
The following is an excerpt from the book by Emma Gannon titled, A Year of Nothing, a two-book special.
When you're a woman in your 30s, people around you tend to assume that you will, at some point, have children.
At weddings, people would smile at me while I held friends' babies and say things like, "great practice for when you have your own!" When my husband and I were first shown round our now home in London, the estate agent kept pointing out that the two small spare rooms that "would be great baby rooms".
They would in fact be our offices (we’re both freelance creative types).
A few months after I got married, my financial advisor rang me to talk through my finances should I need a "year off" soon for "obvious reasons". Did I need to have a plan in place? I wasn't immediately sure what he meant by "obvious reason"? Ah, of course: when I decide to have a baby.
When you're self-employed, you ideally need to have a buffer for maternity leave purposes.
Listen to a doctor answering questions about the mind. Post continues below.
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Even though my husband and I are not planning to have children, I did already have the beginnings of a solid financial buffer: savings from multiple income streams created by my self-employed career, which I was lucky to have.
I was always aware that you needed to save a bit, even when work was going well. Saving for a rainy day. There was no harm in creating a financial safety net for myself, I thought, should anything unpredictable happen. I stopped spending on bags and shoes and cooked more meals at home. Something was telling me to reserve some money.