To wonder what people actually expect and why they can’t just be happy to live simply?

Because life would be tedious as fuck without fun, holidays etc.

I agree, we should be happy if we have food and shelter, everything else is just nice to haves, we don’t need them.

Some people end up with very new cars when they have young children because they need to fit children's car seats which are now massive, alot don't have the cash to buy an older car outright and end up with cars on finance paid monthly. Not that I think it's the best way to go about things but I can see why it happens
Back in the day men used to be in the pub several times a week drinking with friends, now people are more likely to grab a coffee on the way to work
People could afford to live very well on 2 full time wages a few decades ago and could survive on one. Now both parents need to work full time and might still only cover life's essentials and not have an adult left at home to do the domestic labour. So now the time they are not working is used to do the stuff around the house. You can't blame people for wanting to do things like having a holiday once a year to unwind and have a break from everything

I think the environment you live in can make a huge difference to how you feel about life and how much you feel the need to spend money on fun stuff to make life seem better . Living somewhere beautiful will mean someone is much more content than if they’re living on a smoggy A road into a major city . Perhaps OP has a nice environment?

Yes I agree. Think you may have meant to respond to someone else?

What is the point of working if you don't have enough money to enjoy yourself?

This ^

Whilst I enjoy the simple things @Thepeopleversuswork , what you describe is just existing until you die. If that is all we do or need then there would be no ambition or fulfillment and no incentive to do the jobs that may need years of training and/or hours of extra time.

In a developed, modern country with low energy lightbulbs I don't think many people would have their mind boggled at that idea! Putting the heating on is a different matter.

My point is, advertisers convince us that we have a need when in fact there isn't one. So much money is wasted that way and it doesn't end up improving our lives or bringing happiness.

OP hasn’t posted again.

I think problem is that many people don’t have enough to pay their mortgage, bills and feed and clothe their family.

It’s not about people wanting ‘stuff’ or expensive holidays.

My parents grew up in the same city in cramped, crappy housing - low income households. As DC one of them went to the cinema weekly, had fish and chips, sweets, day trips to the sea or fair, occasional panto, turkish-style baths every few weeks, a TV. The other had these things much less often. Many decades later they still talked about the differences and what the ‘fun stuff’ meant.

Probably as long as humans have existed tbh

I 've just had a look at the payscale for the job my father did when I was growing up. Outside of London it pays £76-90k. That job enabled my father to buy a large detached house with a big garden in one of the naice suburbs of our city, send two DC to private school, run a car and take several family holidays a year, some in the UK and some abroad plus DB and I did a number of extra curricular activities. DM was a SAHM. That house would now cost in the region of £800-900k, the school fees at my old school are now nearly £21k per child. Work just doesn't pay as well as it used to.

Because giving the entire population a lobotomy would be prohibitively expensive.

Posts like this and the one upthread about trips to the cinema etc are kind of missing the point really. No one is saying that either of these things were invented in the last 10 years.
It's more to do with they way they are taken for granted today - trips to soft play, farms, lunches out, bowling, date nights etc were all very much treats enjoyed occasionally. Now it seem it's almost regarded as deprivation if you wan't afford a weekly soft play trip followed by lunch with your toddler ( who for some reason NEEDS more entertaining than previous generations of toddlers did.
It's true that more families need both parents to work today, but it's equally true to say that none of the above were even remotely regular activities for the average family in the the 1970s/80s or even the 90s.

Look up Wakes week.

@Tagalogalog

A lot of simple fun has been lost - digging in the garden, mending your bike, building a shelf unit, reading a library book or sewing a new dress, having family round to lunch or simply going to church. These things have been replaced by expensive complex pastimes and hobbies to “help” fix our fitness and mindfulness and wellbeing. I think it’s a shame we have lost sight of the pleasure of a small and quiet life.

This is mainly just rose-tinted spectacle wearing. These things are all seen through the glow of nostalgia but at the time they weren't necessarily seen as "the pleasure of a small and quiet life", they were seen as the trappings of a drab and limiting life.

Ask the average person from the 1950s or 1960s if they'd like something more interesting to do than "mending their bike" or "going to church" and they would bite your hand off. Why do you think intelligent young people from small towns generally have escaped them as fast as they can? TV, the internet, all these technological developments took off for a reason: because people wanted them. They certainly have their downsides (which is a whole other thread) but all of them offer people access to worlds they previously couldn't imagine.

I'm not a fan of mindless consumerism and gadget hoarding but I think harking back to a much poorer and more limited world with far fewer options, fewer leisure activities is daft.

"When did holidays , excess “stuff” and weekends of fun days out and take away etc become a given right and expectation?"

A week's holiday has been commonplace for a long time as has a chippy tea.

Well holidays started in Victorian times. So they’ve been an expectation for quite a long time.

the mills in my town in the north would shut for a couple of weeks and everyone would decamp to Blackpool en masse.

And this. There's a reason why communism generally doesn't work, because if people are told to limit themselves to seeking only to meet their basic needs and be at parity with everyone else, there's no incentive to work harder than anyone else.

God knows there's a lot to dislike about capitalism but it does at least provide a reason to reach higher, to innovate and to grow.

@Mushroo these things are what toddlers like! Mine would happily play in the garden, toddle in wellies through the park or woods, sit in the trolley whilst I shopped. And we love games! Okay not monopoly but my kids will play games for hours - long past my boredom threshold!

A lot of simple fun has been lost - digging in the garden, mending your bike, building a shelf unit, reading a library book or sewing a new dress, having family round to lunch or simply going to church. These things have been replaced by expensive complex pastimes and hobbies to “help” fix our fitness and mindfulness and wellbeing. I think it’s a shame we have lost sight of the pleasure of a small and quiet life.

I agree with this completely.

Oh I don't know, perhaps some people aren't that keen on the idea of just surviving until they die and would quite like to be able to enjoy the limited hours they don't spend working.

I don't think a lot of that is true.

Thirty years ago, things like a trip to the cinema, 10 pin bowling, ice skating, etc was well within the reach of a typical 12 year old with a paper round. Now, it's a luxury for a working adult.

And the second hand cost of cars is so high, that a lot of people with a need of a reliable car end up paying £300 a month, because they can't afford £8k outright for a basic car.

You sound fun OP

Because people want to do more than just exist and who are you to tell them what they "should" want out of life?

Because the harder people work, the more they tend to want to be compensated for that. You may not agree with that philosophy but you can't put limits on how people spend their time or money.

Because this is subjective: one person's idea of "living simply" is wildly different from another's. Your idea of living beyond your means is someone else's idea of a desperately drab life.

Because having and educating children is expensive even if you do it frugally. Once you have children you owe it to them to optimise their lives as far as you can afford nutritionally, educationally, socially. Imposing a Puritanical worldview on your spouse and children is just going to make everyone miserable.