Maternity leave and a decrease in income! (2024)

Hello everyone,

My due date is 5th November and I was planning on working up until 21st October.

I am a childminder and understandably the parents of the children I care for need to find alternative childcare, and unfortunately they are all leaving before the end of Septmber.

I can't help but keep wondering how I'm going to cope money wise. I don't really want to start claiming for maternity pay until the end of October as I want to be able to take as long as possible off of work and spend a quality 9 months with my baby.

Is anyone else worrying about coping on maternity pay?

i do worry.. just hoping DH keeps bringing in the ££££'s whilst i'm off

we're saving at the moment to put some aside for when i'm not working x

WSS. I would just start maternity leave when the children leave. Or if you can manage one month with none of your money coming in, start as close as possible to when you wanted to.

It is tough but you will just have to adjust. We lost one income when I went on maternity the last time and I didn't go back to work because of studying and now new baby. Luckily, my husband earns just about enough for both of us at the minute but its still tough getting to the end of the month with no money :/

Fortunately I'm on 6 months full pay but the last 3 months are half pay, the direct debits for things like rent, TV licence and car ins come out of my account so my plan is to save a bit of money up before my pay halves so that my savings can cover me over these 3 months

My OH covers all other bills x

Is there nothing you could do to earn some money to keep you going until you planned to take maternity leave? Could you advertise and see if anybody needs temporary childcare during that time or something? You might be just what somebody is looking for.

If not, I would probably take the maternity allowance as soon as you need it. You don't *have* to spend it all so if it was enough and you managed to save some, you could maybe make it last as long as you wanted originally.

Rachel_C said:

Is there nothing you could do to earn some money to keep you going until you planned to take maternity leave? Could you advertise and see if anybody needs temporary childcare during that time or something? You might be just what somebody is looking for.

If not, I would probably take the maternity allowance as soon as you need it. You don't *have* to spend it all so if it was enough and you managed to save some, you could maybe make it last as long as you wanted originally.

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Thank you all for your replies. I have tried advertising for holiday cover as the summer holidays start this week, but so far I havn't heard anything. My wages will drop down to a 3rd of what I'm earning now! I'm sure we will get by, but I'm such a worrier. My hubby is self employed too and at the moment he is very busy with work and earning enough to look after us both, but the problem with being self employed is that you never know when the works going to dry up! Fingers crossed we'll be ok. xxx

Luckily and somehow my mat pay (or at least how I have worked it out) works out as the same amount I get now anyway

I think it's because of all the overtime I used to do.

I think money probably becomes an issue for most around maternity leave time.

As someone has said before, you're allowed to work ten days while on maternity leave. So you could sign up for maternity leave from the end of September and then try to work some days here and there (if possible) throughout October