To not understand how people fund their lives and feel a bit jealous?

These kind of threads make me really angry. I too live in SE, close to London but make do on £31,000 a year. Just me and the cat though. The only light on the horizon is that when my parent’s property is sold, I’ll be in receipt of the main portion of my inheritance.

Yes, OP is definitely taking the piss!!!

I never usually respond to such posts
I don't care that there are people who earn 4 or 5 times what I do. I'm happy and content with my life.

But what really baffles me is that people in jobs which command these sorts of salaries seem incapable of working out why or how other people appear to have 'more' than them. Or maybe if they cut their holiday budget by a few thousand, they might have more money for other things.

Holy fudge! You are definitely taking the piss.
Most of us get by relatively comfortably on much, much less than that.

I hate this phrase, but check your privilige!

We live an hour from London and the cost can be £900 a month in train fares. I now only accept wfh contracts and that goes down like a lead balloon. I'm retiring at the end of the year and selling my shares in a company I helped found. Without that I wouldn't have much of a retirement fund due to financial loss (criminal business partners) and having to stop work due to caring responsibilities and serious ill health. I have earnt more than your income but contracts can get cancelled and it's a struggle to get paid. Contractors also have frequent voids.
Stop spending like water and put some funds away. I used all my personal savings over a year of being ill. You never know what's around the corner.

I think the problem is you'd expect that when earning £180k a year - you'd be able to afford to buy anything you want but you can't - it's not enough, no amount ever will be - people just expect more and more. I think it might help to try and focus on being more grateful and I don't mean to be snarky when I say this.
And sometimes people don't have as much money as you think they do - our in-laws asked us for a large sum of money to help deal with financial difficulty there were in- we didn't have it - we'd spent all our money on a house renovation- they didn't believe us and it really affected our relationships with them. From my pov - because they saw us as a cash cow - they think we lied.

Have you considered taking in ironing?

But seriously, there seems to be so many of these threads lately. I think its a combination of 1) cost of living has gone up considerably, which means that your ££s don't go as far, 2) determination to compare yourself with others - without knowing where other people might be scrimping or putting themselves in debt in order to prioritise holidays/cars whatever, 3) a weird expectation that by mid-30s you should be so comfortably financially to be able to have a massive house/holiday wherever and whenever you like (probably linked to point 2). The reality is that the vast majority of the population spend most of their working life spending most of their money on their mortgage/rent, bills and children, and only find themselves 'comfortable' (if ever) when they're older and get some sort of a windfall (inheritance/redundancy payout/private pension).

Salary Calculator- Google- 2x 90k salaries equates to £10,460 per month.

And you can't afford anything? Do you have a bank account you look at?

Turns out the DH is a massive gambler with a penchant for the prostitutes on a Tuesday.

That should say 'teen is' not tennis

The Tesla one I can help explain - my husband’s company car scheme is any car as long as it’s electric and a very fancy looking Tesla was the cheapest car big enough to hold the kids and the pram 🤷‍♀️ I bet a lot
of Tesla’s are being driven by people lucky enough to access similar benefit schemes (as there’s no way we’d have chosen one without it being through the company benefits)

Yes, lots of people in the south east are richer than you. We live in London and it is a fact of life that you are surrounded by very, very wealthy people. You sound like one of my children before I have to remind them of how lucky they are. My tennis lucky enough to go to a private school and thinks he's poor as we don't live a flash lifestyle. It is difficult when surround by such wealth(humans naturally compare themselves with those around them), but try not to lose sight of your privilege and be content with what you have.

You spend a lot and they spend even more.
They earn more than you.
They inherited more than you.
They have debt.
They don't save.
Who knows? Who cares?

All the people jumping on this thread to whine that they earn a 10th of that are totally missing the point. Not all of us are satisfied at scraping by. UK has become a low wage society and now, even if you are a very high earner it is impossible to have the trappings of wealth unless you either bought your home 20 years ago (like me) or have significant money from non earned sources. It’s a downward spiral and terrible. What is the point in being ambitious.

Is a large percentage of your income going into savings or pensions? Sometimes people do that and almost forget that they are living on only part of their salary and feel it's not going far.

I'm convinced that posts like these are showing off look at how well off we are posts.

There is no way on earth you can't afford clothes and shoes on your earnings! So you clearly were trying to wind people up!

You must be doing something really wrong

Judging by your name, you prioritise travel. So do I.

But because I have some other large family expenses, I stay in bargain AirBNBs. My last holiday was to Greece in December and I paid Euro 50 per day for an AirBNB. It was perfectly fine.
I would rather travel, have weekends and go to the theatre than run a car in London where I really don;t need it, so we got rid of our car.
My clothes are mostly from M and S, Uniqlo, Albaray, and charity shops.

Even high earners have to make choices.

Oh please. Come back when you have real problems.

OP, you are stealth boasting to cover your insecurities . I can also guess that you somehow made your mumsnet ID known to people around you so they think you are rich.
If you have a budget of £15k for a holiday, you can absolutely afford a SUV.

Ours is over £400 month….we’re in East Sussex. Plenty of other Councils are around this amount if not more depending on the property banding.

180k and can’t afford clothes, fuck off 💩

I think you just sound terrible at budgeting. £15k on a holiday but can’t afford a newer car?

Take aways cost money as does a nice holiday each year
A lot of people pay £400 a month to lease a new car
But you spend that money on holidays and takeaways .
You can't have it all wAys

This is just disingenuous. Our household income is about £165k, and that equates to c. £7.5k of take home. So a lot of the £15k you refer to is gone in tax before it hits the bank.

Think so 😂
Obviously bored