Maternity Entitlements

[clipclop1]

Hi everyone,
My partner and I are considering starting a family soon but want to make sure that we know where we stand with regards to finance before we do anything!

We both earn £19,000 a year and are not married. I've had a look at what maternity pay we can get (90% of my wage for first 6 weeks than down to £138 a week) but when I looked at Child Tax Benefit the online calculator it said that we're not eligable for it at all and I'm guessing this is because of what we earn.

Now I may sound extremely clueless here but surely there must be more help out there for first time families?! To take a £800+ drop in my monthly earnings is horrendous enough and I find it hard to believe that people do actually manage on this?! I saw that you can get £500 Surestart grant for your first child or twins and while that's a nice little sum of money, it doesn't do anything for our mortgage payments and paying the other bills... If this is really the case then I can't see us going into this.

If any of your expereinces mums and dads would like to offer me any advice I'd be very grateful!

[factor-fiction]

This has been a difficult issue for families for parents for generations and most have found a way through

[sherrardk]

Clipclop, there's never a right time. Babies don't need all new stuff (even though it woild be nice) or even as much as you think. Maternity leave will be tough financially but childcare costs are the killer. If we hadn't changed our lives ginormously (and in a lot of people's eyes we took too much of a risk) then we would only have two children.

[black_cat51]

it's true there is never a "right" time, but people just manage. You just cut your cloth for what you have

[black_cat51]

do you have skilled jobs? if not, then an option is to do stuff like night work, or shifts where you don't overlap, early morning cleaning shifts and so forth (which is what my parents did)