Modern life is rubbish?

'Keeping up with the Joneses' has always been a huge thing. Probably since you were envying your neighbouring cave-dweller's animal-skin decor. Yes, social media makes it more visible, but being competitive about resources and status is a basic human trait.

yabu because not all of us fell for the new build house, shiny new car, loans for everything nonsense.

I went without holidays until I could afford a secondhand car for cash, which I kept for 10 years. Bought a scruffy house and sorted it out myself.

Ignored my ex's desire to keep up with the neighbours. It isn't difficult.

There's always people richer than me and poorer than me. So I pay it no mind.

No. I've never felt the need to live beyond means or 'keep up with the Jonses'.

I'm perfectly happy but I don't have a lot of 'stuff' I don't need. I'm not paying off expensive cars or huge loans because I couldn't afford stuff I thought I had to have to be as good as everyone else 🤷🏻‍♀️

I remember when BSkyB came out. Satellite dishes sprung up on certain estates, rented property. No way were we paying for them.

I saw the first plasma screen in a shop that sold bang and Olufsen kit. Again we walked away.

We were years behind everyone else getting a flat screen, and other gadgets. But our mortgage was paid off when DH was fifty which was a good feeling. He retired at 56.

We're still careful with heating, water. But can afford holidays etc.

It's peace of mind.

@OhMargaret

The average woman in a middle-income household now works far harder now than she would have been expected to in the previous generation.

I completely agree with this. Modern women are usually doing a "double shift" whether they work or not. And that this causes all sorts of problems, social and domestic.

Where I'd disagree is that stopping or reducing the work is the solution to this. I accept that the current situation is far from ideal but I do think that the economic freedoms we have gained, with all the baggage that goes with them, outweigh this.

I also think that the only solution to the "double shift" problem is to shift more domestic responsibility onto men and off women. That has been starting to happen.

One of the problems with the narrative about encouraging women to work less is that it will undo much of this good work. It will also reduce women's overall wealth and thus their domestic bargaining power.

@newkettleandtoaster and @rivalsbinge social media is just a tool though, it only shows you what you follow or what it thinks your interests are according to your viewing history. My feeds don't have any fashion, beauty, bling, celebs, big houses, influencers, people showing off their wealth, etc, because I'm not remotely interested in following that. Perhaps delete all the crap and follow things that you like instead? Use IG and FB in a way that works for you.

Exactly.

Anyone who is "pressured" or "swayed by society" or "feels the need to keep up with the neighbours" is a downright simpleton. March to the beat of your own drummer.

What's out of touch about it?
Anyone who knows they want to be a parent should be saving money from the first paycheck. Why should everyone else always be on the hook for others' lifestyle choices?

@maccymac I had to go back at 12 weeks in 1998 - Labour changed this shortly afterwards

The whole world should be happy

It's very sad, as per PP.
I happened to come across a short video on YT , called "Happiness". The one with people as rats.
I hardly ever cry, but as a 46 yo woman it made me irrationally upset (a rat has bitten another one's paw for a flat screen TV).
Now, with humility, thanks to other people
I probably have enough money to die first before spending it.
Without a second thought, I would give it all up for life as it's been (for myself) thirty years ago.
No internet to share opinion, obviously.
But so easy to be happy with less!
🥲

My point isn't that things were worse pre-feminism, it's that what passes for feminism today is largely about reducing wages and increasing a cheap workforce. There are some protections within marriage in the courts now (not many) but these are now slowly rolled back, unfortunately. The average woman in a middle-income household now works far harder now than she would have been expected to in the previous generation.

When I bought my little 2-bedroom cottage, there was a lock on the second bedroom door, which is just a few feet across the hall from the other bedroom, and a tiny bathroom in between. The only other two rooms are a kitchen and lounge. The bedrooms are about 10x10 feet each.

I asked an elderly neighbour what the lock was for and she said the older couple who built the house took in lodgers. The man of the house worked at a factory and there were always young single men who needed a place to live.

So instead of a flat or house, a man in his 20s (this was in the 1950s, 60s and 70s) would rent a room and share the bathroom with the homeowners. The lady of the house was willing to share a teeny bathroom with two men, one a virtual stranger, to make ends meet. I presume the lodger either sat in his room at night, walked around the village or sat & listened to radio or watched tele with the homeowners.

That elderly neighbour who gave me the information -- her house was even smaller than mine! She was a music teacher and her husband some sort of draughtsman; I never met him. They didn't even have a shower. They raised two sons who shared a room with two single beds until both were out of uni. She raised food in her garden and they never did eat much meat. She was widowed at age 60 and lived into her 90s in that house, very very frugally. She was still wearing pants that clearly were from the 1960s when she died. When they cleared out her house, everything was old except a TV her older son had provided for her. Yet she lived a rich full live as a teacher, member of the community orchestra, wrote books about music for children, etc.

This is how people really used to live. My dad, born 1928, grew up in a house with his parents, grandmother and a succession of extended family or lodging friends. When he returned home after military service, he resumed living there but had to rent space from a neighbour for his car. He worked in a factory by day and then drove a taxi from 6pm to 1am to generate extra income that eventually became the deposit for a small house. A 2BR tiny place he purchased in his 30s, and where ultimately I spent my baby years. When they moved it was "upgrading" to a 1000 square foot cottage. And that was when my dad was nearly 40, with a secure job in an automotive factory.

My other worked from age 14 and helped support her mother's household; her father was an unreliable wastral. Shared a small room with her two sisters until she married at 25, in the early 1960s.

People expect SO much more when they are in their 20s/30s/40s than they used to; that is part of the problem. When people talk about "the good old days" they conveniently forget all of that. Expectations ned to become more realistic. There are twice as many people on the planet (if not more) than there were then, but the same amount of space in desirable areas, and even fewer natural resources/need for human labour. Get used to diminishing lifestyles.

Why are you blaming others for your own failings. Living beyond your means, keeping up with the Jones's, is just stupidity. Why didn't you reign it in at any time. We never lived beyond our means.

Very out of touch but thanks for the input

People always have the option of working and saving for a few years to augment maternity pay. It's not society's responsibility to make life cushy or to fulfill everyone's preferences.

Haven’t read all the posts, but I would highly recommend the book Affluenza.
I agree with what you’ve said OP.

I drive a 19 year old mini cooper convertible. I've looked at changing but modern cars are so boring and I like putting the roof down when the sun shines. DH had a Dacia Duster, amazing work horse. Son has it now. So he's bought himself a second hand VW with numerous gadgets we still haven't worked them all out 😁
It's an automatic.

As I've mentioned before, when I was growing up my dad replaced his car religiously every two or three years, with an expensive premium brand, losing a fortune in the process as he had to stomach the depreciation. I could see my mum despair over what it did to our family finances - it absolutely ruined any chance we had of an affordable life.

I understand why he did it - he was born in the Depression and grew up in absolutely horrific poverty, and his biggest wish in life was to be successful. But he constantly took on more than he could comfortably afford, and later on, as his health failed, it really caught up with him and threatened us with homelessness on more than one occasion. It meant we had to move house a lot, something I found deeply disruptive and unsettling.

I was absolutely determined not to repeat those mistakes. I didn't learn to drive until my late thirties anyway - driving is more hassle than it's worth in London, and most public transport was free for me as a perk of my job with Transport for London. I only learned to drive when I moved to Scotland, and was struggling to find work because poor public transport made commuting difficult.

I have only ever bought one car. It's a Dacia Sandero Stepway, known for being very simple and very cheap. I bought it new eleven years ago, trading in my mum's Kia Picanto when she died, and paying the remainder on my debit card from money I inherited. It's a car mocked and sneered at by petrol heads, but all these years later, it's still impeccably reliable and meets my needs perfectly. Annoyingly I've just had to fork out £400 to fix the horn (a surprisingly complex job), but some people pay more than that in leasing costs every single month. I'll keep it going until it either falls apart or develops a very expensive fault, but it's such a rugged and reliable thing, those days seem quite a long way off.

I'm actually quite glad my dad made stupid financial decisions, it taught me how hollow and stupid it all is, and I've never once been in the terrible mess he got into, just because he wanted a BMW to impress his fellow golfers. My income is way below average, and I'd like it to be higher, but I manage, and it isn't actually that hard.

I think your comment about everyone having those cars is really telling in terms of how you’ve spent money to impress , I spend money on things I love or need and couldn’t care less what others think and I am very comfortable financially as a result

You mention cars not doing it for you anymore because everyone else has the same. I’m paraphrasing but not sure what you mean?
Yes I agree that societal pressure is for stuff and more more more.

Cost of living crisis is making things difficult for us but not impossible. We aren’t on the treadmill I don’t think. We sold up and moved for land and a reno project house. I gave up work and my dh works full time at home running a business. We have land and animals and have really made daily life, the holiday we always went on. By that I mean, we always holidayed in the countryside with views and quiet.
Stuff isn’t it for me, but location is. Lifestyle is.
We drive old cars and our reno project we are doing ourselves, we hand make and reuse whatever we can.

I see more and more people craving the simple life.

@OhMargaret

Women are still trapped in marriages, now they can’t afford to leave even with both partners working full time. No one is winning in this society, the expectations placed on women have become ridiculous. In reality, the only aspects of feminism that have ‘won’ are the ones that directly benefit shareholders and business owners.

Of course some women are still trapped in marriages. But proportionately, far fewer than before. Women are at least now protected by the divorce courts in that they don't have to give up a lifetime raising children and running a household only to find that they have nothing to show at the end of it.

I'm not going to disagree with your premise that life is hard on a lot of people and keeping balls in the air is draining. That's a given. But your argument that this would suddenly disappear if fewer women were working is a false premise.

People talk about the pre-feminism days were an era of calm and choice and that's just not the case. Most people have always worked really hard. Whether in back-breaking blue collar jobs or in corporate politics or women in the days before labour saving devices existed spending all their time cleaning and organising things at home or desperately keeping up appearances to hold onto a man who was there only source of income. It's never been this Elysian scenario in which women were completely protected and free to focus on their children.

There's no scenario in which women get both economic autonomy and the chance to step off the hamster-wheel. The best case scenarios are a) you marry someone wealthy who is also decent, enabling you to work less and you are protected by marriage but you are locked in OR b) that you generate your own money and are exhausted but at least its your money and there isn't a huge financial penalty for leaving.

It's Hobson's Choice maybe but it is at least a choice. For the vast vast majority of women until about 50-60 years ago that choice didn't exist.