How Much Should You Save Before Maternity Leave? A Month-by-Month Way to Find Out

Somewhere around the second trimester, a quiet question shows up and does not leave: will the money be enough? You search for a number. You find “three to six months of expenses”, a forum thread where someone saved $20,000, and another where someone saved nothing and “it worked out”. None of it is about you, so you close the tab and feel a little worse than before.

That is a normal reaction to a vague question. So let’s make the question smaller. You do not need a rule of thumb. You need three amounts you can add up, and one month to look at.

Why the pay you lose is the wrong number

The obvious way to do this is to work out how much less your leave pays than your job does, and save that. It sounds responsible. If you normally spend less than you take home, it is also too high, sometimes far too high.

Take Sarah. She is planning on her own, earns $1,600 a week before tax and takes home $5,200 a month. Her leave is 18 weeks: 6 weeks paid in full by her employer, 8 weeks of state paid leave at 70%, and 4 weeks unpaid. Altogether the leave pays her $14,106 after tax - about two-thirds of what she would normally take home in those weeks. The gap to her usual pay is $7,782.

So does she need $7,782 in savings? No. In her plan, her savings are only $161 lower at their lowest point than on the day her leave starts.

The reason is simple once you see it. The gap compares her leave pay with her usual pay. Her savings only care about her leave pay compared with her costs. Sarah spends $3,850 a month, well under what she earns, and her parents help with $300 a month. For most of her leave, the money coming in still covers the month. Only the unpaid weeks actually reach into savings.

The gap is still worth knowing - it tells you how big the change is. It just is not your savings target.

The three amounts that are your savings target

1. Your safety buffer. The amount you decide not to touch, whatever happens. Take it off the top first. Sarah’s is $5,000. Planning without one means a single car repair in month three rewrites everything.

2. Your one-time baby costs. Crib, stroller, car seat and your out-of-pocket birth costs. They land before the leave starts and come straight out of savings. Sarah’s come to $2,800. For the birth costs, call your insurer and ask for your deductible and your out-of-pocket maximum rather than guessing.

3. How far your savings dip. The difference between what you start the leave with and your lowest point. This is the part that needs a month-by-month look, and it is the part most estimates skip.

Finding your lowest month

Leave pay is uneven. It often starts close to your normal pay, drops, hits zero in the unpaid weeks, then recovers when you go back - with childcare now on top. So a plan can look fine in total and still have one month that is not. The question is never “does it add up overall”. It is “what is the lowest point, and is it still above my buffer”.

To find it, go month by month from the day your leave starts:

• Money in: your leave pay for that month, a partner’s pay if you have one, and any regular support you are sure of.
• Money out: your normal household costs, the real ones - rent or mortgage, student loan and car payments included - plus the new monthly baby costs. From the month you go back, add childcare.
• Plus or minus: the difference. A plus adds to your savings. A minus uses them.

Here is Sarah’s plan. After her buffer and her one-time costs, she starts with $5,200 available ($12,000 saved, plus $1,000 in gifts, minus $5,000, minus $2,800).

Month	Plus or minus	Money left
March 2027	+$1,835	$7,035
April 2027	+$671	$7,706
May 2027	+$220	$7,926
June 2027 (unpaid weeks)	-$2,820	$5,106
July 2027 (back at work on July 5)	-$66	$5,039
August 2027	+$450	$5,489

Rounded to the dollar, so a line can be $1 off.

Her lowest month is July, not June. That surprises people. The unpaid weeks do the damage, but the month she goes back is still slightly negative: the paycheck is not a full one yet, and childcare has started. This is why it is worth planning through the first three months back at work, not just to the last day of leave.

So how much did Sarah actually need?

Add the three amounts:

• Buffer: $5,000
• One-time baby costs: $2,800
• How far her savings dip: $161

That is $7,961. She has $13,000, so she has about $5,000 of room, on top of the buffer she is not touching.

Now change one thing. Without her parents’ $300 a month, her lowest point would be $1,500 lower, and the third amount becomes $1,661. Her number would be $9,461. Same salary, same leave, same baby. This is why someone else’s number from a forum cannot be yours.

Start with the part that takes two minutes

The first thing to pin down is what your leave really pays, stage by stage. It is the number most people have never seen written down.

You will need your pay per week before tax, a rough tax share, and for each stage the number of weeks and the percent of pay. If your state has a paid leave program, its website gives you three numbers: the weeks, the percent and the weekly cap. If it has none, that stage is simply 0 weeks.

If your lowest month goes below your buffer

Then you have found it now, months early, which is the whole point. The levers are few, and they are all yours:

• Shorten the unpaid weeks. Each unpaid month costs a full month of living costs, minus whatever still comes in.
• Save more before the leave starts. Every extra dollar lifts every month by the same dollar.
• Count regular support, if it is certain. Child support, help from family, benefits.
• Place the one-time amounts. A tax refund or a bonus in the right month can carry the lowest one.

One thing that looks like a lever and is not: covering the lowest month with a credit card. That does not raise the month. It moves it later and adds interest.

From a number to a plan

Doing this once on paper is useful. Doing it again every time something changes - a later due date, a daycare quote, a different return date - is where it gets tiring. Baby & Leave Runway is the Excel planner we built for exactly this: your leave pay, your baby costs and your savings on one timeline, with the lowest month marked and a plain status on top - On track, Tight or Short. It opens with Sarah’s numbers, so you can follow this article in the file and then replace them with your own.

This guide is general information for planning, not financial, tax or legal advice. Leave rules and benefit amounts change - check them with your employer and your state’s program.