Modern life is rubbish?

I agree, I don’t really know people who live in massive houses, drive posh cars or use private schools.

MN has definitely opened my eyes to how fancy and expensive lots of people’s lives are and I sometimes have to take a moment to stop myself before I begin to feel dissatisfied with my own life in comparison.

We aren’t struggling and I’m very grateful for what I have, but MN can be a real eye opener!

It's not only physical things, some of it is subscriptions to self improvement podcasts, botox, fillers, now weight loss injections( not knocking it!)

The over riding message to us
" you are not good enough"

Absolutely tapping into people's insecurities and exploiting them
Particularly women-we had the biggest con going in WW and SW with 1 in 600 achieving long term weight loss but it gave a sense of community and belonging.
That's the key I think, getting back to community whereas now everyone is so hostile as they all try to get up the ladder faster.
Dinner parties will make a come back!
You heard here first 😉

Yes I agree many of us have been suckered into thinking these physical things will make you happy but we should now know that's it's the quality of your relationships that matter.
It's within everyone's gift to opt out but will people decouple from consumerism? Probably not.

Thank you so much @DragonScreeches for posting this.
I was very young at this time and the recession was awful.
3 million unemployed, job losses on a massive scale.
My neighbour killed himself due to the shame of losing his job and the house being repossessed due to debt.
On other threads it was minimised and scoffed at.

This has absolutely shaped my view of finances and " there's no such thing as a free lunch" springs to mind.
I also saw the effects of the 2008/9 crash.

Recently as others have said the Quantative Easing that the Tory government used to avoid a worse recession post 2008 has come home to roost.
Print money and sell it cheap-buy whatever you like!
" you would be a fool not too"
Those were the words of my colleague who spent 1K per shopping trip, once the CC was at its limit she swapped to another and then when unmanageable remortgaged.
Now the house has gone and the business went under.
Not everyone lost out though
People got on the housing ladder and had a good few years of cheaper mortgages.

Thanks for starting this thread Op

Sorry I should have linked in @wherearemypastnames

I agree with most of your post although I don't agree it's necessarily easier for independent for women- mainly because of the housing market - if you split and need to rent you have to jump through hoops and fit very specific criteria- even if you can pay 6 months up front it's not easy and unless you own and have a ton of equity or an incredibly high salary good luck with finding a house to buy that's suitable in many areas of the country or getting a mortgage.

I listened once to an economics professor in the 80's talking about the introduction of credit cards.
The conclusion was that it's a good way for companies to have a regular income (intrest & min payments) and also tapping into people's future earnings.

Obviously this economic model has been taken to the extreme now, from mobile phone contracts to 40 year mortgages.

I bought. Small holding and retired early to escape the rat race. I do my own thing now.

100% and I have fallen in to that trap.

Luckily we haven't got the bigger house with bigger mortgage etc, as I chickened out, but we were very near to it before Christmas until we sat down and asked why? We don't need the bigger house, we just felt like we have to have it, because it was the done thing.

I earn £30k and feel like this is a pittance, when in reality, it's fairly average.

High streets are full of nail bars, coffee shops, eyebrow places and fast food joints. None of these are essential. Ok, so it's 'only' a few quid each time but it adds up to hundreds or even thousands a year. And people don't notice, especially because they mostly just swipe a card rather than handing over cash.

I agree. We live in a lovely 3 bed semi with a garden and a drive, something a lot of people dream of who live in rented flats etc. but I feel like a failure, because I don't have a 4 bed detached with a garage, utility room, home office and kitchen extension.

I also have a fairly stable office job that has flexibility and lovely people, but it's only £30kpa so I feel like I'm a failure because I don't have the £70k pa job, and I've convinced myself I'm unhappy because of it.

None of these insecurities have come from instagram though they've all stemmed from MN. Hearing how the other half actually live is depressing!

Far fewer women are trapped - which is why so many more get divorced

I don't think there has been a much better time to be alive in many ways but I also suspect that in many ways people 100 or 2000 years ago were generally as happy

And I do think as a nation we are having an up happy spell - I think seeing things get worse rather than better plays into this

And I do think rampant commercialisation , envy of stuff and others lives plays into that quite strongly also

We do on average far less now to help others than we ever used to - everything should be someone else's job- it should be paid for - keep yourself to yourself - and that doesn't help either

But it almost always is women who scale back.

And not always by choice.

All too often employers see a woman having a baby and assume she is now less interested in career progression. Fewer opportunities will come her way.

When a man has a baby it is assumed that he is more interested in his career and is more likely to have career opportunities come his way.

The actual evidence in front of the employer's eyes doesn't matter, this attitude is still in the back of their mind.

I have experienced this and seen it happen to others too many times.

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.

It is rather a case of shooting yourself in the foot. Because households now often have two incomes it allowed housing prices to rise. If it wasn't for the extra income that comes with two salaries housing prices wouldn't have been able to rise as much as they have.

You can't put the genie back in the bottle now though and it goes without saying that there are advantages for women to work and have control over their financial future.

It isn’t necessarily women scaling back, maybe they both go part time? Having more than one child is the tipping point for most families. It’s impossible to be everything to everyone. So hard choices are needed before having dc. I am educating my dc to be extremely careful in the future. It looks like children are becoming a luxury most just can’t afford.

Intelligent women can raise children at home and use the time to qualify and further their careers in the evenings. It is not
‘dead’ time. It just needs thought and planning. I completely retrained.

Yes I think people have let themselves be too caught up in the social media influencing. It fascinates me that people I work with are having nails and beauty treatments every other week, spending £400 a month on car leases (not even owning them?!) and having takeaways or expensive date nights every week. Same with kids clubs etc.

Our kids just do swimming and football which costs me about £50 a month combined. Both our cars are used and purchased outright. We buy "posh" meal deals instead of takeaways, and only really do days out if there are offers. We're not hard up by any means, I just like value for money.

Half term is a good example. We're swimming which is free, doing a trampoline park place which has an offer on, getting a train into the city for a wander (kids travel free) and will do one of the kids cinema mornings for about £4 a ticket. A colleague of mine has got something planned almost everyday, including two days out which cost about £20-25 a ticket, so almost £200 for the four of them. It's wild!

It's clever isn't it?
Keeping people in debt, keeping people on just about enough income to service that debt and as a result having a tap on people's future earnings.

It does stop people thinking if they are pre occupied buy paying off their debts... governments and industry have us right where they want us to be!
Less stuff is definitely more, there is plenty to do that's free and doesn't require a large income/ debt. But it's getting less and less accessible.

I always find these threads unsettling because it’s never long before someone pipes up about how “sad” it is that families need two incomes and from there it’s a short hop to “life is easier if mums give up work”, which is usually the money shot in this line of argument.

Its seductive but simplistic.

Of course a lot of us feel stretched and burned out at the moment. It’s also true obviously that full time work with kids is exhausting.

But people overlook the huge benefits of having women in the workforce. Women joining the workforce in large numbers has led to an unprecedented boost in female independence which is ultimately a massively positive change for women and children. Two generations ago women were largely locked into marriage due to the difficulties of being self sufficient.

Life has been exhausting throughout millenia. Many people have struggled to keep the fruits of their labour. Keeping up with the Jones’s isn’t a new thing: the Victorians were stressing about it.

I completely understand and acknowledge how the “sandwich generation” feels worn down particularly at the moment, and I understand people wanting to live a simpler lifestyle and scale back their consumption but I am wary that this rhetoric often tends to lead to a conclusion that life would be better if most mothers stopped working.

I think it’s short sighted and glosses over the huge economic freedom that women have acquired in recent decades.

I believe low interest rates have enabled people to live beyond their means. The idea of saving up for something before buying it slowly disappeared, replaced by purchasing on credit. This created an illusion that everyone was living the dream life, when in reality, most were relying on debt.

This mindset shaped entire generations to believe that anything they wanted was within reach.

When I bought my first property, I had to make sacrifices, like giving up my car and forgoing holidays abroad. Today, it seems like people want it all—and often have it all. While I’m sure many can afford the extra luxuries, a large number are financing them through credit.

Growing up in the 70s, I saw my parents struggle financially. They had to save for anything they needed because credit was expensive and not as easily accessible. I also lived through a housing market crash and was made redundant twice in my 20s. All these experiences made me more conscious of how fragile the economy is, and I learned never to take anything for granted and to be prepared for the unexpected.

When COVID hit and I saw the government pumping money into the economy, I knew there would be consequences down the line—and here we are. Of course, Brexit and the war in Ukraine haven’t helped matters either.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill

It is too easy to get seduced on to that treadmill through advertising and peer pressure, but never too late to get off it.
It is about working out how much of your lifestyle is really you, and shaping it accordingly.

We were in the loop of working hard and rewarding ourselves with costly dopamine hits until we realised it wasn't real contentment.

If lovely cars really are your thing, and you can indulge that without going into deep debt, then go for it, but maybe you don't have to have the new kitchen every few years, the exotic holidays or the rest of it on top.