Maternity pay - how much did you save?

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Just curious how much you had in savings for mat pay. I usually take home £2,800 a month so dropping down to the £172.48 a week is going to sting!

Im a teacher and get 4 weeks full pay, 2 more weeks at 90% and then weeks 7-18 at 50% (+ stat pay then). I'm due end of Sept so looking to go back July time so rough 10 months off.

Just curious how much people saved! We currently have £4k in savings and still have a few pay days left to top it up a little more.

Don't feel like you have to answer as I know it's personal but just look for a rough idea of how much people did save up.

Thanks!

Wow I think the package you get sounds amazing

We are lucky! Perks of working for the county

We worked out the shortfall to my usual contribution for the whole maternity leave and jointly saved enough to cover it. Then when I was reduced to 0 pay whilst on maternity dh transferred me an amount each month to cover anything I might need.

Have you checked your partners entitlement to shared parental leave? It's in a different section of the contract to the paternity leave section. Just mentioning because someone told us to and it turns out my partner got 4.5 months full pay. So we did shared leave, which was almost all full pay. My company also changed the policy a couple of years ago to give all men on shared leave six months full pay.

My partner had originally skimmed his contract, seen the paternity section, and assumed he only got the two weeks mentioned there.

So we didn't really save up too much extra, but did have to get the baby stuff, and we also went away with our baby and dog for a couple of months and so had to save up for that

Have a look into shared parental leave, it allows you to return to work and be paid for the holidays, so might mean you can afford to take longer leave.

https://www.teachersspl.co.uk/how-it-works

Do you have any outgoings that will be reduced while your off e.g. childcare?

I'm a teacher too. Due August and planning on going back in July. I've managed to save 7000 so far so hoping it will help to make up the short fall once I go on to statutory. It's interesting that people think we get a good deal. All of my friends (variety of private sector jobs) get 6 months full pay!

Don't forget you'll get SMP alongside your 50%.

I'm also a teacher due in November, I've managed to save £9,000 so far and my partner £5,000.

Not really... this is our first child so all we'll really save on is a bit of money as I won't be driving as much.

@TTCJJB wow! That's a fantastic amount. This is our joint savings so I won't be able to save quite that much!

We spent the year before putting my salary into savings and living off of Dh’s. I was the higher earner at the time. It was a bit extreme, but we wanted to experiment with what it would feel like to live on one income and it allowed us to save a large amount of money very quickly.

Your question really needs to be the other way round - how much do you NEED to save to cover outgoings whilst you're earning less. And consider PT wage / childcare bills etc when you go back.

People have have zero saved or a million saved and it won't help you know what you need to pay your mortgage

I think it's probs more important to look at how you're going to cover everything month to month once you are down to statutory pay.

Is your partner going to make up the short fall if you stop contributing to household things once you're on SMP? If so, how long can he do this for.

If he can't make up the short fall for the remainder of the time you're on SMP then you know how much you need to try and save to cover that period so you can continue your usual or reduced contribution to the household.

If he can cover you for that whole period then I wouldn't worry about saving anything but your own spending money for that time.

Sorry if I've got the wrong end of the stick!

I had saved 6 months wages both times.

My mat pay package was only slightly better than statutory as I work in the charity sector.

I had just short of £10k saved by the time I went on to statutory pay. I got 20 weeks at full pay so continued saving between giving birth and going to statutory pay. I found that I didn’t spend that much on maternity leave, but still had all the usual bills (including a large mortgage).

People are raising good points! I think we've worked out that SMP + my husbands wage will literally cover our outgoings only. So we need to save enough to live on after that (food, fuel and then a little bit extra so I'm not stuck in the house).

It's crazy to think I'll be on Mat leave in 13 weeks! I'm so excited but stressing about money even though we're doing everything we can to save 😂