MSE Parent Club - Part 2

Sami_Bee

Agutka wrote: »

Grrr. Twice.
One - went into clarks and at last his feet have grown, so the assistant goes and brings the ONLY pair they have in his size :rolleyes:. So I say, ooh, I prefer these brown ones. Well, the navy is the only one I have, she says (whatever happened to ordering stock for a customer). So to make my mind up I put him in one navy and one brown to compare. Yes, I prefer the brown, I suppose I'll have to go to a different branch. At hearing this the assistant pulled the shoes off Joseph's feet, packed them away and walked off :mad:...

Ever noticed how nice they are, offering to order from another store etc when you are looking at a pair of £80 boots or a handbag tho :rolleyes: I hate it when they say I'll bring out all of the ones in his size and they usually come out with about 3 pairs!
Its not like Chris is in an unusual size from what I can gather from other mums he is average

SB I love those red ones!

lizbob

hi guys thought you'd be the best people to advise. If as a couple you rely on both salaries to live (albeit we're not broke, we could probably save around 100-150/month if we needed to) how do you survive 6 months on statutory maternity pay? we keep "waiting till we're financially secure" to have kids but i just don't see a day when we won't be relying on both our salaries. a friend of mine said "well i just lived on mjy credit card and overdraft" but that can't be the only option right? are there any other income sources directly after thebaby's born that i'm not aware of?

thanks

Agutka

Becles wrote: »

I routinely throw a scoop of Vanish Oxy Action in with the childrens clothes to get all the food stains and general muck out of them. If it's a bad stain like bolognaise, I spray it with Shout spray too.

SHOUT and... VANISH! :rotfl:Oh, if only life were that easy :rotfl:.
I knew I'd have to buy that oxy stuff! I've been putting it off for this long...

My MIL is also of the 'only in Clarks shoes' persuasion. But you get the real story eventually - sounds like all three of her kids wore the same shoes and recently she offered to dig them out for Joseph!! They're nearly forty years old :eek:. She's lovely really :A.

Welshlassie

lizbob wrote: »

hi guys thought you'd be the best people to advise. If as a couple you rely on both salaries to live (albeit we're not broke, we could probably save around 100-150/month if we needed to) how do you survive 6 months on statutory maternity pay? we keep "waiting till we're financially secure" to have kids but i just don't see a day when we won't be relying on both our salaries. a friend of mine said "well i just lived on mjy credit card and overdraft" but that can't be the only option right? are there any other income sources directly after thebaby's born that i'm not aware of?

thanks

We saved as much as we could before I got pregnant and throughout teh pregnancy. Also check what you are entitled to from the government child benefit, child tax credits etc.

We went from surviving on 2 salaries to my DH giving up work completely to look after our DS. If you cut your cloth accordingly you will be surprised what you can do.

Go through Martins Budgeting spreadsheet for what you spend now and what you would spend when baby arrived, you'll be surprised where you can make savings, especially as you won't be going out socialising so much. It is possible and if you waited until you were "inancial secure" in reality it would never happen.

lizbob

Welshlassie wrote: »

We saved as much as we could before I got pregnant and throughout teh pregnancy. Also check what you are entitled to from the government child benefit, child tax credits etc.

We went from surviving on 2 salaries to my DH giving up work completely to look after our DS. If you cut your cloth accordingly you will be surprised what you can do.

Go through Martins Budgeting spreadsheet for what you spend now and what you would spend when baby arrived, you'll be surprised where you can make savings, especially as you won't be going out socialising so much. It is possible and if you waited until you were "inancial secure" in reality it would never happen.

i know! thats what i keep thinking! my boss is now in the situation of being almost too old and even said that she's gratefull that her first was an acident as even then she didn't feel financially secure enough to plan a baby.

i think we might make the decision to save for the next 6 months and then i'll come off the pill meaning we will have at least a years if not 18 months worth of savings by the time i go on maternity leave.

thanks so much!

Lu_T

Sami - the coating's already on, no need for a spray.

Lizbob - you will get about £80 per month child allowance (everyone gets this) and perhaps some tax credits, depending on what your income is. Here's the link to the info
http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/MoneyTaxAndBenefits/TaxCreditsandChildBenefit/index.htm

There are other things you can do to supplement your income. Cashback sites pay cash for clicks. You could make around £20 a month if you were dedicated without actually spending any money. Then there's cashback on the things you do spend on - mobiles, home & car insurance, books, all manner of baby things.

Mystery shopping is also an easy thing to fit around a little one. There's a whole section on the forum dedicated to this.

Don't forget you'll have some things to buy for the baby as well as money to live off. In reality you can do this pretty cheaply and you'll be surprised how many people will lend or give you things. There's only so much you need, but there will be lots of things you want!

Finally, don't bank on coming off the pill and it taking 6-12 months to get pregnant. I was pregnant first time both times - that's within a maximum of 10 days of starting trying :eek:

However, as others have said, you will never be completely financially secure so just do it when you're ready. HTH

Sami_Bee

lizbob wrote: »

hi guys thought you'd be the best people to advise. If as a couple you rely on both salaries to live (albeit we're not broke, we could probably save around 100-150/month if we needed to) how do you survive 6 months on statutory maternity pay? we keep "waiting till we're financially secure" to have kids but i just don't see a day when we won't be relying on both our salaries. a friend of mine said "well i just lived on mjy credit card and overdraft" but that can't be the only option right? are there any other income sources directly after thebaby's born that i'm not aware of?

thanks

there is somekind of loophole about working self employed or something but I don't kno the ins and outs. best thing I'd suggest is check which benefits you will get and how much here; Expecting or bringing up children : Directgov and start saving up. (sorry I'm not the most helpful on this as I'm SAHM)

ladybirdintheuk

Liz, I think it really depends on both your incomes. DH's salary plus my maternity payments just about cover groceries, petrol and bills (plus an extra bit to cover once in a while stuff like MOT and things!) and we get £80 every 4 weeks child benefit and £80 every 4 weeks tax credit. (tax credit drops after 1st year, but will be back to work by then!), so that will do us for "flash cash"/birthday presents etc. DH has decided he can't possibly spend time with his daughter instead of going to the pub at the weekend (to be fair, he is going a lot less than he used to, and is finally accepting that he has to go with a £10 note and leave hs cards behind!), so he has decided to get a part time job too, but that is up to him!

We didn't do any saving before hand, but concentrated on getting rid of debts as much as we can, and also bought all the big things we needed. (We were lucky to get quite a few hand me downs too, which has really helped.) For the last 6 months or so we tried to spend the money we wouldn't have on baby stuff or put it off debts, so we were used to not having that extra bit

Other than that, you can also try reducing bills as much as possible (look on uswitch to make sure utility bills are as low as theh can be, go onto a cheaper mobile contract, do a ring round to make sure you can't get cheaper insurance quotes etc) and look on the old style board for help reducing grocery bills. Maybe see if you can get a payment holiday on your mortgage too?

ladybirdintheuk

Oh, you might be entitled to the sure start grant too, which is £500, to help you buy baby bits.

lizbob

hey ladybird, to be honest i don't think we qualify for the sure start thing as it seem only for people who are already claiming tax credits or benifits which we're not. i think we'd be entitled to 75 tax credit plus 80 child benifit oplus i'd get 500 maternity pay, so actually 700 a month is almost half what i'm earning now. i guess we'll just manager some how, i know that my mum and gran and aunties are just itching to give us stuff when we do have a baby so i'm pretty sure we'll be fine for stuff (plus OH's youngest of 5 so all his siblings have kids already) i think i always fooled myself that there would be a time when we'd have enough money to have a baby comfortably but that was pretty much just my naive young outlook!