Mat leave, mat pay- what’s yours like? How will you cope?

[Sleeplessem]

Hiya,

I’m pregnant with dc2 due late next month and the reality of mat pay with another child has just hit me like a tonne of bricks.

DD is in nursery 3 days a week, will want to keep her in nursery at least 2 days for normality and a bit of a break for me tbh. She’ll be 26/27 months when dc2 arrives. Dc2 was unplanned. I’ll need to take the full year due to childcare costs, the last 3 months and the smp is scaring me.

I’m lucky where I work does 6 months full pay and 3 smp and the last unpaid. Hopefully I’ll get a bonus too. But I’m barely saving as is. DC1 I got less mat pay 5 months, but obviously less expenses and lock down meant spending less.

How does everyone else cope? Hit me with your best budgeting tips? Xx

@JasonMomoasgirlfriend you can’t moan about struggling through maternity leave and still pay an £800 nursery bill when you don’t even need childcare is my point. You do you and all that but you sound bloody ridiculous

[quote YerAWizardHarry]@JasonMomoasgirlfriend you can’t moan about struggling through maternity leave and still pay an £800 nursery bill when you don’t even need childcare is my point. You do you and all that but you sound bloody ridiculous[/quote]
You sound ignorant.

@JasonMomoasgirlfriend how so?

When I had I mine I took the full year but I had two part time jobs so I got two lots of SMP which really really helped.

We cut costs to live on dhs pay and half my pay, so definitely cut some childcare. 6 months full pay would get us through the whole leave! I get 4 months so that’a 8 months at half pay and savings to cover the next few months. I will be off for 12 or nearly.

@Sleeplessem

We’re twinning *@JasonMomoasgirlfriend*! I’m due end of nov 25th to be precise lol.

We got better with evening meal planning and using our slow cooker but it’s lunches when dd is at nursery we’re awful at and ended up ordering from uber eats and stuff which is like an extra £4 delivery, sounds nothing but adds up.

We’ve been spoiling dd over the summer too, days out and little trips before baby comes, knowing we won’t be able to after baby, but then we inevitably ended up eating out and bam another £50 gone 😭😭

Order bread, cheese, rocket and butter and have a bloody sarnie

My best budgeting tip for you is that you need to completely re-frame your mindset and learn to save when you have the money rather than try to economise when you don't. The idea that you'd drop nursery days once you drop to SMP instead of looking at the period as a whole, and that you've been spending money this summer "while you have it" as though it expires at the end of the month if you don't spend it!

Your mat pay is front loaded so try to work out what you'll take home across the year, divide it by 12 and consider that what you have available. It's no use carrying on as normal for six months then thinking you can suddenly manage on nothing for the last three if you don't plan and save for it from the start.

Also stop with the Uber eats. If it's an app, delete it, close the account. Utter madness.

Mat leave with dd 1 was great and I didn't worry about money because we'd been saving for years while ttcing. That took years sadly.

Now dd 1 is 3 she gets 30 free hours but it's still £1000 a month full time.

I'm due in a few weeks with twins and while mat leave is 6m full pay and then smp I'm thinking of keeping DC in nursery either full time 9-3 or , 3 days a week

I anticipate lack of sleep from newborn twins and can't imagine looking after a toddler as well!

I wish I could save a bit more with dc 1 with nursery and the only way to do it is by cutting nursery hours. Otherwise it will mean I'd have to go back to work at 8 months instead of the full year.

We don't have much in the way of savings anymore with recent big expenses so it will be tight after the 6m pay is gone. I expect a bonus but expect tax to take most of that so not really worth my time tbh.

I hopped on to say, do check with DD's nursery manager what the Ts and Cs are for the free hours. At my nursery you have to book sessions which run 8am to 1pm and 1pm to 6pm. Nursery has to staff the sessions for those hours so EVEN IF i drop off regularly at 9am and collect at 12pm, i can't claim i only want 3 hour sessions, i have to pay for the whole session of 5 hours. You might think "great then you can have 3 free sessions not 5, but that's still fine" but no, because funded hours are TERM TIME only (38 weeks) so my funding is prorated 38/51 weeks x 15 = 11.2 hours a week.

However my nursery does offer a small rate discount if you have 2 kids there, AND the rate decreases when your child changes room at age 3 at my nursery as the ratios of staff to children are lower.

Worth bearing in mind after your mat leave and both kids are in nursery, the best thing to do is simply ask nursery manager to model what it would actually cost for 3 days of nursery for two children, one age 1 and one age 3.

Different nurseries do the funded hours differently but typically the discount isn't quite as impressive as you hope!

Also remember that with your 20% tax relief on childcare you will have an account for each child and ANYONE can pay into it and as long as you haven't paid in more than £2000 in a 3 month period, the government will top up. Depending what your childcare costs are you MIGHT be best off overpaying while you have good mat pay, to save for when your nursery fees go up.

There is a great illustration of this here:

revenuebenefits.org.uk/tax-free-childcare/guidance/how-does-tax-free-childcare-work/managing-a-tax-free-childcare-account/paying-into-an-account/

Also another thought, when you do go back to work will your MIL want to care for both kids on her day of the week? It's a lot more work. If not that might also push your nursery costs higher, as 3 y.o..may have to do an extra day.

At my last job I got 3 months at 50%, the rest was SMP - we saved enough that I had £1200 per month for a year - DH covered most bills, but we didn't have childcare costs.

Next baby I get 4 months at full pay & I'm going to save enough that I have £2k per month for the year - that was ai can still help with childcare. DS will be 3, so will get 30 free hours. I'll need to save in the region of £7,000 to subsidise myself - which is doable whilst pregnant

If you haven’t saved for nursery fees while you’re off I think you’ll have to take DC1 out of childcare.

Honestly if you have over 75k income combined and a generous mat package unless you have really high essential outgoings you really need to rein in spending if you think you will struggle!
I just got SMP, for the entirety of both my maternity leaves. Did a small amount of freelance work s/e during both mat leaves, but very little second time around due to Covid.
Realistically, second time around you cant actually do the whole sitting around in cafes eating cake thing every day as the older one to think about. We rarely do days out to farm parks etc that cost a lot, tbh they won't remember it! We go to the park a lot, play dates, and lots of walks in the woods/hills, trips to the beach. The petrol costs, but that's about it.

@JasonMomoasgirlfriend

I feel it's not really fair to the child though *@PeonyTime* if they enjoy nursery and get a wide range of activities and development stuff to do? I think Ds would hate to be at home with me and the baby cause I just wouldn't be able to do the things nursery offer.

Plenty of kids are at home with their parents until they get free childcare hours and they manage just fine. Nursery is a very large unnecessary expense while on mat leave and the most obvious thing to cut. Fair enough if you don't want to but then don't complain about having no money!

I would also argue that you don't "need" a new car - plenty of people manage with 2 kids in a small car. You could get a roof rack or just get creative with packing the car e.g. a small foldable buggy rather than a bulky travel system, or a buggy and baby sling rather than a double buggy.

We got better with evening meal planning and using our slow cooker but it’s lunches when dd is at nursery we’re awful at and ended up ordering from uber eats and stuff which is like an extra £4 delivery, sounds nothing but adds up.

This is an easy fix, just stop doing it. Deactivate your uber eats account. Add some luxury items to your weekly shop - if you like pizza from uber eats, get a nice pizza from the supermarket. You'll be less tempted to get uber eats if there is nice food in the fridge.

Also a good idea to look at school nursery or preschool. Our preschool charge about £16 for a half day, rather than £60 for a full day at nursery. If you don't need to have an 8am drop off and a 6pm pick up, it is a good option.

@Sleeplessem I think the paid SPL doesn't apply to your husband then as you've checked, but for anyone else reading, we found the policy a bit confusing. Basically he gets 2 weeks full pay in the Paternity Leave section, and the Shared Parental Leave section was a few pages on where he also got 4 months full pay if we opted for SPL. So if we'd just read the Paternity Leave section, we'd have assumed two weeks paid was all he got.

A few of my friends are pregnant now, and their partners also have an amended policy where they now get anywhere between three to six months full pay as companies seem to be moving to matching the maternity leave package for men on SPL.

Uber eats is gone! Deleted! It’s no ‘excuse’ but I’ve struggled so much with acid reflux and sickness this entire pregnancy a lot of the things that DD loves have just been stomach turning to me. I can’t even est ‘normal’ bread, i mean how silly is that, by normal I mean sliced from a supermarket. I’m pissed off at myself and DH (actually a little more at DH than me, because I feel he could have taken better charge of food when I felt so unwell) for frittering away cash. DD never had takeaways though, she always had home cooking. It was just Sod’s law that the things we know the skinny Minnie will eat were the things that made me sick.

I’ve been saving every month, just not as much as I used to, plus we’ve had some essential house spends that came up that cost a bomb and a tough 2 months after DF passed away, costs of long taxis, funeral etc.

Someone mentioned MIL when I go back to work, so I get a lieu day every other week which will continue and DH will plan to condense his hours to give him a lieu day every week, so she’d look after them one day every other week whilst we wfh, so I’m hoping because it’s less it won’t be as bad, plus we’ll both be there for meals and naps. She’s not the best with DD, actually she’s the only person dd actively doesnt seem to click with, so if it’s too much I’ll ask to condense my hours to get another lieu day.

I’ll definitely ask about what their free hours policy looks like (I’m prepared to be disappointed though) and start enquiring at a few nursery schools around us for when the time comes. One of the big reasons for keeping her there is my mental health, how much I struggled with the newborn stage, hopefully this time will be different and can reduce her to 2 days a week early on. Unfortunately can’t do it now due to alternate childcare arrangements.

I agree on the car front, we’re not getting a double pushchair anyway, just a buggy board/ seat and using a sling. DH just says the prices are creeping up and up 🤷‍♀️

@A1b2c3d4e5f6g7 There’s a strong chance DH didn’t look properly. He works for a prominent company so they probably have a shared parental leave policy. Does it mean that one party has to be back in work? Could it potentially be used in the way that say woman takes the 9 months paid and then partner uses 3 months shared parental?

@Sleeplessem it's so tough not to fritter away money when you feel shit - I've def been eating more takeaway and pastries out etc (daily pastries 🙈) because I just didn't like food I make at home for the first 4 months or so. Don't beat yourself up about that.

For my partners, he has to take the 2 weeks at the start, and then the four months any time in the 1st year. Might well vary from company to company - we weren't really aware til a couple of the men on his team did it in the last 18months. But means we get 10 months full pay between us. I'm taking six, and he's taking four, then one or two months of of stat between us

My partners paternity leave is as primary carer so I have to go back to work for him to start it. Whcih is fine at 10-11 months whcih is when I would, I would hate to go back at 6 months post partum.

It’s tough isn’t it. I get a decent package (5 months full pay then statutory) but I’m the main earner so that makes it especially difficult. We’re coping by reducing DDs nursery days, cutting expenditure elsewhere (mainly the luxuries like cleaner, meals out, etc), I’ve also been saving as much as possible to fund the SMP only part. I’m also going back to work sooner than I would ideally like to, I’ll take 10 months with 2 months of that being holiday so only 8 months of actual mat leave.

@pennywus thank you for that informative post... appreciate that :)

@Sleeplessem I think the way shared paternity works is that you basically say you have a year to dish out between you and your husband.
You could both be off at the same time for 6 months together. Or you take 6 months and then go back to work and your husband has 6 off. Stuff like that. It might be worth speaking to your company and his company about it.
That's a good start to deleted Uber eats.

My Mat leave allowance is the exact same as yours OP and our combined salaries works out about £50k…you’ll be absolutely fine, the biggest expense I can see here is the nursery although I see why you’d want to keep it. As others have said maybe 1 day a week or so for the SMP/unpaid months?