Today I’d like to talk about a financial obstacle that has been weighing heavy on my mind… my upcoming maternity leave in September!
When we had Caleb and I went out on leave, we obviously didn’t have a child yet, and therefore had a sizeable savings account. That meant that during my leave, we hardly had to use the credit card, and relied heavily on our savings. I went back to work after about 9 weeks because money was running low and I needed to start bringing home a paycheck again. We made it out relatively unscathed with a credit card balance of less than $500. Phew.
This time, I’d really like to take an entire 12 weeks because I’ll have TWO babies to take care of now, and I want to give everyone (myself included) time to adjust to becoming a family of four. In addition, Caleb is starting preschool in September… talk about a month of BIG changes for everyone, especially Caleb. I want to be there for him while he transitions to both brotherhood and school.
The problem is, my maternity leave is essentially unpaid. Maternity leave here means ONLY that your job is held for you while you’re out and that if you receive benefits, you will receive them while you’re out. While that’s great, the lack of a paycheck is really, really difficult.
With my employer, first you have to use your banks up (vacation, sick time, etc.). Even if you don’t want to use them, you have to. They won’t let you go “no-pay” if you have banks. You are allowed to withhold a small amount of vacation time if you’d like to, based on your years of service (in my case, I can withhold five days), but that’s it. You HAVE to go through the rest of your time banks, even if and when that means zeroing them out. Now for us we wouldn’t want to go “no-pay” from the get go anyway because we couldn’t afford it, but even if we wanted to… we wouldn’t be allowed. I’d LIKE to withhold my five days of vacation in case I need time off once I return to work (sick babies, anyone?) but we might not be able to afford for me to do that, and I may have to use those days too. Only time will tell.
As it’s looking right now, by the time I go out on leave, I will have between 5 and 6 weeks total of my sick and vacation banks to use. My sick time is relatively low because I had to run it down to zero when I was out on my leave for Caleb, and I’ve been rebuilding it ever since. Add in the ectopic pregnancy last year, and various doctor’s appointment for THIS pregnancy, and my time is lower than I’d like it to be.
Once those banks run out, that is IT! I go to no-pay. I do not receive any kind of maternity pay or disability pay. Many women DO receive that pay when they’re out (usually just a percentage of their normal pay), but as a public service employee, I do not. Why? I have no idea. My bestie is a teacher and due right before I am, and we’ve been bemoaning this fact since she is also a public employee. Why do private employees get that pay but we don’t? It’s really upsetting and discouraging. It’s not like we work any less, or as if the work we do is any less valuable… but we can’t do anything about it.
What all this means is, I’ll be going anywhere from 6-7 weeks without pay, assuming I stay out the whole 12 weeks. That’s a LARGE chunk of money we’ll be missing out on (I’ve been cringing ever since I figured out the amount). Jerry will be returning to work after about a week or two, so that’s a help of course, but the financial loss of my checks is going to be major.
We have SOME in our savings, but not as much as we’d like, and not even anywhere CLOSE to what we’re losing. I’ve discovered that saving money and then KEEPING it in your savings are two different things. It’s very hard to keep money in there for long with a house, two cars, and a child… all of which always need something.
We don’t have much of a plan. We’ve been doing what we can to prepare by socking away money and paying down debt, but the bottom line is… maternity leave in this country sucks. We’ll pay what we can with Jerry’s checks, use savings for the rest (again, not much in there at all), and then have to fall back onto the credit card as our last resort. I feel so torn. I KNOW we’re going to have to use it. It’s going to unavoidable, and it makes me so upset. But at the same time, I don’t want to miss out on this time with my babies. They need me. It’s more important than the money.
We will do our best to use it as little as possible, while also keeping in mind that this is temporary. The time with our newborn is so, so fleeting and priceless. Once I get back to work in November or December, we will go full throttle at paying back the credit card. We’ll dive right back into our debt repayment plan at full velocity.
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