Full Pay or Half Pay??

[megaminz]

Hi,

Through my work I get 6 weeks paid mat leave and I was wondering if it is better to take it at full pay or half pay....

I get paid quite well (over $50k) have no hecs or anything but we do have a lot of bills to pay due to DH and I having badly paying jobs before we scored our current ones.

Is there any benefit to take it at full or half pay? Apart from at half it would be stretching out for longer???

I do plan to take at least 6 months off.

[briggsy's girl]

there are additional benefits to taking your leave at half pay in that, cash in hand wise, you tend to get more over the longer period as your tax liability is lower for those smaller pay amounts... i've taken rec leave at half pay and gotten well over half my normal pay in the bank...

personally, i think taking your leave at half pay would be, from a budgetary perspective, a lot wiser if you're planning on having at least six months off - FTB isn't a whole lot of money, your mat leave payments will be taken into account and impact your FTB anyway, so having a higher amount in your pocket for a longer period of time would be more beneficial

hope that helps

[megaminz]

thats exactly the kind of advice I was after thanks!

I was gonna leave any FTB benefits we may or may not be entitled to til the end of the tax year anyway cause doubt we would qualify for much so if we get a little lump sum at the end even better.

I think the stability of the half pay would also be good for us too cause least there is always SOMETHING coming in rather than nothing, and if they let me take the baby bonus in installments then our weekly input would be manageable.

[briggsy's girl]

everyone is eligible to get the baby bonus in installments - and with how far along in your pregnancy you are at the moment, you'll have no choice! from january 1, all baby bonus recipients will be paid in installments of approx $385 a fortnight for 6 months. one thing to keep in mind though is that it IS dependent on yours and your partners income in the six months immediately after bubs is born - if it's more than 75k, you won't get the baby bonus (just not sure what "quite well paid" meant, so thought i'd drop that in there for you!)

[megaminz]

ooh had a mild panic cause combined we get more than $75k a year, but then realised its $75k in 6 months which we certainly won't get. I get $54k and dh $52k so for what we do its quite good money. So we will be under $150k per year cut off

PHEW! Whilst I won't be buying goods with the bonus it is helping me with Mat leave

[briggsy's girl]

excellent - glad i could help (well, not with the panic attack, but you know what i mean!)