Have you ever wondered how you would even begin to figure out what your numbers are on how you could afford to be able to take unpaid leave for any holidays, summer, Easter, whatever? In today’s vlog, I’m going to share with you a very simple calculation to how you can figure out how to do this and take the mystery out of it.

The first is how to figure out if you take unpaid leave for. If we’re talking about Summer holidays, generally they’re about six weeks, but adjust that to whatever yours is, wherever you are. So let’s work off a six week summer holiday. And let’s say that your monthly expenses are about 2000, whatever currency.

So if you’re taking six weeks off, that roughly equates to you losing income of about c. 3, 000. So you need to find a way to fill that gap of 3, 000. How do you do that if you’re taking totally unpaid leave? So if we divide that by 10 months, so you’ve got 10 other months in the year where you’re going to be earning your full salary. That would equate to 300 a month. So the idea is that if you want to know that you have that 3, 000 coming to Summer holidays tucked away in a little savings account, during the other 10 months of the year, you need to find a way to be able to put away300 per month, so that you have that little kitty of 3, 000.

To know that the expenses are covered for the six weeks and you can take them unpaid with no worries about that. And that’s a really simple way to do that. Now that’s very cut and dry and yes, there are anomalies and different complexities to that, but that’s a very easy way to get you start thinking about how you can do it.

The other part of it, when it comes to the money of Summer holidays is you’re going to have extras that you wouldn’t have in your normal weeks. But equally, you will have expenses, you won’t have expenses that you have maybe when the kids are not when they are not in school. So you won’t have after school classes, school lunches et cetera. Those will stop and there you have some money that you will be spending that you will have available.

So what you want to try and do to give you that sense of peace of mind for school holidays and not dread them is figuring out what that is. So in your typical summer holiday, what are the kinds of things that you’re likely to do? As I shared previously, you can really have an amazing holiday, whatever time of year, doing very simple things. It doesn’t have to be a case of you spending a lot of money to have an amazing time and create those precious memories with kids. So check out the blog on this here https://financialwellnessacademy.co.uk/?p=1584

So get pen and paper or digital format, whatever works for you, and figure out what does that look like. So when you’re sketching out your Summer holidays and what is going to involve, maybe it’s going to be a trip abroad. If you are able to figure out what that looks like, and maybe it’s a camp that they particularly want to do, or maybe it’s a trip to a day trip to somewhere in particular, jot down those things that you want to do in that time, and what it’s going to cost.

Again, take your 10 months and divide that figure over and see what that would, would look like. So say it could be, let’s say we can, um, or talk to a figure, uh, let’s say an easy figure of you reckon it’s going to cost you maybe 1200 pounds. So again, we divide it by 10 months of the year, um, or we’ve got the salary coming in and that looks like 120 pounds.

So if you’re putting away that 120 pounds, then you know that what are the things that you want to do over the Summer holidays, they are taken care of. Now this isn’t always easy to achieve. It doesn’t happen overnight, but when you’re paying attention to your numbers on a regular basis, it is amazing and it blows my mind every time I do this work, either myself or with another woman.

As to where we start to find this money, when we pay attention to what’s going on, we start to discover money that’s going out that we didn’t realize. We start to find money in places that we had forgotten about. And before we know it, we have that 300 that allows us to take unpaid leave. And we have maybe that 120 that allows us to do all the things that we’d love to do with our kids. And we’ve got it stashed away.

So the way I do it is every month I have an amount that goes out of my account that will give me the space to do those things in the Summer holidays, etc. So I set it up as a standing order from a current account into a savings account, and that money then is there for me to draw on when I need it.

So that’s a really simple way for you to address the challenge that you’re having in terms of feeling that you can’t afford to take unpaid leave to be with my kids. This is my simple little hack for, for how you can do it. And that can also be applied.

To Your Financial Wellness,

Caitriona