I'd love to be a Stay At Home Mum

debsley_pig

I am 5 months pregnant and have arranged to come back to work part-time (3 days per week) after a 6 or 7 month maternity leave. Even though my job is well paid, once I go to part-time hours and have paid 3 days per week childcare fees, I will only be bringing in £600 per month. This is enough money (just) but surely I can earn that amount in other ways and not have to come back to work??

Anyone got any bright ideas??

I can't rely on hubby bringing in all the moolah as he is on disability benefits but is currently a full-time student trying to get a career started up in writing.
I also can't rely on him providing the childcare as he is in college most days and has to work at his degree full-time and the rest. He also has a knackered back and it would be difficult for him to look after a baby on his own.

Leilasmum

If you find something let me know! I have a 7 month old and am supposed to go back in May, but I don't want to leave my little one with someone else and have decided not to go back....but I still need to pay mortgage, bills, etc. Have found ways of earning small amounts (mystery shopping, ebay etc) but there's not a lot out there.
Good luck with it all anyway

Spendless

Hi

I don't know if you will qualify with help with your childcare via tax credits as usually you both have to work at least 16 hours, but there may be different rules for people with a disability. Look here www.entitledto.com

If you don't does you work offer childcare vouchers (like Busybee) as you can sacrifice upto £50 a week in return for vouchers and not pay tax and NI on this amount. Be careful when using them with tax credits though as sacrificing salary can affect entitlement.

Other than that, look round the board for areas on making your money go further,the family board about reducing costs with babies/children and check the Oldstyle board about reducing your shopping bills.

Cath_S

I'm 7 months into my maternity leave and your figures sound similar to mine. I'm reluctant to go back to work so for the past 2 months I've been doing what I can to bring in some pennies to see if not going back to work is realistic.

I first started with selling all my old junk on Ebay, then I started selling my old books DVD's and CD's on Amazon. There's a brilliant thread here for Amazon.

I've sold about 70 items on Amazon which has netted me about £200. This is from my stuff but now I go into charity shops and see what I can find to sell on. Ebay has netted me about £200 too.

I also do something called Shop & Scan . You get £10 for your scanning the barcodes of your first shops and then £1 a week thereafter. Not a great amount, but it all adds up and I've just exchanged my points for Next vouchers. I could have left it in until christmas, I would have had over £50 but I'd rather spend them now .

Most recently I've been doing matched betting, look on the Gambling Introductory Offer loopholes section of the forum. You basically put 2 bets on the same football match for example, Team A to win on one bookie and lose on the other and take advantage of the introductury offer which is often £25! If you go through cash back sites you can earn even more. I've only placed 6 bets and I made £67 from the bookies and £62.50 from the cashback sites. I would never ever bet but matched betting is a pretty easy way of getting the bookies back.

So, altogether for 2 months "work" I've netted around £550 which is half of the figure you quote. I'm quite happy with that as although £600 a month working is more than this we can live on me bringing in £300. So hopefully if I can sustain this for a few more months I may not be going back to work!

super41

I hope you're able to stay at home if you'd like and you can make ends meet - MSE is definitely the place to find tips! However you might decide it's a nice balance to go back to work part-time so don't close that door too soon. Can you take a career break from your job for a couple of years perhaps? Perhaps you could cut down to working 2 days (I work 2 and 1/2 days and find the balance suits me).

I hope you can find the balance that's right for you and all the best for your pregnancy!

stardoman

I'm a SAHM and gave up work when my second child was born 5 years ago, before that I worked full time. One of the things we did was to remortgage on a lower rate and extended it over 30 years to reduce our payments. We also rolled in the car loan (which was costing us £220 per month). This reduced our outgoings by over £350 a month. Although we obviously would have the debt for longer we felt that we could increase our mortgage payments as we were quite young and reduce the mortgage term as the children got older if I returned to work then.

Five years on and I now work as a registered childminder and earn around £800 a month. We remortgaged again 2 years ago and this time reduced the term to 10 years. We are also overpaying and at this rate we'll have the mortgage paid in 3 years time.

If you can be disciplined with your finances and are young enough to extend your mortgage it may be one way of reducing your outgoings by a significant amount.

Also, you will get child benefit which I think is around £64 a month for one child.

Someone also told me to realistically work out how much it costs you to work, as you may be working for less than you think. For example, how much does it cost you to get to work. If you now have 2 cars, could you manage with 1 if you were not working? Do you have to wear smart clothes to work (which can be much more expensive than casual clothes). How much do you spend on lunch each day? Do you buy ready meals instead of cooking from scratch (big savings can often be made here too).

Good luck. We lost 50% of our income when I gave up work and didn't think we would manage at all. But somehow we have.

Mandy.

Lillibet_2

Cath_S wrote:

I also do something called Shop & Scan . You get £10 for your scanning the barcodes of your first shops and then £1 a week thereafter. Not a great amount, but it all adds up and I've just exchanged my points for Next vouchers. I could have left it in until christmas, I would have had over £50 but I'd rather spend them now .

This sounds interesting & fairly simple but how do you get "invited" to join? Looks like you can't just sign up unfortunately:think:

finc

Lillibet wrote:

This sounds interesting & fairly simple but how do you get "invited" to join? Looks like you can't just sign up unfortunately:think:

I was going to ask the same thing. I emailed the company through the 'contact us' bit so hopefully get a reply.

moggins

I know it's not very orthodox to advise spending money to save it but I bought this book when my DD was born as I did not want to go back to work. It was amazing and also showed you how to comprehensively work out how much going to work was costing you

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0091855969/203-2559475-1254354

Cath_S

Lillibet wrote:

This sounds interesting & fairly simple but how do you get "invited" to join? Looks like you can't just sign up unfortunately:think:

:wall: Sorry guys, I remember now, I was invited. By whom I can't remember, I've ditched the invitation email. Here are some contact details if it helps;

Sam Meredith
Shopandscan Panel Manager

Email: helpdesk@shopandscan.com
Freephone: 0500 560 152 (Mon-Fri 9-5)
Post: TNS, West Gate, London, W5 1UA.

Sorry again, I'd blame the blond hair but I think it goes far deeper than that

Counting_Pennies_2

I would second the recommendation about being a childminder.

It probably won't bring in £600 a month, but not far off it.

My childminder is my friend with a child the same age and the two kids are like brother and sister, it is wonderful.