Courtesy of Danielle Desir
- Danielle Desir is a self-employed podcaster who is getting ready for maternity leave in April.
- She and her partner, both entrepreneurs, opened a separate savings account just for their three-month parental leave.
- Planning their finances together as a household has brought them closer, and gotten them more excited for the baby to come.
- Read more stories from Personal Finance Insider.
After traveling to 27 countries, paying off $61,823 worth of student loan debt, and buying her first home, 31-year-old Danielle Desir decided it was time to stop working full-time and work for herself.
Desir wears many hats. She’s a podcaster, author, motivational speaker, brand ambassador, content creator, and award-winning affordable travel blogger, and she’ll soon be a new mom. Both Desir and her partner are entrepreneurs who plan on taking three months of parental leave together to be with their new baby.
Here are four ways Desir and her partner are making it happen.
1. The couple analyzed their income and expenses together
Desir tells Insider, “We’ve been working together for the last nine months to put that three-month parental fund together, which has been really great. Before, it was kind of like, Venmo me for this, I’ll Venmo you for that, but now we get to be a family unit.”
Desir alone has nine different streams of income. “It can be very hectic, tracking all the income and funneling as much as possible into the baby fund,” she tells Insider. “Personally, I have a spreadsheet for my business and I track my income every single day.”
Desir and her partner also assessed their average monthly expenses to come up with a realistic savings goal for parental leave.
2. Desir focused on finding passive income sources
“Passive income is gonna be the most important thing for us, especially during that time,” Desir says. Before going on leave, she’s been working on different products like digital courses to help bring in passive income while she’s on maternity leave.
3. They opened a separate savings account for parental leave
While paying off her student loans and saving for a house, Desir used a “virtual envelope system” with a savings account designated to each goal. Having separate savings accounts made her progress in each category really clear, and motivated her to save more.
She’s bringing the same strategy to her parental leave savings journey. Desir says, “All of our extra side income, all our extra savings, and windfalls, we put into that savings account.”
4. They enrolled in a self-employed paid leave program through their state
Desir and her partner enrolled in the Connecticut Paid Leave program for sole proprietors and self-employed workers. Per Connecticut’s Paid Family and Medical Leave Act, the program allows self-employed people like Desir to get paid leave benefits just like if she were working full-time.
“In Connecticut, you pay into this fund, and you actually get a percentage of your paycheck back every month while you’re on leave,” says Desir.
For parents who work full-time, she recommends connecting with HR early on to iron out the details of your paid parental leave benefits so that you can plan as soon as possible. She adds, “Making sure you get all the details before taking that leave, it’s really, really important.”
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