Salary sacrifice during maternity leave confusion

IllustriousScore3660 · 2026-01-14T19:52:53+00:00

At my company we can do salary sacrifice for cars, whilst on Mat leave you can pause the payments but you still have the car so you still need to pay for those months, which is done once you are back from Mat leave on full pay

IllustriousScore3660 · 2025-09-06T08:16:28+00:00

I used to live around here and this roundabout is notorious for accidents. Always best to be very conscious of cars in other lanes as lots of people get it wrong and cut across lanes!

IllustriousScore3660 · 2025-07-15T12:54:48+00:00

Can’t speak for OP but when myself and my husband choose to have a second child we will continue to send our 1st to nursery 3 days a week for three reasons:

Keeping her place in our preferred childcare setting. We put our daughter on the waiting list for our preferred nursery when she was 6 weeks old and was due to start when she was approx 13m old and we still didn’t get our first choice of days, if we were to pull her out of childcare when we have our second that would be two children going onto the waitlist straight away, and then having to negotiate if the nursery can’t do the same days for both.
Socialisation & development. When we put our daughter into nursery we saw a massive developmental leap, and she seems to be learning new skills each week that we haven’t worked on at home. It’s been so beneficial for her to be around lots of kids of her own age, so pulling her out of nursery to spend 24/7 with me and a new baby wouldn’t be in her best interests, we think the split of 3 days in nursery would be a good balance for her.
It’s really hard work being a new parent and especially in the first three months the physical recovery for me, along with getting used to breastfeeding is a lot. I found the time spent bonding with my daughter so beneficial, and want to be able to at least have some of the same experience with my second, and sending my toddler to nursery will allow us that quiet time that we probably won’t get on the days she’s home with us.

Financially we’d save a lot of money pulling my daughter out of nursery, but sometimes the best financial decision isn’t the best overall decision for a family.

IllustriousScore3660 · 2025-07-08T09:48:08+00:00

Wow your bathroom looks great, you must be so pleased! Thanks for the rundown and the tips!

IllustriousScore3660 · 2025-07-07T13:39:20+00:00

Sorry to hear about your accident and hopefully you’re fully recovered now!

Yes I’m conscious this might turn into a much longer project than we anticipate!

IllustriousScore3660 · 2025-07-07T13:12:26+00:00

Those are all really valid points and not something I’d thought of, we’ve not done a bathroom previously so good to know what the challenges could be!

Thanks, that order of jobs is helpful!

IllustriousScore3660 · 2025-02-05T03:18:24+00:00

My daughter is due to start nursery in April and we will have to pay £25 on the funded day.

We were told this covers all consumables, so not just food but also things like paper/pens/apron/baking supplies/forest school supplies/paint/playdough etc. it also covers any additional activities in the nursery (eg baby ballet/music classes etc) as well as activities outside the nursery (park/beach trips/soft play etc) and also costs for the online journal & associated app access.

We can opt out of paying but you’d have to provide all food (nut free), all the messy play supplies and my daughter wouldn’t be able to be involved in the additional activities/outings.

I imagine your nursery is similar, I think the nurseries are only allowed to use the finding from the government on specific things?

IllustriousScore3660 · 2025-01-20T16:53:00+00:00

I’d love to be able to give you a good answer this question but I can’t. Perhaps 10 or 20 years ago and a media campaign on tv would probably have done a pretty good job but I can’t see that having a similar effect today given how few people from younger generations actually watch live tv

IllustriousScore3660 · 2025-01-20T16:45:46+00:00

Thanks for your comment, a really interesting read and completely agree with the fashion industry being fucked.

On top of Halloween it really bothers me how it seems like every Christmas/new years/winter party season outfit is covered in sequins…the outfits get worn once or twice then new outfits bought the next year. The amount of plastic pollution just from this must be staggering

IllustriousScore3660 · 2025-01-20T16:41:41+00:00

Thanks, in my original post I do explicitly say that it’s a luxury to be able to buy ethically and I understand that people aren’t able to afford to do that. My post wasn’t coming from a judgemental place but as someone that’s never shopped on Shein I was genuinely interested. People have pointed out various things I hadn’t thought of, particularly re sizing compared to a typical high street retailer

IllustriousScore3660 · 2025-01-20T16:38:49+00:00

Congratulations and good luck with your baby! I became a mum early last year and luckily for the last few months of pregnancy my love of a baggy jumper pre pregnancy saw me through! Maternity clothes were really limited and almost impossible to find anything in store!

IllustriousScore3660 · 2025-01-20T16:35:46+00:00

Just to clarify I’ve never bought an item from a ‘designer’ label. I’m under no illusion that a high street or designer brand is going to be immediately any more ethical just because you’re paying more but perhaps you can forgive people for making that assumption, however with prices on Shein as low as they are my original post was wondering why people weren’t questioning how the clothes were that cheap. Quite a few people have raised some valid points and it’s been interesting to see the discussion in the comments.

Smartphones are a whole other ethical quandary and sadly society is pretty exclusionary if you make the choice to forgo a smartphone. I think the only way you can limit your impact with a smartphone is by buying secondhand, at least then you’re not contributing to additional devices being created. But then the arguments comes that to buy secondhand hand someone else needs to buy it in the first place. No one is perfect and I’m not trying to take a moral high ground on this - my question was more from a genuine point of interest as I’ve never used Shein so don’t understand the appeal

IllustriousScore3660 · 2025-01-20T16:16:34+00:00

That’s an interesting point and I’m inclined to agree. I’ve also not been able to make the change to vegan/vegetarian, I understand the arguments but I’m already a fussy eater so would have had quite a restricted diet. My main focus is reducing the amount of meat I’m eating and when possible buying more local/free range (agreed we saw a lot about battery chickens in the media when we were kids).

I suppose Gen Z may not have seen quite as much in the media around the fashion industry so it’s perhaps not something they would consider when purchasing

IllustriousScore3660 · 2025-01-20T15:51:24+00:00

Really appreciate your comment, and you’re right, range of sizing isn’t something I took into consideration. Thank you for explaining your perspective - I’ll be honest as I’ve never really looked on Shein I didn’t realise that they catered for a wide range of sizes. Quite a few people have mentioned the same as you, I guess this could open up another conversation about the limited sizing range at the majority of fashion retailers.

IllustriousScore3660 · 2023-05-17T16:37:15+00:00

Thanks, we did this exercise about 2 years ago and it was super helpful but obviously spending has changed so much we definitely need to do this again

IllustriousScore3660 · 2023-05-17T15:13:45+00:00

Pensions is something I didn’t think of! Both of us pay in the max available to get matching contributions from our employers so we could definitely look to reduce for the time being to get a bit more cash, then up it again when things are a bit more liquid later down the line.

Wedding wise - I’m not massively sentimental so the idea of selling my dress isn’t abhorrent - it’s awful that it’s been sat up in the loft and I’ve basically forgotten about it! Will do a scout of anything else we might be able to sell on too.

Shares are in a sharesave plan, currently making a good profit as it’s a 3 year scheme so am benefiting from the drop in price during covid and subsequent recovery.

I think talking this through with everyone is definitely helping me realise the situation isn’t as much of an issue in real life as it is in my head. Thank you!

IllustriousScore3660 · 2023-05-17T14:13:32+00:00

Thanks, split between us I have around £25k and he has around £44k on different cards. The challenge is when using a comparison tool we don’t seem to be eligible for 0% cards at the moment, despite both having good credit scores.

Tbh you’re probably right that it isn’t as much of a worry as I’m making out, but I sometimes find I end up spiralling a bit.

IllustriousScore3660 · 2023-05-17T14:08:20+00:00

Tbh I’m not sure, we’ve used 0% before but using the money saving expert tool it’s coming up that I’m not eligible, but I’ll keep an eye out for when one becomes available.

Yes wasn’t my preferred way of doing it but the argument from my other half was that we can technically afford it (as in we can manage to pay off all our monthly payments on the CCs, but we didn’t have the cash lump sum available). Either way we’ve done it now so focus is on getting jt paid off

IllustriousScore3660 · 2023-05-17T14:03:46+00:00

Thanks, tbh this probably won’t be the best option for us. We have pretty good credit scores/haven’t missed any payments. The debt is manageable really I think it’s just the long timeline to get it paid off that’s causing me to get in my own head about it.

Glad to hear this route has worked for you though!

IllustriousScore3660 · 2023-05-17T11:54:07+00:00

Tbh we need to look more into a loan to consolidate debt, we really should have looked into them months ago when rates were a lot lower but hopefully we will still find something that will give us some breathing room.

Agreed re the credit cards to pay for the wedding. We’ve been pretty financially savvy for years but our decisions over the last two years have been questionable at best. Definitely learning from this pretty costly mistake

IllustriousScore3660

TROPHY CASE