Feeling the financial crunch..........

Well, I am officially home now on maternity leave and we are already feeling the "financial crunch" of me giving up work for the next several months. Thankfully I still have a couple of regular paychecks and then all of my vacation time coming to me, before I have to file for disability. I find it really pathetic though that in NYS that I can only file for a max of like $170.00 a week for 6-8 weeks and that's it..........all other leave is unpaid. Oh, did I mention I also have to pay for most of my health insurance out of pocket during this time too?
My husband has a "friend" on the other hand who is basically a waste of space, who has been sitting around for months now, collecting unemployment, twice that amount, and he's not even bothering to look for a new job...............

We are lucky that we have a pretty good savings which we've added to in anticipation for this baby, but it's still stressful knowing we may need to live off some of that even for a couple of months.

We told our families as well we are not going all out this Christmas either.

We knew all of this ahead of time, and planned for it, but it's still a pretty sad reality that you feel like you are being "punished" in a sense for taking time off to spend with your new child........

I guess I will never be able to be a SAHM. At least not as long as we live here on costly Long Island.........I have asked for a change in roles at my job though when I return, which will allow me more flexibility to spend with my son, work from home more and just not have to deal with a lot of the corporate BS that I've been dealing with for the past year.........That's a major positive at least!