Statutory Pay - Survival

Personal for me who already has one child
Me and partner spoke about bills before my mat leave started meaning they take on all the bills and I pay for other things, my son now 3 years old and we still do it this way even with me being back at work, I pay for days out, nursery, Xmas and stuff like that. I know it’s not ideal for everyone but that’s how we do it.
We also do a big monthly shop and that’s helps the weekly food shop cost a lot less
Mat pay is shit.

Honestly , my husband pays all the bills anyway 🤣 he has done since I went off work with our first then my wage has been saving/treats but we panicked about money before our first and we just saved a few months worth of bill money before I went on maternity as a just incase it was needed.

We’ve been saving since finding out i was pregnant, just putting a bit aside each month, we will just about be okay without savings but wanted a buffer. I do get some occupational pay at the very beginning for a couple weeks but it’s pretty awful so not really much more than SMP at all

We use a budget planner, we will be downsizing to one car during mat leave to save some money and I am working some extra little bits now so we can save. I calculated how much we need to have saved so I can 'top up' the SMP each month to my normal part time wage and will live off that. As it currently stands we will probably be £1000 short but hoping something will come up to cover us 🤞🏽

I only pay a couple of bills so luckily doesn’t really affect me. The biggest bill I pay is council tax and I’ll just take a little each week to pay it at the end of the month. I only work 3 days a week so money on smp isn’t much different. Sorry I’m no help x

I usually contribute half of all bills/ mortgage so its going to be a big shock for us! I am planning on doing some self employed work alongside to help top up the money a little bit