A new mum saved £15.5k for maternity leave - so she could afford to have a baby.
Alice Gregory, 30, was "shocked" when she found out the statutory maternity pay in the UK was just £184.03 a week - after falling pregnant late last year.
The mum-to-be realised the money would not even cover the bills and started saving straight away so she didn't have to be reliant on her partner, Dion McGrath, 31, support carer salary.
In nine months, Alice managed to save £7,000 from her salary and £8,500 from side hustles such as surveys and freelancing but felt a "pressure" to work to afford her own maternity leave.
Alice Gregory, 30, was "shocked" when she found out the statutory maternity pay in the UK was just £184.03 a week - after falling pregnant late last year.
The mum-to-be realised the money would not even cover the bills and started saving straight away so she didn't have to be reliant on her partner, Dion McGrath, 31, support carer salary.
In nine months, Alice managed to save £7,000 from her salary and £8,500 from side hustles such as surveys and freelancing but felt a "pressure" to work to afford her own maternity leave.
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FunTranscript
00:00If you're currently on maternity leave and wanted to make some extra money but you just have no idea where to find the time,
00:04I'm going to share with you three things that helped me earn £1,000 every month to top up my statutory maternity pay.
00:10Okay, so the first seems simple but I'm obsessed with writing a to-do list every single week.
00:13So on a Monday, I'll write out a to-do list and I'll split this to-do list up into two sections.
00:17So the first one is absolutely essentially have to do by the end of the week.
00:21And the second is a list of things that I'll do if I can get around to it.
00:23So if I finish everything on the first list, I'll work my way through what's on the second list.
00:27I'm the worst for doing it but it is really important that you make sure that your list is realistic
00:30because if you get to the end of the week and you've hardly crossed anything off,
00:32you're just going to feel really shit like you haven't actually got anything done.
00:35So make sure that everything on your list is actually doable.
00:38Second thing I'll do to stay on top of my work is to set aside an hour a day from Monday to Friday
00:42to make sure that I can get everything done on the to-do list.
00:45And that definitely isn't at the same time every day.
00:46I will try to do it in the mornings because that is the time my baby tends to sleep more in the afternoons and in the evenings.
00:52She tends to get more groggy and I don't have a spare.
00:54Second, to get any work done.
00:56Third thing that I'll do is to try to make the most of the time that the baby is feeding.
00:59Because obviously that happens quite a lot during the day and I don't like to waste it just scrolling on TikTok.
01:04So I try to make the most of it by making notes, having a look at websites that inspire me
01:08or content creators that I think have got really good ideas.
01:11And essentially I just try to add to that to-do list.
01:13I don't do it every feeding time because obviously it is a special time and you want to make the most of it.
01:17So I do do that sometimes but not every time.
01:20So I'll make notes on my phone, I'll come up with ideas on how I'm going to get through my to-do list for that week.
01:25It just helps me feel more organised for the week ahead.
01:28Okay so I think I've figured out how to become financially secure whilst you're on maternity leave.
01:32And it's probably easier than you might think.
01:34So when I found out I was pregnant last year I obviously had a look at what I was going to be entitled to
01:38in terms of pay when I went on maternity leave.
01:40I was shocked to find out that it isn't a percentage of your wage for the entire 9-12 months.
01:44It is actually just statutory maternity pay which is around £750 every month.
01:48So I do get six weeks of enhanced maternity pay from my employer
01:51but after that I will be on £750 for the month which barely covers my bills.
01:56So I've got a partner who's obviously going to be supporting me financially as well.
01:59I've always been really independent and I think that it's actually interesting to see whether I can challenge myself
02:03to earn what my wage would have been every month.
02:05So I set out on a mission to earn some extra money alongside my full-time job in preparation for going on maternity leave.
02:10And I've earned nearly £10,000 in freelancing and other side hustles.
02:13So my page is all about how to earn extra money whilst you're on maternity leave
02:16or how you can prepare before you actually go off onto maternity leave as well.
02:19So you've got some good saving pots to be able to live off as soon as you finish.
02:22I'm on a mission to earn as much money as I can whilst I'm on maternity leave
02:26because statutory maternity pay is shite.
02:29So I decided to start this mission after I found out how low statutory maternity pay was
02:33when I fell pregnant last year.
02:35So I tried out loads of different side hustles to try to make money whilst I was still at work
02:39to save up for when I was on maternity leave.
02:41And now I am on maternity leave, I am trying to make as much money as I can around obviously my newborn baby.
02:46So I wanted to share my journey, the ups and downs of trying to obviously earn money whilst working
02:52and then also being a full-time mum.
02:54How much money do you think you should save before going on maternity leave?
02:57So we all know how bad, well you might not know, how bad statutory maternity pay is.
03:01So it's about £750 every month and every woman in the UK is entitled to it.
03:05And I feel at the moment it's obviously harder than ever because we've got a cost of living crisis.
03:08Everything is just ridiculously expensive and way more expensive than it used to be.
03:12And so that means obviously saving money before going on maternity leave whilst you're pregnant
03:16is also much more difficult than it was before.
03:18So I managed to save about £7,000 before I went on maternity leave.
03:22So I found out I was pregnant last October and I went on maternity leave at the end of June.
03:26So it's the law for your company to give you six weeks at 90%
03:30and my particular company give me another six weeks.
03:32So after 12 weeks, which is three months, I will be on £750 every month.
03:37So for me that just isn't enough for me to live on, that barely covers my bills.
03:40So I had nine months to basically save some money and make additional income alongside my full-time job.
03:46So obviously I've not been on maternity leave before and I don't know whether that's going to be enough money
03:49or whether it is not going to be enough and I'm going to have to go back to work sooner.
03:52But I would like to know how much everybody saved before going on maternity leave
03:56and if they managed to get to the full 12 months or if they had to go back a little bit earlier
04:00because they had run out of money.
04:02So I've just tallied up for the first time how much money I made through side hustles
04:06since I found out I was pregnant last year.
04:08And the figure was £8,500.
04:10So this was since last October and this was alongside my full-time job.
04:14So essentially I wanted to start side hustling when I found out I was pregnant
04:17because of how low statutory maternity pay was.
04:19So I don't know if I'm the only one, but I did not know how low statutory maternity pay was.
04:24I thought that it was a percentage of your wage that your employer would pay you every month
04:28that you were off whilst you were looking after your baby.
04:30Which now obviously I know isn't the case.
04:32So I think SMP, which is statutory maternity pay, without any enhance is about £750 a month.
04:37Which obviously barely covers any bills, let alone food shops and everything else
04:42that has gone up in the cost of living crisis.
04:44So the majority of that extra income, which was £8,500, has come from freelancing.
04:49Obviously there was other parts to it, so things like selling on Vinted, mystery shopping, surveys.
04:54I did all of that, but the majority of that money came from freelancing.
04:57I didn't spend loads of time doing it.
04:59Obviously I had a full-time job at the time, I was pregnant so I wasn't feeling very well.
05:03I only had a couple of hours after work and then at the weekend.
05:06So I didn't overwork myself and so I'm really happy with the £8,500
05:11because I don't feel like I've worked enough to get that money, if you know what I mean.
05:15So my very first job as a complete beginner to freelance earned me £1,500
05:20and that was creating really simple Instagram captions for various different brands.
05:25My day job is in marketing, so jobs like this I do find quite easy.
05:28So that was what I used to offer as a freelancer, was my marketing services.
05:32However, and I've said it in all of my other videos, if you do all of the best free courses,
05:36so I've done another video on different kind of courses depending on what jobs you're going for,
05:41you create a really, really good portfolio, you show all of your examples,
05:45you would be able to land a job like that as a complete beginner to freelancing and marketing.
05:49You just have to know how to market yourself and how to speak to clients and how to land those jobs.