You might have seen my announcement recently that my husband and I are expecting our first baby in May! If not, now you’re up to speed. For more details you can check out my previous post all about prepping for motherhood and maternity leave. I has some key takeaways I’ve already learned, and insights so far. Planning maternity leave as a woman entrepreneur and business owner is a whole new level, and isn’t talked about often enough.

I’ve also found that planning and saving financially for time off of work is tricky. The planning falls entirely on you when you don’t have any employer or don’t qualify for FMLA. It’s been a lot of hours researching strategy and making checklists. So I’m sharing what I’ve learned about planning ahead for a longer leave like maternity leave.

I want to share with you how I’m applying all this research to my business planning out of office time. If it helps even one more new mom or someone who wants to someday be a parent, I’ve succeeded.

Game Changers and Planning Resources: Maternity Leave for Women Business Owners

1. Madison Dearly’s Maternity Planning Spreadsheet – Madison is a financial expert and bookkeeper, so when I found out she created this spreadsheet to help financially plan for maternity leave I was thrilled! If you’re not big on creating your own spreadsheets, or need help with your numbers, I recommend checking this out! (I bought this resource and I want to fully share that she has not paid me to say this. I’m not affiliated with her business in any way, simply LOVE the resource and want to share it with you.)
2. Quickbooks – Aside from a CPA, I usually work with a professional bookkeeper, AccountHer, for all my annual bookkeeping tasks. I’ve paused my working with Yahi though just for a few months, while I’m out of the office. (AKA I won’t be bringing in new income and new clients), so I took over my own Quickbooks account that her team uses for my business. I familiarized myself with the platform enough, so I feel confident doing my own bookkeeping while I’m on leave.
3. Income and Sales Taxes – Planning ahead and getting those tax due dates on my calendar ahead of time is going to be key! I want to have payments all set, so that I don’t have to worry about those due dates sneaking up. My state sales taxes are due each month, and my state and federal income tax estimates are due quarterly. I need to keep up with those even while on leave. Surprise surprise, the government doesn’t care that I’m out of office, I’ll still owe them as scheduled.
4. Bills and Expenses – Any bills and expenses I can, I’ve set to auto-pay! Those that I can’t schedule payments for, I added to my Google calendar. That way I’ll get a reminder when it’s time for myself or my VA to pay them.

In the next post, I’ll focus more on diving into how I’m prepping my business and my clients for leave. This post I wanted to focus more intently on just the financial side of things. I’ll separate the topics out to keep things shorter.

While I love my business, I want to be able to fully disconnect and bond with our new baby. So I’m working hard to set myself up for a guilt-free maternity leave as a business owner and entrepreneur.

For more posts like this, visit the Motherhood section of my blog.