mo' money

don't forget to enter my green birthday giveaway! you have until 8pm pdt on wednesday, april 29, 2009. it's awesome, and who doesn't like free?

i just found out the other day that BOTH brian and i can take paid family leave (pfl) when the kiddo comes!

this is fabulous news to us. brian had been planning on taking a bunch of time off - 6 weeks to be exact - starting may 4, so he and i could spend time together before the baby and also so he could spend time with me and the baby after she arrives. he has two weeks of vacation and we had expected the other 4 weeks to be unpaid. we would just watch our pennies and be very careful with our savings.

because i am the one actually doing the hard work of being pregnant and giving birth, i get state disability (sdi) for 4 weeks before and 6 weeks after baby arrives. i am not taking the full 4 weeks before because i feel fine and we need the money. i also have a private individual disability policy that we purchased about a year and a half ago for this specific reason, which will also help to replace my income - 4 weeks before and 6 weeks after. (nor are my benefits reduced by sdi - thank you, california.) we had assumed that i would go back to work approximately 8 weeks after the baby, as we don't want to completely deplete our savings just for the sake of keeping the kiddo out of day care.

but! we have now learned about pfl! pfl means brian can get paid for those 4 weeks after his vacation time! pfl also means i get an additional 6 weeks paid after my sdi runs out! of course, the payments are reduced compared to what we would be earning if we were working full time, but it's money coming in, so i'm not going to complain.

pfl is slightly different from the family medical leave act (fmla) but seems to work in conjuction with it. from what i understand, fmla basically preserves your job, seniority, and benefits for up to 12 weeks each year, for specific reasons (like your own medical condition or caring for a family member or a newborn child). the leave is unpaid. pfl, in california, is up to 6 weeks of paid leave for the same kind of reasons. so our jobs and benefits are protected for 12 weeks, but we only get paid for 6. fortunately, we both work for great people who do not want to lose us. this isn't so much of an issue for brian as he is only taking 6 weeks of his available 12-week fmla leave. it is VERY important for me because i will be off work for 14-16 weeks, so my employer is not required to hold my job for that amount of time.

i am so thrilled. not only am i going to have my husband home for 6 weeks (at which point you may well find me shoving him out the door to go back to work, if he drives me up a wall), but we can delay putting kiddo into daycare until the middle or possibly even end of august. and we will have some money coming in to help us out. such a burden off my shoulders!

we are at: 37 weeks 2 days.