12-24 weeks pregnant (part 3)

Peonie

Lemon, the nappies are a great price in the baby event. They are 99p cheaper than C0stco.

Daisie, when I saw you'd bought the breast pump I thought 'why didn't I buy it?' What are we like...

A friend has some real nappies she does not need. I'm going to see what they are like and how much she wants for them.

cmace2

purcy81 wrote: »

Looking good daisiegg I love your top x

Hooray for finding the HB T2D I love how they always squirm away, I think it gets worse the further on you get!

Like lilmissmup its time for me to jump threads but I'll probably still lurk around! Wishing you all the best and I'll see you all soon on the big (scary) thread!

24+1

I'm not moving til 25 weeks (which incidentally is only tomorrow lol!) cause I'm too scared that its the last thread before birth :eek: !! How can it seem like time is going so quickly and slowly at the same time?!

monty-doggy

Keep the receipt for the breast pump and if you don't use it take it back and say it was a gift. They will prob exchange it for you x

daisiegg

monty-doggy wrote: »

Keep the receipt for the breast pump and if you don't use it take it back and say it was a gift. They will prob exchange it for you x

Too late I have opened the box to have a look and it says you can't return once opened unless faulty nevermind, hopefully I will be able to use it!

Peonie

OMG I think I'm going to hyperventilate. I need your help.

Today I used the statutory maternity calculator on the gov.uk website and I think I've unknowingly saved enough to cover 2 maternity leaves plus quite a bit after that left over! Which is great as i don't need to worry about sunny day saving again and I can overfill my current IVF pot.

I'm wondering if I've miscalculated. In fact I've calculated it a few different ways and they all seems to come out with different credit amounts.

I calculated - part 1:

(9 months current costs + decorating/baby stuff) - (statutory maternity pay + child benefit) = money needed from sunny day savings.

Part 2:

Total sunny day savings - (Money needed from sunny day savings * 2) = credit for IVF pot.

Calculation additional information:

• '9 months' is how long I want on maternity leave and 'current costs' is the amount I contribute to the monthly bills.
• 'Sunny day savings, is my name for maternity leave/baby decorating/items needed.
• The '*2' is for 2 lots of maternity leave.
• For baby 2 we would not need to decorate the same or buy more baby items but have kept the same amount of money in to cover the additional cost of already having a child.
• As I don't know how much child benefit we'd get I've estimated an amount.

Please help. Does it look right to you?

I want to jump for joy but don't want to tell Mr P as he'll probably want to spend it on decorating and house renovations.

monty-doggy

I've no idea what you mean, are you trying for another baby after this one?

daisiegg

Sorry Peonie - I am with monty-doggy and confess to being really confused by your post too! Maybe we all have baby brain?!

daisiegg

Do you mean you have found out you will get more maternity pay than you expected so your savings are going to go further than you thought?

teaandcakeordeath

I too am baffled Peonie.

Am also freaked out. We have no savings, I am the sole earner, I work in NHS so we do have a nice mat leave policy (I assume to make up for our otherwise crappy pay) . I really wanted to take 12 months off (work will split the pay into equal monthly installments rather than it dropping after 8 weeks) but I don't even think we can afford me taking 6 months- 12 months leave will leave us about £550 short per month.

I have no idea what to do and the money thing is really stressing me out- I genuinely didn't think this would happen so never bothered to save and tbh have never had enough surplus income (as my credit card will attest) to do so.

Does anyone know if you can take repayment holidays on mortgages? I have mine with RBS...

Peonie

Sorry about the confusion. I've always wanted 2 children so yes if all goes well with this one we will try for a second. Although we'd probably need IVF for that one as well.

Over the years I've had time to save for maternity leave and had saved to cover my necessary monthly out-goings over that time and had not took into account statutory maternity pay or child tax credit. Today I used the SMP calculator and realised it would cover the majority of bills over my 9 month maternity leave and I would only need to dip into a bit of the money I had saved. I then realised I also had saved enough money to dip into for a second lot of maternity leave should the IVF be successful. Plus some money would be left over to contribute towards the IVF costs.

I was unsure how would we manage to save for additional IVF treatments plus maternity leave whilst paying silly nursery fees. So this is great news.

Sorry, I've probably given too much information now.

All in all, how did you calculate what savings you need to cover your maternity leave and anything you need for the baby, whilst taking into account SMP and child benefit?

I really hope that makes sense.

Peonie.