How to Afford Time Off with Your Baby: 101 Ways to Ease the Financial Strain is an excellent book. If you are pregnant and wondering how you will make ends meet if you don’t go back to work, you should definitely check it out.

I get fed-up with the tired old tips that come out again and again in many features on saving money when you have a family, and Becky Goddard-Hill has done a great job in coming up with realistic and practical original advice for cash-strapped parents and mums to be. What’s more, she hasn’t fallen into the trap of many yummy-mummy journalists who were obviously living on a much higher budget than most of us in the first place and offer somewhat unrealistic advice.

What Becky does offer is straightforward practical tips on subjects like:

• 10 things you should borrow for your new baby
• birthdays and baptisms on a budget
• looking after yourself for next to nothing
• low cost activities for the pre-school years
• earning money while staying off work
• and an inexpensive Christmas

You can tell that Becky has tested out her own advice in real life. In line with the general money-saving advice, you may want to borrow this for free from your local library. If you want to buy it, How to Afford Time Off with Your Baby is available for a budget friendly £5 from Amazon at the time of writing.