Maternity and Mortgage

katieemma

Hi everyone, 
I've been reading some debt free diaries and it's inspired me to have a go at my own!

Abit about me... I'm married with 2 daughters and I'm currently pregnant with our third! We are trying to save as much as we can for the dreaded maternity pay which sees me going from £2000 per month to £580 per month next year. We're also saving to buy our first house and have £18,075 currently saved for a deposit so hoping to top this up to £20,000 as soon as we can. House prices in our area are very expensive so we're hoping to move within the next 2 years if we can save a big enough deposit. We have a £13,000 loan to pay off too which we'd like to do before we move house.

We currently have £3000 saved to cover my maternity leave, but of course this needs topping up. I'm a teacher and my husband has a his own business as well as doing freelance work.

So that's abit about us! I'm looking forward to starting this diary and hopefully it'll show me where we're going wrong and what we can tweak.

katieemma

My husband has taken our girls to stay with his family for the weekend which has given me a much needed break and time to sort out admin-y bits and do some work. Yesterday I wrapped all presents for Father's Day and my hubby's birthday and ordered some more bits I thought he might like. I also ordered a birthday present for my daughter's friend who is having a party soon (first one in ages - woohoo!). I paid my daughter's dance class and a week long dance workshop she's doing in the summer (altogether £145 eek!!) and put aside £44 for both girls Rainbows and Brownies fee and an activity day they're going on. So, even though I was at home it was a very spendy day BUT everything is now up to date and paid for. I've also put the girls on a waiting list for swimming lessons, hopefully they'll start going again end of June or early July. I know these are all extras and we'd save a lot not doing them but we're actually in a better financial position at the moment than we've ever been and it's been wonderful to treat the girls in this way.

Everyone is back home around 3ish, so my plan for today is:
- Clean bathrooms
- Hoover downstairs
- Put clothes away
- Make packed lunches for tomorrow
- Put another load of washing on (hoping it doesn't rain so I can peg it outside!)
- Freezer meal plan
- Find bits to sell at car boot

A no spend day today... breakfast was cereal and apple juice, lunch will be eggy bread and bacon (eggs given to us from a friend - bonus!), fruit for snacks and dinner will be something from the freezer. We have 2x freezers and they are absolutely heaving so my plan is to get it all out, have a look at what we've got and do a meal plan for at least two weeks. The only problem I'm having with dinners is I don't quite fancy anything hot at the moment, everything makes me feel queasy, hoping it'll pass.

At the moment we're getting a Tesco delivery every 4-5 days and aiming this to be £40 (mostly topups) but I can see that this is creeping up so doing meal plans will help I think. We use it for fresh fruit, bread, milk, yoghurts, and toiletries mostly.

Looking to do a car boot in a couple of weeks and we already have bags and boxes full of stuff to take, so will scout around the house whilst I tidy to see what else I can add to the pile. Anything we make from that will go towards a birthday weekend trip to Whitby for my hubby.

foxgloves

Hi KatieEmma, Well done on saving that deposit. Shows you can save if you have to & that's a positive. Agree getting rid of that loan before you buy a new house is a good plan. You'll know that part of the mortgage affordability checks involve looking at existing debts & reducing the amount that can be lent accordingly. This happened to us. It wasn't a problem as we didn't need to borrow up to the maximum for our mortgage but it could impact on someone buying in a more expensive region.
You are right that meal planning is key. There are always reductions to be made on grocery spending. A quick win for you would be to do a weekly shop rather than every 4 or 5 days and to meal plan so as to avoid the dreaded money-hoovering top-up shops. Batch-cooking for the freezer esp while you are on maternity leave could also be a money saver.
Good luck!
F

katieemma

foxgloves said:

Hi KatieEmma, Well done on saving that deposit. Shows you can save if you have to & that's a positive. Agree getting rid of that loan before you buy a new house is a good plan. You'll know that part of the mortgage affordability checks involve looking at existing debts & reducing the amount that can be lent accordingly. This happened to us. It wasn't a problem as we didn't need to borrow up to the maximum for our mortgage but it could impact on someone buying in a more expensive region.
You are right that meal planning is key. There are always reductions to be made on grocery spending. A quick win for you would be to do a weekly shop rather than every 4 or 5 days and to meal plan so as to avoid the dreaded money-hoovering top-up shops. Batch-cooking for the freezer esp while you are on maternity leave could also be a money saver.
Good luck!
F

Hi Foxgloves, 
Thanks for taking the time to comment! That's exactly why we want to get rid of that debt, chunk by chunk, so it's sort of like a clean slate when we are able to buy. I'm glad you were able to do that successfully!

I totally agree that having less Tesco deliveries would help us in the long run, will chat to hubby when he's back. I just know when I'm on maternity I'll have a much better 'control' over things. I don't mean this in an ungrateful way, but I work full time and hubby works from home so he does all the cooking as I'm often home late, but he doesn't always use everything up or find new recipes and tends to add lots of things to the Tesco shop that we don't actually need (our heaving freezers testify to that!!) so I'm keen to be at home to do this and I think we'll see lots of saving in that way. 

Thanks again for your comment, hope you have a great day! 

Honeysucklelou2

Congratulations on your third baby! Well done on saving a deposit amount. How long do you have until you start maternity leave?

katieemma

Honeysucklelou2 said:

Congratulations on your third baby! Well done on saving a deposit amount. How long do you have until you start maternity leave?

Thank you very much! :-)
I'm due end of September so will probably keep going until 1 week before (all being well) and won't go back until mid-July (I'm a teacher). I really can't wait!

Thank you, I'm actually really pleased/surprised that we've managed to save that much, we haven't been savers at all in the past and we've been very much 'life in the moment' kind of people, but weirdly during the pandemic we were able to save lots and it's given us a real boost!

Honeysucklelou2

Great if you can go back for a couple of weeks in Sept before maternity leave. Teacher here too! Unfortunately  I could only afford to have 2 terms off with my youngest but fabulous that you have been able to save to financially get through the maternity leave🙂.