Baby Fund Challenge

gearfreak

Hi,

So my spreadsheet is showing that I need to have a basic amount of £1,780 per month whilst on maternity (£21,312 total), and its showing that I should have £2000/month which includes my savings target of £14,267 (but I have some DIY/house costs to come out of this in the next couple of months £600 + new upstairs carpet) and it also doesn't show my works share return as not sure what this will be and I wanted to have a worst case scenario. But overall its looking quite positive at the moment. Its sounds like a lot but I'm the main breadwinner so need to be able to continue paying all the bills etc whilst I am off, think my o/h would be happy for me to go back full time after 6 weeks ;0?

My ebay selling is also going very well and I am using anything from that to pay for baby stuff I need to get.

So I should have some cash leftover at the end of my maternity which I want to put into a rainy day / redundancy fund just in case the worst happens, then once thats done I'll start making overpayments on the mortgage :0)))

I've also opened the First Direct 6% savings account which I'm transferring £300/month into now until my normal pay stops, as suggested by Peonie and then I need to open a new ISA account when the new ISA year starts. Anybody got any suggestions on the ISA???

Hope your all having a great easter weekend x

Peonie

Hi GF,

The clothes off ebay sound great.

It sounds like your SOA is coming together and the rest of your finances. And like you have a good plan: maternity, then rainy day, then mortgage. Ours is similar.

There are so many ISA products it's hard to advise on one. Are you transferring your existing ISA? How much is in it? Do you want instant access? I use this list to inform my choice: https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/401374 Unfortunately they are all pretty bad; including the ones requiring £40K+.

P.

castlelough

Welcome EchoDelta, ChelseaBlue and gearfreak! Great to see new faces! Am feeling distinctly like a failure on this thread! My savings got raided to repair my car .
We are actively ttc, regardless....as we have learned the hard way that you just can't plan these things. I'm going to be concentrating on clearing my credit card until the start of August, and then I'll be in a position to plough money into the babypot.
Love hearing all your ideas for economising with regard to baby paraphernalia, and anticipating the costs of maternity leave.
Fingers crossed for a bfp soon!

Peonie

Castlelough, it is a shame but at least you had a fund that could be raided and in September you will be here back with us.

PrincessLou, how often do you want us to post our updates? Every 3 months would be less work than every month and we could post our totals rather than you having to add everything up. The first post was last updated in January so we could update at the end of this month, then July etc.

Thanks for setting up the challenge.

EchoDelta

Castlelough we had a car issue too and that means that we haven't increased baby fund in this last month. Blooming cars!!

Good luck with the credit card clearing and the ttc.

I've hit an ultra broody phase right now.... There are babies and pregnant ladies EVERYWHERE!! Fingers crossed for a bfp soon. It took ten months to conceive first time round though so trying to stay cool about it all!

Wishing everyone the best of luck this month.

gearfreak

Thanks for the ISA link peonie, now got one sorted :T

Thanks for the welcome castlelough, sorry to hear about your car problems x

Also just wanted to let you know that it took us a year and half to get pregnant and I'd pretty much given up when we found out. But when we were trying all I could see everywhere were babies and pregnant ladies so can definatly sympathise with you on that ED x

Peonie

No problem.

Even every TV advert seems to have a pregnant lady or baby in it.

EchoDelta

Woo hoo! Did budget for this month (bit later as was on holiday) and have managed to transfer some money to the baby fund. "Only" £4403.22 to go!

EchoDelta

Pay roll failed to pay me a bonus I was due last month and so £186 has just arrived in account and been put straight into baby fund :j

Also doing the "Tilly Tidy" each day.

And for the first time in ages I am doing some PAID overtime! Usually we are just expected to put in the extra time for no extra money but things so extreme at the moment that they are paying us!

Only an hour or two per day because of Small but it will mount up and it is all destined for the baby fund.

I know it's a bit tragic but I am really looking forward to updating my signature on pay day!

Peonie

EchoDelta wrote: »

Also doing the "Tilly Tidy" each day.

I know it's a bit tragic but I am really looking forward to updating my signature on pay day!

Are you TT to your baby fund or mortgage?

It can't be tragic; I'm the same and I don't want to be tragic.