How to work out how much I should save for when I go on maternity leave?

Oldernotwiser

Why not spend a period living on the income you would have when you take maternity leave? This would give you some idea of the shortfall.

harrassedmum

As others have said try to live on the money that you would be receiving whilst you are on mat leave putting whats over to one side for when the happy event happens.

Personally I didnt take any mat leave up until I had the children (I went into labour with three of the little darlings during the night) so just rang up the day after to commence mat leave from that date which obviously gave me more time to be with the babies after, plus I saved all my leave and arranged to take it following the mat leave so I was payed leave pay. This worked really well for both me and the kids and didnt put any financial pressure on us. Try and work out all this with your Human Resource Department or your Manager. Good Luck and well done for forward planning.

getmore4less

Dinah93 wrote: »

Personally we'll be fine on SMP + my DHs wage, so all we are aiming to save is 3 months worth of SMP equivalent (around £585 a month although that's an average, it varies depending on weeks in the month) so I can take the last 3 months unpaid without worrying. My employer is also sounding keen for me to do the keep in touch days, which on my wage should be about £105 a day. You can do 10 of these so for many people it tops up SMP quite nicely.

Don't forget that if you take the full year you accrue a full years holiday 5.6 weeks so you can try(employer can get you to take them before) to use those as well if you don't want to actualy have more holiday.

(see this was also posted while writing)

HRV

whilst u might be able to work right til baby is born take into account that you may not- if sick 4 weeks before due date mat leave starts automatically.

skaps

Thanks for all the advice don't know if I can live off the standard maternity pay as a trial at the moment. Got alot of debt left to pay and trying to reduce this as much as possible. I need to look at the oh and my pay and see what we would vlbe able to afford it.

borokat

I'm aiming to save £3200 so that I can top up my income over the course of maternity leave to £1000 ish a month - if I save £400 a month I will manage this. £1000 a month will be more than enough, as that is also the amount I will be left with after putting the £400 away. I would like to think that over the maternity leave I won't spend £1k a month, so can have a bit put by for a holiday before going back to work. Don't forget that it isn't only your responsibility to pay for everything baby related hubby should shoulder some of the burden to and accept a drop in his personal disposable income.

Dinah93

getmore4less wrote: »

Don't forget that if you take the full year you accrue a full years holiday 5.6 weeks so you can try(employer can get you to take them before) to use those as well if you don't want to actualy have more holiday.

(see this was also posted while writing)

Thanks hon, I'm actually going to have in the region of 74 days holiday to take between returning to work and the end of Jan 2014 as all my 2012 and 2013 leave will need to be taken as I've been signed off until the baby comes, so my hope is to be able to work 3 days rather than 5 days a week up until Christmas 2013 but still get a full time wage.

OP, definitely do a budget now for how you'll get by on SMP, both assuming minimum debt repayments and that you've got it paid off. As you can see we have no small chunk of debt either, but within the next fortnight we'll have cleared everything that's not 0% except my student loan (which I don't care about as I won't pay it during maternity leave), and we're paying off around £2k a month through ebaying clutter and mystery shopping as the day we got our positive it was like someone put a rocket behind me to get us into a better position rather than toddle along making minimum payments and small overpayments. You need to know what the shortfall of your OH income + SMP is now so you can have as long as possible to plan.