How Much Should I Save Before Maternity Leave?

The structure is simple, and it is the one our calculator follows:

Costs should cover the whole period you intend to be off, not an average month, because your income changes part way through. Income means the maternity pay you actually expect to receive month by month — including any employer enhancement while it lasts.

Once you have a gap, dividing it by the number of months before your leave starts gives the amount to set aside each month.

Maternity income is rarely a flat line. Typically:

• the first six weeks of Statutory Maternity Pay are paid at 90% of your average weekly earnings, so they are often the highest-paid weeks;
• from week seven, statutory pay becomes the lower of 90% of your average weekly earnings and the statutory standard weekly rate — for most people a clear drop;
• any employer enhanced maternity pay usually runs for a set number of weeks and then ends, which can be a second, larger drop;
• Statutory Maternity Pay normally lasts up to 39 weeks;
• so someone taking the full 52 weeks of leave typically has a final period with no statutory maternity pay at all.

Mapping those steps is the single most useful thing you can do before setting a savings target. Use the UK Maternity Pay Calculator for the statutory schedule, and the Enhanced Maternity Pay Calculator if your employer offers a scheme on top.

Work from your real spending rather than a template. These categories are a practical checklist of what to include:

• HousingRent or mortgage, service charges, ground rent, insurance.
• Utilities and billsEnergy, water, council tax, broadband, mobile — energy often rises when you are home all day.
• Food and householdGroceries, toiletries, cleaning, pets.
• TransportCar costs, insurance, fuel, MOT, public transport. Commuting may fall while other trips rise.
• Debt and creditLoan, credit card and car finance payments that continue regardless of income.
• Baby running costsNappies, wipes, formula if used, clothes as they grow, healthcare extras.
• One-off equipmentPram, car seat, cot, sterilising equipment — often front-loaded before the birth.
• Emergency bufferA cushion for the boiler, the car or an unexpected trip, so a surprise does not become debt.

Some costs fall during leave too — commuting, work lunches, paid childcare for an older child if your pattern changes — so it is worth adjusting both directions rather than only adding.

We deliberately do not publish a recommended savings figure. A household with a mortgage and a car loan and one taking 26 weeks off with enhanced pay are not comparable, and a headline number would mislead one of them.

If you plan to take the full year, yes — this is the part most often missed. Statutory maternity leave can last up to 52 weeks, but Statutory Maternity Pay lasts up to 39 weeks. The difference is around 13 weeks of leave with no statutory maternity pay.

Those weeks are not automatically unaffordable — some households cover them from other income, some people return earlier, and some use Shared Parental Leave so a partner takes part of the period instead. But they should be planned for explicitly rather than discovered in month ten.

The Maternity Leave Planner shows the dates of the paid and unpaid periods for your own leave start date.

Household contributions reduce what has to come from your personal savings, and leaving them out of the sum tends to produce an alarming target that does not reflect reality.

The practical approach is to be specific: decide which bills other household income will cover during leave, and count only that. If a partner will cover the mortgage and utilities while you cover food and baby costs, your savings gap is measured against your share, not against the household's total spending.

It also helps to agree this in advance rather than month by month, so the plan holds when income drops at week seven.

Earlier is easier, because the monthly amount depends entirely on how long you have. A £3,000 gap is £500 a month over six months, or £250 a month over twelve. Nothing about the gap has changed — only how comfortably it can be met.

If the monthly figure looks unmanageable, the useful next steps are usually to re-check the leave length you are modelling, look again at which costs other household income will cover, and confirm whether your employer's scheme adds anything in the early weeks.