How to Financially Prepare for a New Baby & Going on Maternity Leave Feat. Christina Wanta - Part 1

In this episode, I am joined by my friend Christina Wanta to discuss how to financially and mentally prepare for maternity leave and having a baby. We share our different experiences as a corporate employee and an entrepreneur. Part one focuses on pre-maternity leave preparations, including dealing with loss of income, insurance benefits, and saving for baby-related expenses. Part two will cover time off during maternity leave, returning to work, and daycare options.

Key Highlights

[00:00:00] - Introduction to the episode and topic of preparing for maternity leave and having a baby.

[00:00:21] - Introducing guest Christina Wanta and discussing their different perspectives as a corporate employee and an entrepreneur.

[00:00:49] - Part one of the episode: discussing preparations before maternity leave, including loss of income, insurance benefits, and saving for the baby.

[00:01:31] - Preview of part two of the series, which will cover time off during maternity leave, returning to work, and daycare options.

[00:01:32] - Welcoming Christina Wanta to the podcast.

[00:01:43] - Christina sharing her experience and financial fears when she first found out she was pregnant.

[00:04:05] - Discussing the process of informing the employer about the pregnancy and understanding maternity leave benefits through HR.

[00:14:20] - Discussing the expenses of preparing for a baby, including strollers, cribs, and the SNU rental.

[00:20:53] - Sharing the surprise of receiving hand-me-downs and spending less money than expected on baby items.

[00:25:34] - Discussing financial preparation before maternity leave, including creating a baby savings account and budgeting for expenses.

Notable Quotes

• "I did not want to work during maternity leave. I want to be able to give my time and energy and love exclusively to this baby while he's so young."
• "Identity plays such a big role in this whole journey, your professional identity, but also your identity as a woman becoming a mother who's also a spouse."
• "I had so many friends reaching out, offering to share their baby items. I felt so loved and cared for through that process."
• "Invest in a great stroller and car seat, something you can use for years. Your community can chip in to support this special item."
• "You don't have to spend a fortune on baby items. Look for deals on used baby gear, like the SNOO, to save money."

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Transcript

0:01

Hello and welcome to the Holistic Money Podcast. I'm your host, certified financial planner and money mindset coach, Whitney Morrison. Over the past seven years, I've taken myself from credit card debt and no savings to a seven figure net worth. I did this without a budget or a restrictive money plan, but instead smart, sustainable wealth building strategies combined with changing my relationship with money. In this podcast, you'll learn the ins and outs of my no budget philosophy, practical wealth building strategies, and key mindset shifts to make it happen. There is no shortage of information out there to tell you what to do with money, but teaching you how to think and feel about money, that's my secret sauce. If you've been waiting for a podcast that gives you actionable strategies to not only build wealth, but also feel really good while you're doing it, then you're in the right place. Let's get started. I am officially 40 weeks pregnant. And while I am waiting for this little guy to debut, I decided to record a couple of episodes on how to financially and mentally prepare for going on maternity leave and having a baby. I've learned so much over the past nine months on how to prepare. And so I wanted to share this information with you. I decided to have my really good friend, Christina Wanta join me on this episode. And the reason why is because. Because she is a corporate employee and I'm an entrepreneur. So we have two different experiences and perspectives on the things that we had to do to prepare for maternity leave. So she's going to be sharing that corporate perspective, and I'm going to be sharing the perspective of an entrepreneur. The way that we've broken up this episode series is there are two parts in part one, this episode right here, we're really going to be talking about before maternity leave, all of the things that you need to start preparing for. So thinking about loss of income, if you don't have. paid maternity leave or paternity leave at your company. I know as an entrepreneur, we do not have that. We're going to be talking about insurance benefits. We're going to be talking about the most extensive items that you need to be saving for in order to prepare for your baby. And part two of this series, we're actually going to talk about your time off during maternity leave. And we're going to be talking about after maternity leave, returning back to work and potentially sending your kid to daycare in the event that that's what you choose to do. Let's dive in. Christina Wanta welcome to the podcast Hello. Thanks for having me. I'm so excited to have you here. Christina, you are a mom of two and you've been through this a couple of times now. Tell me what it was like for you when you first found out you're pregnant for that first time and did you have any like financial fear come up when that first happened? Yeah. So maybe I'll back up and explain not the moment of finding out I was pregnant, but the moment before the moment, which is Planning the births of my eventual babies and how that came to be with, with my, my husband. I remember being on a solo vacation and I was newly married and I was like, I know I want to have babies. I know I want to have two babies and I have to time this appropriately so that they're the right distance apart. And so that my career was at a certain point. And so I wrote down in my notebook, first baby, 2019, second baby, 2022. When I came back from my vacation, my husband found these notes. And it became a big joke, still a running joke because he, I was basically planning our life independent of him and he, as we know, it takes two to tango with having a child. So I, uh, that sort of became a big joke. I did have my first baby in 2019. Her name is Jojo. She is now four. I remember that, that first moment just being so like, I got really excited. And then the moment of finding out she was a girl, I got red road, I got pink roses and I put them in my, my back seat and I had my husband go play. I was like, can you go pick up the groceries in the car? He picked out the pink roses. I would thought he was going to immediately figure out what I was talking about. He had no idea. He's like, Oh yeah, pink roses, pink roses. In terms of like financial fears, I think the biggest thing for me was around thinking about how do I create a solid career and an identity in that before embarking on parenting and parenthood and money is so tied up. In that way, because it was important for me to have a solid base in my career, a feeling of like upgrade mobility and feeling like I was in a good company with good benefits, which I know we'll talk about. And so that was primarily where my head was at and why timing it in the way it did was very intentional for me. So let's talk about before maternity leave, like that moment of being like, okay, I'm pregnant to this baby is coming and I need to make sure that I have. Everything ready financially and like stuff in your house, you know, we're going to talk about that too. So tell me, what was your process with your employer when you found out you were pregnant? The first thing I did was wanting to really know my benefits. And wanting to be thoughtful about when do I tell my team and my boss around this? Um, and the reason why that was important to me is to separate talking and knowing about my benefits and speaking with like HR, separating that from my team is because I think it's so important, whether or not you're an entrepreneur or you work for a company that just self advocacy and just knowing what you have available to you. And so the first thing I did was meet with HR just to understand. Okay, what are my, what are my benefits? What are the benefits available to me at the company, um, in terms of maternity leave? What is my current insurance provider? And understanding what do I need to change my insurance provider when it's open enrollment? So I, I went sort of that route of self-advocacy, talking directly with my HR, and, and understanding how should I manage speaking to my boss, Ron, speaking to my team about it. At what point are you supposed to tell people that? Is it when you're showing? I mean, you technically don't have to tell them at any point. And now we live in a remote world where you could go pregnant and no one would ever know. I sort of separate those two things and starting with HR and understanding what's, what's available to me and what are my benefits. And what did you find? Were you surprised at all at any of the benefits that you had through your employer? I had, um, 12 weeks paid, which at the time felt like a really healthy time off and paid time off. And now, you know, I had a friend who was living in England at the time and she's like, I had a whole year off. So, I mean, you, you can think about it globally and that sort of just a dent in what, what women should have and what mothers and fathers should have sort of access to in terms of leave, paid leave. But I felt like that was, uh, reasonable and healthy. And then they had other perks, like when you were pregnant, you could park closer to the building. I actually think it's good to walk a little farther, you know, to sort of get your body moving. Um, so that was one sort of like an expectant mother sign of, so you can park a little closer. But they also had a benefit called, uh, a bassinet called SNU, which some of you might have heard. I know you're renting one. Um, and so they gave, um, a free SNHU rental. Um, so it was a little bit of both of like, oh, these are kind of like nice perks. And then understanding like taking leave and the process of taking leave, which ended up being kind of a pain in the butt. So great thing for people to consider is starting with HR first and then actually going to their team or their boss to let them know they're pregnant. And I'm curious, when did you make that decision to let your team and your boss know? When I was starting to know that I was going to start to show. So physically, when I was in a, in a position where I couldn't really hide it anymore. So there was like a physical element to it, but there was also a project element to it. Um, I really wanted to hand off. My work in a thoughtful way and have a leave plan because, uh, I just thought that was only fair, you know, from, to my colleagues. And so I wanted to be strategic about like, what are the projects that I was taking on and what was in flight that I was owning that I needed to hand off. But I also I didn't feel like I had to do it right away because that it was kicking up energy that I didn't need to kick up until I needed to. I think that's really smart. I know Craig had a very interesting experience when he was telling his team about, uh, paternity leave. He also had 12 weeks paid paternity leave. One of the things that you and I had, had discussed was the FMLA protection. And I know neither of us are attorneys, but I do think it's something important to touch on because you had actually mentioned it in our notes. So can you just. Like give a high overview of the FMLA protection, you know, it disclaimer. I'm not an attorney. However, FMLA stands for family medical leave act. And it's a state law that while you take leave, whether it's medical leave because you're pregnant medical leave, because you have a sick family member, whatever those are, surgery, whatever those sort of reasons are. You are, your job is protected, so they can't backfill your role. They can't replace your role. They can't fire you. You know, my company is also California based, which is a different, different period of time. And it's not uncommon for, I think, a company to have the paid leave match the sort of FEMLA paid leave, but also as protected as an employee for 12 weeks. I think that's so important because. It can feel so vulnerable just to say, Hey, I'm going to walk away from my job and my projects and my role and everything, every, every way that for me, at least I feel purposeful as a human in the world. I mean, as in Neogram 3, for those of you that are familiar with a Neogram, I'm a Neogram 3. And so my professional life is incredibly important to me and it's a huge definer of my identity. And I think for a lot of people, it can feel that way. It can be a little nerve wracking. Like, how did you feel about that? I now need to know what my enneagram is. I don't even know what that is. So I'm excited to explore that separately. Identity plays such a big role in this whole journey, your professional identity, but also your identity with, as like a woman becoming a mother, who's also a, has a spouse potentially and the relationship to that, and maybe you're a manager at work and you have direct report, it was profound to me how my. The individual me with just spawning, it was building, it was just like getting bigger of my role and my identity. I remember the feeling particularly about leaving the job for 12 weeks. I definitely had some nerves around that. I thought like, what's going to happen when I come back? Am I going to be needed? Am I going to be valued? Like. Yeah, my job is protected, but so much can happen in, in three months, as we all know. And so I, I definitely had a little bit of a concern around that. And then I know we'll get into it when the baby comes, you sort of, uh, it sort of dissipates a little bit because your, your primary job just changes entirely. There is the nerves of identity leading up and then it, it shifts. Again, and to focus on something new, which is your baby, which I'm very excited about because I'm still in this before maternity leave, although I really hope not that much longer. Um, but I'm, I'm still in that period, you know, and there, I definitely have a lot of nerves as it relates to my business. So the way that I had to prepare was a little bit different than you. Um, the first thing that I really had to do was number one, you know, I didn't get any paid maternity leave. And for those of you that are entrepreneurs, you can relate, right? Like we don't get paid maternity leave. It's just the work that we do leading up to pregnancy that can either position us well for our time off or keep us working and feeling really, um, Really locked into our businesses and I knew for me. That was not what I wanted. I am a recovering workaholic and so I've really had to spend the last year to Separate my identity like who I am as a person for my job so this was one of those things that I was like, okay, this is gonna be a personal growth and a professional growth exercise for me, but I know When I have this baby, I'm only going to have maybe hopefully two children and I want this experience to be really special. I want to be able to give my time and energy and love exclusively to this baby while he's so young, you know, and I have a mentor. She's. Uh, 75. And the reason why I love her as my mentor is because she has such a broad perspective on life and she can really help me refocus and recenter on what is actually most important. The three months after you have your child, three, six months, whatever, you know, you get to have, I believe are like some of the most important precious moments that you get to have with your child. Maybe that's not true, but for me it just feels really special. So I knew that I did not want to work during maternity leave. Now there may be some of you listening to this podcast that are thinking that's not for me. Like, I want one week postpartum, and I want to be back in the office. And truly, there's nothing wrong with that. This is just a matter of preference. But I'm going to speak about what I did in my business to make sure that I could be in a position where I really didn't have to work. So, the first thing that I did is I went through all of my business expenses and I got rid of anything, I mean anything, that was unnecessary. I reduced my business expenses from 10, 000 a month to 4, 000 a month. That meant I had to let go of my operations manager. I had to let go of my designer. I had to let go of a lot of the subscriptions. That I was using that I wasn't going to be using during my maternity leave. I also put any memberships on freeze. Like, I froze everything that I could freeze. So I can start back up in January when I actually get back to working. And I just reduced everything down. Now, if you have a large cushion in your business account, You may not need to do this. The position that I was in financially in order for me to pay my fixed expenses for my business and continue to pay me any kind of salary, I did need to do that. So I cut my business expenses way down during my paternity leave. I also, uh, made sure that I really understood the financial runway of my business. Y'all, this is so important for entrepreneurs. Even if you are not having a baby. You still want to know your numbers for your business. So I made sure I do have about three and a half, four months financial runway. Which will pay for all of my fixed expenses and continue to pay me while I'm out. It's smaller than what I had originally intended and wanted, however, it's enough for my family. And I think for me, I'm really kind of playing with this idea of enough right now. So that was my process for really preparing financially for my loss of income. Now I want us to move into all of the stuff that You have to get for your baby. I was completely overwhelmed by this initially because I thought that we were going to be spending like thousands of dollars on getting everything that we needed and I was very happy when I found I had a very different experience. So Christina, what was your experience with getting all this stuff? And we can go through the most expensive things, but tell me how that was for you. I was also overwhelmed and partly because, um, I am a, I am a very slow buyer and decision maker, partly because I like to curate things in a way that's intentional. And I, and I. No, with babies comes a lot of stuff. So I'm like, I'm going to have a lot of stuff. It better look cute. I did not want to have a baby shower in a traditional sense, because I just didn't want to have that experience of having to open gifts in front of people. But I know that people want to give. So I had a registry, which I curated from this amazing blogger who basically told me what to buy. And then I just got so many hand me downs and I would try to find things that were like affordable for things that I knew were. Temporary or like ephemeral that I knew would go away. So as an example, a crib, cribs didn't be 1, 000. If you want them to be, I found one at Ikea that was 90. And I was like, this is still pretty cute. So I, I tried to weigh like, what would be something that I would want to keep for a long time? Maybe spend a little bit more money on that. What is something that I know someone will want to buy for me that is more expensive. So. And then so many clothes handing down, which are so special too, is just getting, getting things from other friends who have had babies and no longer need it. I was so surprised by that. I did not even know that that was a thing. I did not expect so many friends to be like, hey, do you have this? Do you want this? Do you want to borrow that? I was like, wow, I feel like I'm entering into a community. That I didn't even know existed. I felt so loved and cared for through that process of just, I mean, even you reached out. You're like, I have these two things. Do you want them? And that just happened over and over. And ultimately, I spent very, very little money, which I was really surprised about. So let's talk about some of the most expensive purchases that you made preparing for baby. So I think the, the most expensive common ones are a really great stroller, stroller, car seat, because look at those as a combination. You're having to pick this baby up constantly in a car seat. And which is amazing because then a doctor says, you're not supposed to carry more than 30 pounds. And you're like, I'm carrying like 80 pounds with this car. So I would spend money there. You will have that set of a stroller car seat for, and especially if you have a second baby. You could have that and use that for five years or more. We still have the one from my first daughter. We used it for my, my baby, my son, who's 18 months and we still use that whole combination. And so I would, uh, either invest in that for yourself or ask a family member to chip in. If, if you have 10 people in your community that are like, I want to buy something, say, you guys can all put a hundred dollars into this. So that special item you can have, you can have your community chip in to support. I think a crib can be really expensive. You can find fancy ones that are convertible that go from, you know, like a, a baby crib to a toddler bed to sort of like a spaceship probably, I'm sure they sort of are like crib transformers. And so you can spend. A lot of money there, if you think strategically about how am I going to use this, but your style changes and you know, things change and your house changes. So I would just aim for something that's super expensive, but you know, something that you like and it fits in with your style. I know then there's the SNU, you may be able to talk more about that, but they, there's a rental fee for that. You don't have to pay for it. Those are the two big ones that come to mind is like getting, getting your, your sort of Set up those were my big purchases as well. So the snoo, so I ended up Buying mine used off of Craigslist. So I was looking I just looked before our call to see how much they go for new So they're about seventeen hundred dollars new but I found a used snoo That I got on Craigslist for 400 and I was really, you know, she said when I got there, she was like, it has a little bit of a like sound when you turn it on, but we haven't heard it yet. You know, maybe at some point I'm going to be like, fuck, I should have just, you know, buy, rented a new snoo, but I've had a lot of other friends that have had success with just buying a snoo on Craigslist marketplace. And I think that. How long do they use the SNU for? Maximum six months, right? Yeah, and probably three months. I know three months because the rentals are usually three months. So, uh, those first three months, I'm sure. So I ended up getting my news. A diaper bag was actually another thing that I spent a good amount of money on. I found a diaper bag that was 250, which in the realm of diaper bags, I don't know if that's expensive or not. I was surprised that I spent that much money. But I'm obsessed with it. I like the way that it looks. It's really big. I think, you know, my husband can wear it. I can wear it. That a good amount of money on. Stroller, I ended up getting that, um, a hand me down. So, it's a really nice stroller. It was with, from a, Couple of friends that they decided they wanted one baby and now, now their baby's three and they don't need the stroller anymore. So we got the stroller and car seat and I did end up getting a used stroller off of Craig's List for Craig because we live on a really dirt, uh, like dusty road. So I thought, okay, I'll have one road stroller that's like really big wheels. It can get dirty, but then I just wanted one to keep in the car. And then every, mostly everything else was pretty much hand me downs. Like, I got a ton of clothes that were hand me downs, bouncers. I did buy new bottles and gifts. That was, like, pretty much it. But I would say overall, preparing for the stuff component, I would say I spent no more than 2, 500 bucks. 2, And I was so surprised by that. Yeah. You were expecting more. I was expecting more. Do you know approximately how much you spent on stuff before baby came? So we got a lot of these big ticket items paid for. So we got things like a mamaroo, which is a little thing that rocks the baby, got the stroller paid for by my mom, now it's her gift to us. So I paid for it more on the decor. So like the cute new rug, the dresser, some bookshelves, and a must have is a rocking chair. Comfortable. Comfortable. Rocker. I still have it. I still rock them. And while I read it is the best, like, this is the most comfortable rocker and it's still stylish and looks cute. I think I probably spent around 1500 on all of those things to just sort of like outfit the room. Another thing actually that we haven't talked about is getting a doula because a doula is also another expense for those of you that don't know. A doula is just like a labor support person. She normally helps you through the labor and delivery process. I have heard so many wonderful things about doulas, and so when I got pregnant I knew that was something that I wanted. I know, Christina, you also had a doula. My doula was 1, 200, and basically what that included was a few prenatal visits. Her actually supporting me, um, emotionally. Throughout the entire bird as well as one, um, post postnatal postnatal as well. Do you remember the investment that you made for your doula? It was about 1200 between 1000 and 1200 and we went through a doula collective here in Austin. Um. Wonderful group. And I had her for maybe like four hours prepartum, um, and during labor, I had it for like a session before I went into labor during labor and then two hours or so after postpartum, um, so that she could help with like breastfeeding and the first latch and things like that. So that was definitely another expense. And then the last one that we haven't touched on is the actual cost to deliver. And I was, again, really pleased with this experience because I had no idea how to figure that out. But my first doctor's appointment when I went to my OBGYN, they basically gave me a printout and they were like, here is your expected out of pocket cost for your labor. And my out of pocket costs were somewhere around 1, 200 to 1, 500 for, for everything, which I was pretty. Pleased with now. I know that can obviously change drastically depending on your insurance. Do you remember how much your out of pocket was? I want to say it was about 500. Okay. And so that was really part of the process of being an employee to understand my benefits. Like I was in a high deductible health insurance. insurance plan when I was pregnant, so I wanted to make sure I was in a different plan when the baby came so that, uh, delivery costs were, you know, because it would have been a very high delivery cost. So paying attention to that while you're pregnant is important to see. Maybe I need to change my insurance in the, in being strategic about when you do that. And did you talk to your HR? Like, did they help you navigate that decision? Or did you have to do a bunch of research on your own to figure that out? I would say that HR is good at sort of saying here are the materials and now sort of like sort of self navigate. But it was a, I remember analyzing all of these insurance plans and it's like sometimes Greek to me. Like what are, what are all of these different things mean, all the different tiers. So I remember sitting down with my husband and just sort of analyzing what is the most like, Not just cost effective, but like for delivery, but also in the longterm, like what is the best health insurance plan? Cause then you're going to put your children on that plan. And so that was important that I was just analyzing that. And HR kind of helps, but you can also talk to your insurance provider and they will outline what are all the different options you have available. Yeah, I think that's a really great piece of advice. So for those of you that do have a high deductible health plan, it could be a really good idea to re, to look at the PPO or HMO or those other options available for you. So, you can potentially save money on your labor and delivery, and like Christina said, eventually have more comprehensive coverage. I recovered through Craig's Health Insurance. And so he already had the PPO, the top plan, so we just ended up staying with that. But yeah, I do think if you have a high deductible health plan that that could be a really smart. I want to ask, if you did any financial preparation before maternity leave for some of these expenses, or did you just cover them as they came up? How did you financially navigate? I don't think I planned for it. I'll be totally honest. I don't think that I put a budget together in the way that I might do that now. For sort of like remodeling a home as an example, and if I were to analyze that, I think I always saw family having babies is just part of my life and building my family and I didn't necessarily associate a baby with increased costs and therefore need to budget around like I didn't make that thread. Now that I'm a little older and I see life just gets more expensive, I might have approached that differently, but I think that it was just sort of became more fluid and part of our life and sort of made decisions based on how things were evolving. I think that makes a lot of sense. I think that is how most people go through preparing for a baby. Because I am obviously a financial person, I had a little bit different experience. And also, thanks for saying that. You probably would do it differently now. I think that's good for people to hear. The moment I found out we had a baby, we were getting pregnant. I was like, we're having a money date. We're opening up a savings account. We're going to put, I, I decided 700 a month. It's how much we were going to put in the savings account every single month, and we were going to build up that savings account until right before baby to pay for everything. Because at that point in time, I really did not know how much stuff I would end up getting from friends and family, but I'm really happy I did it that way because that baby savings account ended up covering so many extra things that had I not done that, I don't think I would have been as generous with myself. And the self care that I was able to give myself. So because I decided early, Hey, I'm going to put 700 a month in this savings account towards the end, we had a little extra money. So we decided to go on a baby moon and we decided to get massages and I'm doing acupuncture and pelvic floor therapy. I cadence. It's going to be a very natural transition to going into the expenses that we're going to have for the baby, which we're going to reoccurring expenses. And then also some of the future savings goals that we want to have for baby. I really loved the way that actually that turned out for us. I wish I did that. I, I think that it was so smart to just build that habit. And then you sort of start to see that. Account grow and then it becomes play money that you can use and do is that special thing that you described? So yeah, and and my relationship with money is I need to do that for myself Otherwise, it's very difficult for me to just be like, oh, I'm gonna go spend this money this way I really have to be intentional With this is the money I get to do whatever I want with, and that's kind of what that baby account ended up becoming, and I was really thankful that we decided to do that. Now, I will say, I did have to cut back on my travel savings to be able to do that. I did have to cut back on my discretionary spending. in order to do that, but it ended up being, I think, a really great decision for us. So that wraps up part one and part two of this series. We're actually talking about what it's like during maternity leave, when you're off work, some of the new expenses that you have, the identity shift that you experience as a mom, what it's like not to go to work every day, if you aren't working, and then we're going to talk about the transition back to work. after you are done with maternity leave and potentially sending your kid to daycare. So don't miss this follow up episode. It will be released next week. We'll talk to you soon. Have you ever built a budget, but within weeks felt exhausted by the spreadsheets, the upkeep, or the restrictive spending categories? If so, you are not alone. Budgeting has never worked for me, so I created a new way, money mapping. Money mapping has all of the things you need to be successful in your wealth building journey. It's simple, organized, and automated, but most importantly, it offers a completely new way to relate to money and manage it in your life. If you're ready to kick off your no budget strategy for building wealth, sign up for my free money map training at www. holistic money. com forward slash money map. Here's to building wealth with ease.