We found out we were having a baby the same week we put an offer on the house we live in now.
We had told ourselves we would sort out the grown-up paperwork (wills, life insurance, and the question of who would raise our child if something happened to us) when one of two things happened: we bought a house, or we had a kid. Then both triggers landed inside the same week, and the savings we had spent three years building went out the door in the same twelve months our daughter arrived.
So I write this guide as a man who did some of it in the right order and some of it in a scramble. If your wife is pregnant right now, or you are holding a newborn and wondering what you were supposed to have done already, this is the list I wish someone had handed me. Five moves, in order. None of them require wealth, and most can be finished in an evening.
And I want to say this before the numbers start: the fact that you are reading an article like this is itself evidence you are taking the weight seriously. A man ruled by fear avoids pages like this one and hopes for the best. You are here, which already counts for something.
Plan for the income drop before you plan the nursery
Here is the number that shapes everything else. In Canada, EI maternity benefits replace 55% of insurable earnings, capped at $729 a week in 2026. Maternity benefits run up to 15 weeks, then standard parental benefits continue at the same 55% rate for up to 35 more weeks for one parent. The extended option stretches the time at home to as much as 61 weeks of parental benefits, at a lower 33% rate.
Read that cap again. If your wife earns more than about $69,000, she will receive less than 55% of her actual income, because the ceiling kicks in first. A woman earning $85,000 gets the same $729 a week as a woman earning $69,000, which for her works out to about 45% of her usual pay. The higher her income, the wider the gap the benefit leaves.
My wife works in healthcare, and her income has varied year to year, including the year of her maternity leave. That leave year was one of the hardest financial seasons we have walked through. The couples who struggle most discover this math in month two of the leave, when the room to adjust is gone. Discover it now, in pregnancy, while every option is still open.
So do the exercise while it costs you nothing. Open your budget, or build a rough one, and replace her income line with the EI figure her pay stubs point to. Run the household on that number on paper for one imaginary month. The shortfall you find is your target, and every dollar you set aside between now and the due date closes part of that gap in advance.
This is also the season to get serious about your buffer. If you have no emergency fund, the months before a baby are the strongest motivation you will ever have to build one. If you have one, consider topping it up above its usual level. A baby is a scheduled disruption. You know the date within a couple of weeks, very little in your financial life will ever be this predictable, and preparing for a disruption you can see coming is stewardship at its most basic.
The crib is a rounding error next to the real cost
Walk into any baby store and you will be handed a checklist that runs past a thousand dollars before you reach the aisle with the cribs. Ignore most of it.
Babies in their first year genuinely need very little: somewhere safe to sleep, a car seat (buy this one new), clothes they will outgrow in six weeks, and diapers. Nearly everything else can be borrowed, bought secondhand, or received from the small army of church grandmothers and self-appointed aunties who have been waiting for this exact occasion. Let people be generous to you. Receiving well is its own discipline, and you will get plenty of practice at it this year.
The real cost of a baby in Canada is the income gap you already calculated.
Later, the cost is childcare. In the first year, though, anxious fathers overspend on gear because buying something feels like doing something, and the unglamorous work that actually protects a household happens in the budget you ran a section ago.
There is help coming, too. The Canada Child Benefit pays up to nearly $8,000 a year, tax-free, for a child under six. It is income-tested, so the maximum goes to lower-income households and the amount tapers as income rises, recalculated every July from your tax return. Two practical notes. First, apply the easy way: when you register the birth, the same provincial form also applies for the baby's SIN and for the CCB. Second, do not spend the CCB before it lands. Budget without it, then let the first deposits accelerate whatever goal the leave season has slowed down.
The paperwork that protects them when you cannot
Now the section most men skip, and the one I have the least right to lecture anyone about, since we put ours off until both of our deadlines arrived in the same week.
A will matters more after a baby than at any other point in your life, for a reason that has nothing to do with money: your will is where you name a guardian for your child. If you and your wife both die without one, the decision about who raises your daughter or son goes to a court applying provincial rules, informed by relatives who may or may not agree with each other. Nobody plans for that outcome. Men simply fail to plan for any outcome, and that is the one the law defaults to.
While you are at it, the same appointment covers powers of attorney, the documents that let your wife act for you on finances and health decisions if you are alive but unable to speak for yourself. My wife and I have ours done. Getting there took two deadlines arriving at once, which I do not recommend as a strategy.
The second piece is life insurance, and here I will be blunt because the industry will not be: buy term insurance, and only term insurance. A healthy 30-year-old non-smoking man can typically get $500,000 of 20-year term coverage for $25 to $35 a month. A common guideline is ten to twelve times your annual income, enough to clear the mortgage and replace your paycheque while your child grows up.
Whole life policies, the ones promising insurance and an investment in one package, mostly work out well for the company selling them. Let insurance do one job. I have a full guide to life insurance for Christian families if you want the details, including coverage for the spouse whose unpaid work would cost a fortune to replace.
If she is pregnant as you read this, get the quotes now. Premiums price your age and health on the day you apply, and they only move in one direction.
What happens to the tithe when the income drops
Somewhere in the leave-income exercise, a question will surface that has nothing to do with EI: do we keep giving through this?
I can only tell you what we did. Through my wife's maternity leave we kept tithing, her maternity payments included. The dollar amount dropped with the income, and the practice never stopped. Nobody should turn our practice into a rule for your house; for us it was conviction, and we tithed with joy even when it was tough. Our giving was never conditional on comfort.
Here is the principle underneath, for your own decision. Giving in Scripture was always proportional. Paul told the Corinthians that God receives a gift according to what a person actually has (2 Corinthians 8:12), which is exactly the verse for a leave year. A tithe that drops in dollars during a leave year is still a full tithe. Ten percent of a smaller harvest was always the design.
What deserves examination is the impulse to pause the practice entirely while everything else in the budget continues at full strength. If money is genuinely tight enough to stop giving, the budget should show other things stopping first.
And underneath the practical question sits the deeper one this whole season keeps asking: where is your security actually anchored? A new father feels the weight of provision in his chest at two in the morning, and a spreadsheet only reaches so far into that. The gospel reaches all the way down, and this year of your life is a very good year to get that settled.
When the RESP should start, and when it can wait
Somewhere around week two, a well-meaning relative will ask if you have opened the education fund yet. You are allowed to say "not yet" without guilt.
The RESP genuinely matters, and it can wait until the dust settles. You need the baby's Social Insurance Number to open one, and the grant math runs on calendar years, so an account opened in month eight captures everything an account opened in week one would have. Sleep first. Paperwork from the earlier sections first.
When you are ready, here is the shape of it. The federal government matches 20 cents on every dollar you contribute, up to $500 of grant money a year, which means a $2,500 annual contribution captures the full match. The lifetime grant maximum is $7,200 per child. That is a guaranteed 20% return before your investments earn anything, and no account in Canada offers a better first dollar. My conviction, which I hold against some advisors: capture the grant, then think carefully before going much past it, because an RESP locks money to one purpose and your child's path may surprise you. The full RESP guide walks through family plans, what happens if your child skips university, and the monthly amounts, and if you are weighing the account against other options, the RESP versus TFSA comparison settles most of the common questions.
If $208 a month is not realistic in the leave year, contribute what is, even $25 a month. Grant room carries forward, and the habit matters more than the opening pace.
What you can finish in one evening this week
None of this asks for a financial overhaul. A single evening and the willingness to do boring things for people you love will cover most of it. This week:
- Run the leave budget. Replace her income with the EI estimate from her pay stubs and find the monthly gap. Write the number down where you will see it.
- Aim your savings at the gap. Redirect what you can toward the buffer between now and the due date, above your normal emergency fund if possible.
- Get two term life insurance quotes each. Online quoting takes ten minutes. You are collecting numbers tonight, and a decision can follow this month.
- Book the wills appointment. Call a lawyer, or start with a reputable online will platform if the estate is simple. The guardian conversation with your wife happens over dinner first.
Then automate whatever survived the evening. We automate everything in our household, the giving and the saving included. It has freed my mind so much, and a tired new father should not be relying on his memory for transfers.
One evening. That is the whole ask. The gap between the man who intends to get organized and the man whose family is protected is usually about three hours of unremarkable effort.
You are already providing more than you think
The week we learned our daughter was coming, whatever I felt was a long way from "provider." Mostly I was a man watching three years of savings turn into a down payment while a due date bore down on the calendar.
Provision, I have learned since, mostly looks smaller than it sounds. It is a leave budget run months before anyone needed it, and a guardian named in a signed will. It is a policy your wife will hopefully never collect on, and giving that did not flinch when the income dropped. A hundred unnoticed decisions that mean your wife sleeps at night and your child grows up inside something solid. The Father you are learning to trust provides this way too, daily and without applause, and this year you get to learn the family resemblance.
Do the boring things. They are how a man says I love you across thirty years.
Common questions
How much does EI pay during maternity and parental leave in Canada?
EI maternity benefits pay 55% of average insurable earnings for up to 15 weeks, capped at $729 a week in 2026. Standard parental benefits continue at 55% for up to 35 more weeks for one parent, and the extended option stretches the time at home to as much as 61 weeks at a lower 33% rate. Because of the weekly cap, a parent earning more than about $69,000 receives less than 55% of her real income, so run the numbers on real pay stubs before the leave starts.
How do I apply for the Canada Child Benefit?
Apply when you register the birth. In Ontario and most other provinces, the birth registration form also applies for the baby's Social Insurance Number and for the Canada Child Benefit, so one submission covers all of it. The benefit is tax-free and income-tested, paying up to nearly $8,000 a year for a child under six, recalculated every July from your household's tax return.
When should we open an RESP for our baby?
There is no rush in the first weeks. You need the baby's Social Insurance Number first, and the grant math works on calendar years, so opening the account any time in the first year loses you nothing. Once life settles, contribute up to $2,500 a year if you can: the CESG matches 20 cents on the dollar, worth up to $500 a year and $7,200 over the life of the plan.
How much life insurance does a new father need?
A common guideline is ten to twelve times your annual income in term coverage, enough to clear the mortgage and replace your income while your child grows up. For a healthy 30-year-old non-smoking man, $500,000 of 20-year term coverage typically runs $25 to $35 a month. Term insurance is the right tool for almost every young family, and the season before a baby arrives is the cheapest it will ever be.
Free: The Steward’s Map
Saving for a first home or the kids? It is move 7 of 8.
The Steward's Map puts eight money moves in order on one page. Leave your email and I'll send the map with its fill-in worksheet, then The Steward's Weekly every Thursday morning.
