Money, money, money

My husband and I are not well-off. This has never been a problem, as we have enough money to eat, live in Oxford, and go to the odd gig and neither of us has particularly expensive tastes. We are also fortunate enough to both do jobs that we love (I'm a journalist, he's an archaeologist), and like most jobs that people do because they love them, the pay is fairly pitiful.

That said, we're a long way from the breadline. We don't earn nearly enough to qualify for any kind of state assistance and tax breaks, and I think I can comfortably say that we earn rather more than vast swathes of the population even in wealthy Oxford (in fairness, I am talking about the single mums on council estates, but I'm trying to get some perspective).

Like I said, this has never bothered me - I don't need a lot of money, and we had enough. Until recently, when I realised I had spectacularly over-estimated the amount of maternity pay I would be entitled to. Demonstrating perhaps that even the well-educated can be impressively dense, until last night I was under the illusion that for the first six months of maternity leave, I would get 90% of my full pay. Er, make that six WEEKS.

SIX WEEKS? That's insane, how on earth is anyone supposed to manage on the 123 quid a week statutory pay after that? This is particularly pertinent as we really have to move to somewhere with a kitchen that does not form icicles inside the windows on cold days, and with a shower that doesn't have tiling paint flaking off as you wash. I've found the place we want to move to and it's perfect and lovely and ticks pretty much all my boxes, for only 100 quid more a month than we currently pay. I had been counting on getting 90% of my pay for a while, and cutting back on stuff to save for the time when I only got statutory pay. This makes things much more problematic. Now I have to figure out how to budget for this, or decide if we're going to have to move from one shoebox to another shoebox with a nicer bathroom but in a much less pleasant location.

I'm going to miss food.