I’m not been immune to this myself, so not pointing fingers. I just keep seeing the same things on here again and again, and I’m coming to the conclusion that Blur were on to something.
We saw the dream of 2 incomes, and bigger houses and newer cars, eating out and foreign holidays. Then because we were all doing it, houses got more expensive. Then we needed two cars as we had two jobs and lots of activities for the kids, but we couldn’t save up for them, or afford them, so we took out leases on them. In the good old days of low interest rates we bought bigger houses, and took out loans for extensions and spent the rest on a family holiday.
Now we have expensive lifestyles but less disposable income. We’re tied into paying off loans that seemed manageable 5 years ago, paying £100s for cars that just don’t seem to do it for us anymore as almost every other person has one anyway. But mostly we’re knackered from trying to manage it all.
Lots of us seem to dream of getting rid of 50% of our things, eating the same simple meals every week, saving slowly for house improvements and living with ‘okay’, and getting off the treadmill, or at least slowing it down. If modern life made us all happy, I could maybe accept it’s all fine, but that’s not the vibe I’m getting.
So is modern life rubbish, or have I messed up somewhere?