Anything that we pay for for the baby comes out of the joint account.

My DP and I put equal amount every month into joint account to cover bills. I will be in matery pay from February so We have saved enough to cover my share of bills until i am back on full pay. That way the 600 quid is for me to spend

We have a joint account both pays go into it and all bills ( everything comes out of it) we give each other personal spends money from it ( for clothes, make up ect) so everything is equal. Mat pay will go to joint like normal, but coz I just get sat mat pay ( which is dog shite) we will have to use savings each month while on mat leave. Dh loves a spread sheet so has all incomings and outgoings and we know what's what.

Every couple is different and you have to do what works for both of you and what you feel is fair. Maybe sit down and work out what's coming in and what's going out.

We saved a bit before the baby arrived in the joint bills account. Then when I was on much less mat pay my partner would transfer me money each month to even up our ‘salaries’ so we had around £1000 a month each. Then we put the same amount as each other into the bills account, but as we had already saved a bit this was reduced from normal (e.g. £300 each instead of £600)

That way we could still pay our own individual bills (e.g. cars/credit cards) and spend what we liked on little bits and pieces. Most baby stuff came from the joint account. To be honest though, since being on mat leave we’ve spent very little on the baby as all of the main purchases were made when we were both still earning.

So our household bills mortgage food etc come up to £1200 for the month, normally me and DH go halves but he has paid this all himself whilst im on mat leave, then i have paid my own bills (car, insurance etc.) with my mat pay (self employed the same.) If we fancied a takeaway or any additionals i would pay for it as he had already covered all the bills.
It was terrifying at first as i was used to bringing home £2200 - 2700 a month myself and dropping to 600 i didnt think was possible - but we've survived. Lockdown has helped as we used to eat out around 3-4 times a week which eats alot of money up!

We do the same as @boymum88. Both our wages go into a shared account that all bills/costs etc come out of. From that shared account we pay ourselves a set 'allowance' each month into our personal accounts.

Once I'm on SMP it'll still be the same, just that we'll have to top up our joint account with savings.

Usually we both put equal amounts into the joint account. I only get SMP so I’ve been saving as much as I can to be able to top up my wage whilst on leave. We haven’t implicitly discussed it yet (DH is in between jobs at the minute due to the covid nightmare) but I imagine I’ll be putting slightly less in each month and he will cover the difference (if he gets a job that allows that). I suppose it all comes down to how much your DH earns and whether is enough to cover the lions share.

This is all so helpful! Thank you ladies ❤️ I totally appreciate Its one of those that’s completely dependent on personal circumstances and different ways work for different people. X

Like a few others said, we paid 50/50 but then when I went on to mat pay just reduced this accordingly. I saved once I found out I was pregnant to try and top up the mat pay which helped alot.

I spent the majority of my mat pay on baby clothes 😂

I was the main earner and had to save the difference in net salary and mat pay to fund our bills as DH’s income would never cover it. I had to add about £25k but it was worth it

We have a joint account so nothing really changed for us apart from obviously the amount going into the account but how we paid bills and mortgage etc remained the exact same

We have a joint account that we pay all our earnings into. From there I move things around into savings. For both maternity leaves I have made sure we have saved in advance to cover my drop but we share all income/outgoings etc from one account. It was how I was brought up so probably just copying my parents!

I earn slightly more than DP (about 400/month)
We each put enough into a joint account each month to cover mortgage, bills, food and general household expenditure. I have enough savings and will continue to save during pregnancy so that I can continue to put that amount into the joint account and have enough left for myself. So we will remain 50/50 throughout.

DP and I just share all income and expenses so it will be the same while I'm on mat leave, with just less coming in overall.

It's really interesting to see how everyone else divides things up! Sharing everything works for us as neither of us buys things for ourselves very often and we run big purchases by each other and try to keep it fair. In usual times we spend most of our money on food, wine and socialising which we would usually be doing together anyway. We've been together a long time and it hasn't always been the same person earning more so we feel it's fair supporting each other when we earn more (currently it's me who earns more, though that won't be the case when I'm on mat leave).

It all depends on what you did pre maternity I guess.

Both our incomes go into the joint account and then transfer what we need for bills, including the mortgage into a separate account. We then take a personal allowance that we can spend on what we like for ourselves. The remainder is sent into saving and investments and is what we use for things like decorating, holidays, meals out etc. I am currently on maternity leave and we are still doing this. Of course, there’s a lot less left in the pot after bills than there was, but as we would generally spend a large portion of this in things that are no longer allowed in tier 4...it’s not too much of an issue. Once I get further into my leave and the money goes down further, we will reduce our allowances or get rid of them all together for a few months.

Same as @boymum88 and @Curiosity101 - we pay our wages directly in to the joint account, then get our "pocket money" out of that. So I'll be paying less in, but get the same amount for personal stuff.

We pay an equal amount each month into a joint account to cover mortgage, bills and other household expenses. During may leave I've budgeted and saved so that I can continue to do that with some left over for me each month. DH earns double my salary so he pays for extras, and will top up as needed x

Our situation is exactly the same as @boymum88

I only work 2.5 days a work so will only lose around £400 per month so we will just save less for the months I am on maternity. I am planning to take 10m by using your my annual leave. As long as there has been no other financial hits between now and then I may take the remaining 2m unpaid.

I actually need to talk to DH about this - we earn the same right now so contribute the same to the joint account every month. But once my extra maternity pay ends I’ll still have six months just on statutory. I guess we can either save the six months I get on full pay (lucky, I know) and put that towards my share, or just pay for everything out of the joint account and not worry too much about who is paying in. Luckily we don’t need to worry about money too much so we won’t need to be too careful about it, but I think it’s important to get the principle right as you see so many women here who wind up paying for everything to do with the children even when the partner earns way more just because that’s how they decided to do it way back when when she was on maternity leave. so it’s important to set the expectations that the leave and child is a joint expense, not just the mother’s.

DH is self-employed and has always had more variable income than me but we try to pay 50/50 for everything. We both have our own money but pay the same amount into a joint account that we use for all joint spending (even a birthday card for a mutual friend will go on the joint credit card) and then use our own money for anything else/saving. We've calculated what we think the baby will cost each month and "baby setup costs" for stuff like a pram and that will come out of joint account as well. We're both paying in extra during PG so there will be enough in the account and I have been saving since getting BFP so I can continue to cover half during mat leave as it's important to me to do that if I can. I realise I'm lucky to be able to afford it.

If there are any big extras (the boiler breaks down etc) and there isn't enough in the joint account DH said he will cover it as I won't be able to stretch that far.

@Polkadot123 I'm also self-employed and trying to make heads and tails of the allowance. Can I ask what you claimed for?

We combined both salaries, pay for everything out of the one pot and then whatever is left we equally spend on whatever we need. I know this may be a bit old fashioned for some but it works for us.
When I do go onto Mat leave it will still the same, we’ll just have a reduced pot to work with.

I think we originally split the bills so we had about the same leftover and we were going to split the cost of baby stuff but once she was her it got really annoying so DP pays a bit more bills and I buy DDs stuff.

After Mat leave I dropped to part time and paid the childcare bill which left me with £600 ish so same as mat leave. When o stopped paying the childminder because of Covid I saved that money.

Then I got a much higher paying job and DP suggested we rebalance but I'm pregnant again so the extra is being saved to hopefully keep DD in her nursery and be a buffer because I won't get as much money this time (got made redundant, now can only get maternity allowance). Next maternity leave I'll have £600, shouldn't need to spend as much as we have loads of reusable stuff from DD and she's growing slower now but maybe DP will need to chip in more.

It really does depend on your circumstances as to what you both earn, outgoings and your maternity pay / allowance.

My employer pays 13 weeks full pay, 13 half pay and then 13 weeks statutory.

When I had my first baby I saved enough so that I could continue to contribute to the bills 50:50 as I earn more than DH and he would not have been able to cover all the bills. I also paid for the bigger things like pram and cot but because I earned more and I was paid fairly well on mat leave.

We are now expecting second baby and I would expect it to be a similar set up as I earn more than I did before and DH earns less so there is a bigger gap between our earnings but we also have more savings now.

We may also consider shared leave but have not looked into it and the financial implications.