AIBU to envy friends with wealthier husbands and easier retirements?

The only friend I have whose DH is "loaded"

(2 children in private school - mentioned frequently.
Large house in an expensive London commuter town - she managed to slip in how much was left on the mortgage. Not much considering how much it cost.
Luxury car he drives - very happy for them, they are doing well)

is married to a joyless man who I find incredibly boring. Not for me, she's free to keep him.

My sister on the other hand has 3 kids in private schools in the states about $50-60k/yr/child. Not a peep from her or her husband about it - i asked re fees as wanted direct conparison to independent schools here. They are just grateful that the kids are thriving. I wouldn't even think to be envious.

Comparison is the thief of joy.

Teaching isn't a rubbish salary and it comes with a decent pension.

You said you have recently retired so I don't understand why you 'wish you didn't have to work' - you don't work any more.

People make choices - you chose to become a teacher and marry a man who was a teacher. It's not too late, you could choose to divorce him and look for a much wealthier man with a bigger house if you want to.

Or you could look at what you have and be grateful for that.

@ThanksItHasPockets Having reread your post, you're describing a Venn diagram of people you don't know, and other people you don't know. OP's husband represents the overlap.
No reach intended.

You’re surprised people are different, have different things that matter to them and find different things attractive in a partner? You’re surprised that some people want a partner who is ambitious? 🤨

I grew up poor. Very poor. My parents had no ambition, they blamed their situation on others and were horribly jealous of others. Our childhood was miserable

There was no way I was going to live that life and I didn’t want a partner with characteristics like my parents. Low ambition isn’t attractive to me because I know where it can end up. I wanted to give any future children a better life than I had which meant earning well myself and choosing a partner who was ambitious and wanted to do well in their career. For me, these were just something I added to might list of needs in a partner along with other things like being kind, caring, intelligent, a good communicator, attractive etc.

You can pretend love overrides everything, but being poorer than you’d like to be and not having things you would like is stressful and can add strain to a relationship.

’You do you’….well yes. I chose a good career and a partner who suited me, as everyone should. I would have no more settled for someone who wasn’t ambitious than I would have settled for someone who was a crap communicator, emotionally unavailable, unkind, unattractive etc. I’m not sure why people think you choose love or ambition, money etc when it’s possible to have all.

I think you sound shallow. Do you really think that people who live in 5 bed houses are always happy and living the best life? Nobody knows what goes on behind closed doors. You friend could be extremely unhappy but just living in more comfortable surroundings. There are people in your town living in far worse conditions than you yet here you are moaning. Count your blessings and you might just become a little happier and more content.

Thank you

Do tutoring!

I’ve taught full time Secondary English for 30 years. 3 kids and a competitive academic school. My marking load is crazy but I managed it so it is possible. It all comes down to choices.

You chose that job, there are better paid jobs you could have chosen
Don't blame your DH.

Oh, ffs. Of course she should just be happy for her friends. To point out that she knows nothing about the reality and it may well not be a reality she would envy is not telling her she should assume the worst, it’s simply pointing out the undeniable fact that running your own business is not a walk in the park and is considerably more risky than teaching, so to be jealous of the end result if you would not have enjoyed the journey to get there is a pointless waste of time.

AIBU to envy these women and think that life isn't fair? I love my husband, but sometimes wish he was more ambitious and that I could have a gorgeous house and didn't have to work

YABU. As others have pointed out, you could have chosen a higher earning career, or been more ambitious in the career you chose. Bit pathetic to expect your DH to work his arse off so you don't have to.

The salary quoted isnt reduced or paid pro rata- its an annual salary which is where you are confused. They dont get £33k minus the unpaid holiday. The 33 already takes that into account. its not considered a part time arrangement so its not reduced. its full time. i bet you dont feel you are paid for weekends even though a month includes weekends. Your advertised salary isnt reduced for weekends, they are just outside of working time. I think of it more like an annualised hour contract but its not quite that either!

Its actuallys based on a concept of directed hours plus 5.6 weeks paid leave. Then in addition to directed hours there is an expectation that they do all the work needed to deliver there lessons but they cant be directed on site to do so.

It is actually quite confusing. If they strike they get docked 1/365 of thier salary because its an annual salary but if they do supply they get 1/195 pay.

@VeganMiniEggs - teaching is not a low paying career statistically- only if you are comparing with law, banking etc. DH and I earn 100k between us as ordinary subject teachers.

That’s a heck of a reach. I’m not implying correlation, much less causation. OP has told us that her DH is nearing retirement and on M6. In my experience, this is unusual. OP has also told us that he leaves every day at 3pm and takes no work home. In my experience, this is unusual.

Maybe she supported him in growing that business either directly or indirectly through taking on all the housework and kids etc.

Goodness me, the bitterness screams out of your last post! It's not only on your husband to 'have ambition' and work hard for more money. As others have pointed out, you could have had a different ambition and gone into a field more well paid. Being "traditional" is not a valid excuse. You chose to be "traditional". You're not significantly older than me - you can't say you weren't aware teachers weren't well paid and opportunities for advancement were limited compared to other careers. You can't say that, after a time, even without discussion, you realised your DH wasn't going to suddently move to a better paid career, meaning you could have made plans at that point. Just because you've trained to be a teacher, doesn't mean you always have to be a classroom teacher. You could gone on to be head of year or principal, you could have retrained for a uni post, you could have been a consultant who trains teachers or taken a role within the Dept of Education; or gone into training in the private sector. So many options. Perhaps you're most annoyed at the roads not taken, rather than your friend having a bigger house? Perhaps it's a gilded cage? Or perhaps she is genuinely happy because she made different choices and they worked out.

Life isn't fair and it's incredibly foolish to think otherwise. But you are still being massively unreaonable.

Oh, I didn't know that about temp contracts. The teachers in my family have been doing it for many years.
For them it's been a vocation which obviously helps with job satisfaction.
I entirely about their value. The same is happening in my field (academic science). It's an employers market so they can demand the moon on a stick and pay crappy salaries.

I’m two years older than you. DH and I are both teachers and manage fine on the money we have plus excellent pensions coming soon. I’d not give you a thank you for a massive house - very happy with my Victorian terrace. I went to Cambridge and have lots of rich banker friends but don’t envy their jobs at all. I think you need to get a sense of perspective. I’m concerned about my children’s generation who don’t have access to affordable housing, childcare or a functioning NHS as we did.

He’s probably envying the men with ambitious, wealthier wives 🙄

The job security has been significantly diminished over the years sadly, many teachers are on rolling temporary contracts and if they want to manage someone out they can do so very easily
However, I do.think many find it rewarding despite all this, it's just a shame it doesn-t seem to be properly valued.

I always find it weird when people have to tell themselves that others who seem to have more than them might be in debt or have a load of issue, in order to make themselves feel better for not having as much, especially when these people are your friends. Who needs enemies eh?

Maybe they’re happy, have no debt, a lovely home. Can people not just be happy for their friends?

I think there are a few things going on here. Initial decisions versus ongoing choices.

If the OP is 57 she would have graduated in 1991 or thereabouts, well before information was freely available on the internet. Salaries were a lot flatter and more similar across different sectors back then. Yes trainee solicitors were always paid more than trainee teachers, but it was more like a difference of £5-10k than the multiples that you get today. Around that time a decision to go into teaching wasn’t seen as a decision in favour of lower wages or a struggle to afford a family home. It was seen as a solid choice. You knew that you would be earning less as a teacher than as a solicitor, but not that you would be worlds apart.

People do forget that there was a big jump in private sector professional salaries in the late nineties and early noughties, with a corresponding escalation in house prices. All this was fed by the IT boom and the bonus culture cascading out of the City. So that left behind those who were on fixed salary scales like teaching or civil service.

But:

Many years have passed since the OP’s original decision and there were multiple points where she could have made different choices.

In the late nineties you could easily buy a decent one bed flat in Zone 3 London for around £150k.

Banks offered 95% or even 100% mortgages.

The OP and her husband were adults during some periods of huge economic growth, including exponential growth in the property market.

Huge amounts of money poured into schools and the wider education sector in the late nineties and the noughties. Thousands of new jobs and leadership positions were created. There were all sorts of courses, schemes and training opportunities for teachers. NCSL courses etc. You had to be prepared to put yourself forward and commit extra time, but the opportunities were there. If you wanted a school leadership role, had some determination and were prepared to move schools you could probably get to an Assistant Head or Deputy Head role. I know because I did it at the time!

Education-adjacent businesses were growing. Fortunes were made by running supply teaching agencies, training companies or by providing IT equipment to schools.

There were also opportunities for saving and investing, including in private pensions, during some huge boom years. Information about this could be found by buying a weekend newspaper (£1) and actually looking at the personal finance section! This is why I have limited sympathy with the WASPI cause, because I remember the information being widely available in the financial pages as well as on the radio at the time (Moneybox on R4 etc).

Taking advantage of some of the above opportunities were all open to the OP. But it would have required raising her head from the normal routine of life and being prepared to go in a different direction and have different priorities to colleagues and friends.

Finally, the big one, choices around how many children to have make a huge difference to family financial resilience, because other implications (maternity leave, work, housing and ongoing expenses) then flow from that decision.

So I would advise young women now to raise their heads and look around them to see what is happening in the world and make decisions accordingly.

The teachers in my family are mostly happy in their chosen career.
Of course they work very hard and work over the school holidays, the weekends and the evenings.
They also have job security, good pensions, seem to manage their work/life balance well enough to enjoy lots of down time when regular office workers are juggling childcare and have been able to progress.

AI🙄

I’m old. My family wanted me to marry for money (no jokes) and I married for love. I’m with that man 100 years later. It’s the best thing I’ve ever done. The best decision I ever made.

Sure most of the 100 years we’ve had no money. We’ve worked so so hard. Together. As a team. I’ve had periods where I’ve gone part time for the kids, he’s had periods of working 2 jobs.

Today people will say we have a nice lifestyle. They don’t know how hard we’ve worked to get here. How many jobs that actually I didn’t want to leave but did so for the money . How many times we’ve said no to events, holidays, takeaways, new cars and restaurants. How many times my husband went night shift in his job for the shift allowance money.

You’re not living other peoples lives. You don’t know what they’ve done to earn or keep their money. Isnt there a saying about “ never wish for what other people have, because you don’t know what it took, or the headache they had, getting there”.

All you can do is work on your finances and your own future. Sure, it’s not something we want to do be doing at this age, I get you. Lots of advice will come from the much younger community, who can’t imagine how tiring life is at this age, both physically and mentally. It’s not something you realise until you get there. But equally nothing lands in our lap. If we want something, most of us have to go out and earn it.

just a note on teachers, I’ve never known any teacher working for pocket money. It’s a damn hard job. Most teachers I know, or did when I was working in the sector, would have loved to have a job less stressful.