New parent

The newborn money list: what UK parents should sort in month one

The first month with a newborn is a blur of feeds and washing, but a handful of admin jobs are worth doing early. Here is the short, no-fluff list of what to sort in month one.

By Katie Manson  ·  8 min read

Nobody hands you a checklist when you leave the hospital, which is a shame, because the newborn weeks are exactly when the boring-but-important jobs are easiest to forget. None of this is urgent in the way a hungry baby is urgent, but a slow hour spread across the first month saves a lot of stress later. Here is the practical list, in the order most families tackle it.

Register the birth

In England, Wales and Northern Ireland you have 42 days to register your baby's birth, usually at the local register office; in Scotland it is 21 days. Leave it too long and you can be fined, and it is the document a surprising number of other things hang off, so it is worth booking the appointment sooner rather than later.

Start the Child Benefit claim

For the 2026/27 tax year, Child Benefit is £27.05 a week for your eldest or only child (about £1,400 a year) and £17.90 a week for each child after that, paid every four weeks. A claim can only be backdated three months, so do not sit on it: you can apply online or through the HMRC app once the birth is registered.

It is worth claiming even if one of you earns enough to pay some of it back. Claiming protects your National Insurance record if you are at home with the baby, and means your child is sent their National Insurance number automatically before they turn 16. The good news is the high income charge now only starts once the higher earner's adjusted net income passes £60,000, and you only pay back the lot at £80,000, so many more families keep some or all of it than a few years ago. If you are employed, you can now pay any charge through your tax code rather than filling in a Self Assessment return. GOV.UK has the full details and a calculator.

Future-you, on four hours of sleep, will be quietly grateful that present-you filled in the forms.

Claim the freebies and extra help

There is more on offer than most new parents realise, and a lot of it has a deadline, so it pays to check now.

Free prescriptions and dental care. Ask your midwife or GP for a maternity exemption certificate (form FW8). In England it gets you free NHS prescriptions while you are pregnant and until your baby turns one (they are already free in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland), and NHS dental treatment is free across the UK for the same period. If you have not been to the dentist since you got pregnant, now is a good time to book.

The £500 Sure Start Maternity Grant. If you or your partner get certain benefits and this is your first baby (or you are having twins or more), you could get a one-off £500 that you never pay back. The window is tighter than people think: you can claim from 11 weeks before your due date until your baby is six months old. In Scotland, look at the Pregnancy and Baby Payment instead, plus the free Baby Box.

Healthy Start. On certain benefits, or under 18 and pregnant? The Healthy Start card is worth up to £8.50 a week while your baby is under one, to spend on milk, fruit, veg, pulses and first infant formula, and it comes with free vitamins for you and vitamin drops for baby. Scotland has Best Start Foods instead.

Baby banks. There are more than 200 across the UK, handing out free clothes, nappies, cots and buggies to families who need a hand. You usually need a referral, so ask your midwife or health visitor.

Free stuff for everyone. Still pregnant? Book your private scan with Window to the Womb and you will be handed a free Custard & Crumble sample pack at your appointment, packed with goodies from baby and parenting brands. Boots Parenting Club is free with an Advantage Card and gives you a welcome freebie plus extra points on baby buys, and Amazon's baby wish list often comes with a welcome box and discounts once you have spent a little. When you feel ready to leave the house, lots of baby classes, from Monkey Music and Caterpillar Music to Puddleducks swimming, offer a free taster session.

MoneySavingExpert's baby checklist rounds up the current freebies and help in one place, and is well worth a bookmark.

Cut the nappy bill

Your baby will get through around 4,000 nappies in the first two years, so small savings add up fast. Supermarket own-brand nappies are often a fraction of the price of the big names and many parents cannot tell the difference, and MoneySavingExpert found the same two years of nappies could cost roughly £400 or £900 depending on where you buy them, so compare prices and stock up when there is a multi-buy offer. Thinking about reusables? You need around 25 to 30 to get going, they can save anything from £100 to over £1,000 per child, and many councils offer free trial packs, vouchers or cashback, so check your council's website before you buy.

Get baby into the system

Register the baby with your GP, keep the red book (the personal child health record) somewhere you will not lose it, and note when your health visitor is due to make contact. These are the routes to weigh-ins, vaccinations and a real human to ask when something worries you.

Check the car seat

If you drove home from hospital, it is worth getting the car seat checked. Seats fitted slightly wrong are surprisingly common, even when they were put in at the shop, and you can be fined up to £500 for not using the right child seat. Many baby retailers will check the fitting for free, and a quick look at the seat's manual and the car's own handbook goes a long way.

Make sure your pay is right

Check your maternity or paternity pay is what it should be. If you have worked for your employer long enough you should get at least Statutory Maternity Pay, you keep building up holiday while you are off, and you have the right to go back to your job. Self-employed? Look at Maternity Allowance. If you are sharing the time off, Shared Parental Leave lets you split it between you.

It is also worth knowing what is coming later. Working parents in England can get up to 30 hours a week of funded childcare from when their baby is nine months old, and Tax-Free Childcare adds 20p for every 80p you pay in, up to £2,000 a year per child. You apply for the funded hours in advance, so pop a reminder in your calendar.

The money admin worth an hour

A few financial jobs are far easier to do now than in a fog later: think about whether you want a simple savings pot or Junior ISA for the baby, check whether you and your partner have an up-to-date will that names a guardian, and glance at any life cover or death-in-service benefit through work to see whether it still reflects your family. If you are putting money aside for the baby yourself, bear in mind that once the interest on money a parent has given tops £100 a year, it is taxed as that parent's income. Junior ISAs sidestep this, which is part of their appeal. Want to give that pot a head start for free? KidStart is a cashback site that pays a slice of what you spend at hundreds of retailers, from Sainsbury's and John Lewis to eBay and Expedia, straight into your child's savings account, Junior ISA or Child Trust Fund. It costs nothing to join, and grandparents, aunties and friends can sign up to save into the same account, which makes it a lovely answer to "what does the baby need?" None of it is glamorous, all of it is kinder to your future self. And if the food shop has crept up now there are more of you, try dropping one brand level on everything (branded to own-brand, own-brand to basics). MoneySavingExpert reckons that can cut a typical shop by around a third.

And what you can safely ignore

Almost everything else. The Instagram-perfect nursery, the colour-coded feeding app, the debate about the fanciest pram: none of it needs deciding in month one. Plenty of kit can be skipped altogether: a nappy bin (cheap nappy sacks do the job), a designer changing bag (any roomy bag plus a fold-up mat works), a play mat (a blanket and a couple of toys is plenty) and a door bouncer. You do not need special nursing clothes either: anything with buttons or a wrap front works, or try the "one up, one down" trick with a strappy vest under a normal top. When you do need bigger items, look nearly-new first. MoneySavingExpert found the same pram for £120 second-hand versus £650 new, and NCT nearly-new sales, Facebook Marketplace and Freecycle are all worth a scroll. The one exception is car seats: only buy second-hand if you know the seat's full history. Feed the baby, register the baby, claim what you are entitled to, and let the rest wait.

This is general information, not financial or legal advice, and the rules change. Check GOV.UK and speak to a qualified adviser for anything specific to your situation.