Planning for Maternity Leave

This is my last week of client facing work before my maternity leave starts. I cannot believe it is already here! I feel like just last week I was complaining about early pregnancy morning sickness and fatigue and now I’m about the size of a mutant watermelon and am a pro-waddler. While I’m on maternity leave the newsletter will be filled with some past goodies (updated with new information and context!), some new musings by me, and some new musings by Marguerite. Many of you respond to the newsletters with questions and comments and I love those! However, please note that I will be slower to respond to those over the coming three months. 

As is my custom, I wanted to share a little bit more with you about how I’m making this leave work monetarily. Because I work for my own company and I am the first employee to take maternity leave I didn’t have a clear plan mapped out way in advance. However, I knew before I got pregnant that I wanted to take at least 12 weeks of leave and that I wanted to maintain my usual income. What that meant was saving, saving, saving! Over the course of about 15 months I saved up enough to cover the ongoing company expenses, some new expenses related to my leave (I need other people to take things over when I’m not here!), and part of my salary.

The rest of my salary is coming from a combination of state benefits paid for by the State Disability Insurance taxes I pay every time I run payroll. Disability Insurance will cover a portion of my salary for about 4 weeks and the Paid Family Leave will cover another portion for about 6 weeks. I say “about” mostly because the benefits haven’t actually kicked in yet and I’m not entirely sure what to expect (i.e. How long will it take? Will it actually last the amount of time I expect? Will there be any hiccups?). If for some reason these state benefits don’t turn out the way I expect I have backup savings at the company that I can dip into as well. Although, I’d love to not do that and instead use those for other investments in the new year! 

Do you have other questions about my maternity leave? About maternity leave in general? About anything else? Let me know! 

XOXO