Posts tagged finance

Well it’s been a long two years but we’ve survived! Our house has been taken over by toys, our savings are depleted but we have two happy healthy children to show for it. We were probably quite unusual in that we had two almost back-to-back maternity leaves. I was back at work for approximately two months before I went back on maternity leave with MasterB. I thought I’d share with you a few tips on budgeting for maternity leave as it is how we managed to survive financially for the last two years. In our household, both my husband and I have similar income careers and so the prospect of losing half of our household income was rather daunting and it took a lot of financial planning in advance. Now I know a lot of people don’t necessarily have time to plan ahead for their babies and maternity leave but if you do then these are my top tips on budgeting for maternity leave:

1. Set up a spreadsheet with columns across the top by month and income and expenditure down the side, something like this works and is nice and simple.

2. Work out your monthly income whilst on maternity leave, add in any child benefit and other tax credits etc you will be able to receive

3. Work out your current expenditure each month and then add in any expected costs of the new addition such as nappies, formula, wipes etc.

4. Work out whether you have enough income to cover all your expected expenditure. If not then you need to work out how much in savings you will need to cover this. From budgeting we knew exactly how much money we would need to cover the reduction in income and so made sure we had at least this amount in savings put away so that I could make the most of enjoying maternity leave with my children and not having to worry about paying the mortgage!

5. Work out how much you will need to spend on baby equipment. My top tip here is not to go overboard! It’s easy to get excited and spend a fortune on the latest pram, nursery decorations etc but in reality you don’t need to spend half as much as you think. Think carefully about what you REALLY need, at the end of the day you can hold of buying something and then go out and buy it later once the baby is here if you find you really need it! Essentials include monitor, pram, somewhere for it to sleep and clothes. Stores love to give out pre-printed lists of items to buy for your baby but trust me – you won’t need half of what’s on the list at all and most of it will just end up sitting in a cupboard until you get round to putting it on ebay

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