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AIBU?

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AIBU to envy friends with wealthier husbands and easier retirements?

541 replies

TheAngryPuxie · 11/04/2026 21:30

Just had coffee out with a friend and then went back to her house. She is similar in age to me (I am 57) and recently retired. I know she didn't earn much as she told me that she earnt sround £32,000 a year. My husband, like me, is a teacher and IS close to retiring. He's on about £44,000. I know that sounds a lot but after mortgage, bills, etc thers's not much left. I try to economise with the food shop, buying supermarket own brands,etc, I buy almost everything in charity shops, discount stores, etc. We rarely eat out or have takaways. My friend's husband runs his own business and, I don't know what he makes, but when I saw their house I was stunned. It is absolutely beautiful with 5 double bedrooms, 3 of them with en-suites, massive kitchen, dining, living room area,, downstairs bathroom and a large utilty room, large garden with another little 'bungalow' at the bottom, plus double garages, etc.

I have worked hard my whole life in a really stressful and demanding job and all of my female friends and colleagues seem to have one thing in commmon: their husbands earn a lot of money meaning they can afford to stay at home or earn a rubbish salary like teaching (which they are doing more as a hobby or for a bit of 'pocket money'). They have long holidays abroad and a lot of other luxuries I just can't afford.

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.

OP posts:
Mintteaplease · 12/04/2026 08:34

Your financial situation sounds good to me. I wouldn’t dwell on it as life is too short and you can't take it with you.

TheMustardSeed · 12/04/2026 08:31

BootMaker · 12/04/2026 08:07

I never understood why any of my contemporaries went into teaching.

Why does anyone go into anything?

My cohort of undergraduates on the 4 year teacher training I completed in the late 90s was full of young people (and a smattering of mature students) who were passionate about education and facilitating learning, about creating opportunities in young people's lives, about early childhood development, about social mobility, about childhood and bringing value and positive impact to children's lives.

Teacher training felt like a very positive place, full of the promise of a career invested in the betterment of society, not just of one's own prospects. This aspect of teachers' capacity for and commitment to service to a greater good has been simultaneously squandered and exploited by subsequent education secretaries -it is such a waste of and disregard for human potential.

Conditions were less exploitative then than now, so teaching didn't seem such a kamikaze mission.

MandingoAteMyBaby · 12/04/2026 08:30

What is stopping you starting a business and making 500K ?

HappyToSmile · 12/04/2026 08:29

It IS fair, because we all had careers choices when younger (or if inherited wealth, their parents had choices..). However, it is also reasonable to be a bit envious of their wealth.

Tacohill · 12/04/2026 08:28

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.

Your poor DH.

He’s probably looking at other couples where the wife is much prettier and younger and also wishing he married better.

If you want more money then you should have chosen a different career.

He’s on £44k which is a lot, plus your salary once top.
You are hardly struggling and most people would be envious of your finances.

I don’t understand how you can be slagging his career off but have the exact one yourself.

People like you are just bitter and miserable.
You will always find something to be unsatisfied about.

Cartmella · 12/04/2026 08:25

You and your husband earn a lot more than I ever did, OP, and you will have index linked teachers pensions. I will just have the state pension, but I have my own 2 bed apartment with a little garden and I'm very happy with it.
We'll all be dead or in care homes in a few decades. Who cares then how big their house was? If you dont like teaching, leave and downsize to a flat. Enjoy your life. YOLO.

ThanksItHasPockets · 12/04/2026 08:24

Your husband is close to retiring and is only on M6? This doesn't make sense.

Unequalworld · 12/04/2026 08:23

TheAngryPuxie · 11/04/2026 23:35

That's not a lot in today's climate unfortinately. I am grateful for what I have and though thst I'm much better off yhan a lot of people. It judt seemd that everyond I know has a much better house, etc than me.

Comparison is the thief of joy.

Two teachers nearing the end of their careers. Surely, no child costs, mortgage ended, 2 above average salaries.

Potentially have a look at your spending and budgeting skills?

Dragonscaledaisy · 12/04/2026 08:20

LameBorzoi · 12/04/2026 07:16

Can they actually afford these things? They might be mortgaged to the hilt and buying holidays on credit.

Why would they? If they nearly sixty, they're likely to be mortgage free and building their savings and investments for a comfortable retirement.

PissedOffAndStuck · 12/04/2026 08:19

I think you're getting an unfair bashing here @TheAngryPuxie

For context I'm school support staff and do a second job at school one evening a week to make ends meet. If I didn't do the second job my mortgage and basic essential bills alone (not including running a car, food, pets, Netflix etc) would be over half my take home pay. I certainly can't afford a pension, and have no partner - high earning or otherwise.

Working with older kids in the current climate is utterly gruelling and I don't blame you for envying your friends who don't have to do it, but I suspect that envy is more about how unhappy you are at work rather than wishing you had a higher earning husband. One of my colleagues works two days a week in a non student facing role and does not stop moaning about it - do I roll my eyes internally - yes; am I a bit envious - also yes, but I still like her and just have a moan with her these days.

Is there anything you could do to change your job or get a better work/life balance? I'm planning to relocate and downsize (was supposed to going on the market this week but had had to put plans on hold for this year 🙄) so I can maybe work p/t all year round and clear my mortgage sooner.

If all else fails - does your mate really need a house tha big? Think of all the cleaning and maintenance...sod that!

Hoppity80 · 12/04/2026 08:18

I don't understand why OP can't even move into something more higher paid now in the teaching world - there must be lots of heads and deputy heads who are in their mid 50s and early 60s - could you have a final career push and aim for one of those roles - if only for a few years?
It is not as if you are 75

Dragonscaledaisy · 12/04/2026 08:17

TheAngryPuxie · 11/04/2026 23:59

Yeah - her husband's money. He owns his own business.

Your friends made smarter decisions than you did. You also sound lazy and entitled. The lack of success and financial rewards in your career is entirely down to you.

Owninterpreter · 12/04/2026 08:16

Can you make some friends with worse houses and horrible husbands so you feel a bit better about your situation.

GreenCaterpillarOnALeaf · 12/04/2026 08:16

ModestlyPrudent · 12/04/2026 01:26

Did she tell you she married him for his money or is that your assumption?

I ask, because I feel I know someone that has married for money, he’s 18 years older than her, she says not, but I do think otherwise!

Oh she straight up told me when I was like 16 and made a joke about marrying someone rich. Gave me a proper telling off which is very out of character for her normally she likes a joke and a laugh. She was pretty drunk at the time but we have had conversations since. There were some things she liked about him at the start, he is very handsome and can be really charming. I thought he was very cool when I was a kid because he had loads of gadgets in his house and he had a massive TV.

LookingforMaryPoppins · 12/04/2026 08:15

TheAngryPuxie · 11/04/2026 23:52

I know that really. It just amazes me what other people have.

There will always be people with more, however, there will be many more with less. Focus on how much you have rather than what you don't. Comparing to those who have more will only make you feel the way you do.

I do sympathise with how you feel, my husband does have a good job and earns a decent salary however my line of work pays significantly more - subsequently i've always been the main earner. Whilst we could live on his salary alone it would mean making some fairly big life changes. What was easily affordable even 5 years ago isn't now, it's stressful being the one that everyone relies upon, feeling trapped into having to maintain that level of income.

I have a number of friends who have a very nice lifestyle without that stress because of their husband's wealth - being dependent on another has its own drawbacks! You never know what the dynamic is behind closed doors.

Focus on the positives, happy marriage, healthy children, comfortable lifestyle. If you are struggling financially consider how to improve that - could you downsize or supplement your income with private tutoring?

You don't seem at all happy teaching, maybe consider leaving the profession altogether. The income it provides and the level of education you must have to be a teacher does mean you could do something else entirely fairly easily and match if not exceed your income.

BootMaker · 12/04/2026 08:07

I never understood why any of my contemporaries went into teaching.

BewareoftheLambs · 12/04/2026 08:04

TheMustardSeed · 12/04/2026 07:57

What you're describing sounds like being married to a teacher. Minus the pay.

Yes I agree, people dont realize that teaching takes over people's lives for very little monetary reward.

TheMustardSeed · 12/04/2026 07:57

ToffeeCrabApple · 12/04/2026 07:35

Also op ime people who owns their own business often work all the hours god sends them! They can be very difficult people to be married to, often inflexible, taking very little holiday etc. It can pay off longer term but can take a long time to get there and the journey is not a bed of roses. Also for every successful businessman there are 5 failed ones who lost everything or worked like a dog for years to barely make ends meet.

What you're describing sounds like being married to a teacher. Minus the pay.

Claudiasfringebenefits · 12/04/2026 07:56

DuchessofStaffordshire · 11/04/2026 22:28

You've managed to retire at 57 and have benefitted from nice long holidays. Look at the positives and stop comparing yourself to others. If you want to improve your lot, do something about it.

This and surely this is going to be just a fleeting thought, if for all these years you have been sticking with what you have?

ThisCantBeRightCanIt · 12/04/2026 07:55

I totally get your feelings I have some very wealthy friends and its hard not to be jelous sometimes. Dh has a good job and i do too if only part time (turned down more senior role to spend more time with dc) we budget, economise etc like most people.

I see my friends giant houses and I want that house, but do I also want the husband that is never home, the constant stress of a high level job whilst juggling dc. No I don't. I've made my choices about my life and wouldn't swap. I'm sure if we're genuinely given the choice you wouldn't swap either.

It's hard but try to focus on what you have. Comparison is the theft of joy and all that.

Dweetfidilove · 12/04/2026 07:55

WearyAuldWumman · 12/04/2026 01:02

It's no longer my problem of course, but I assure you that the long holidays are recuperation time.

In my last year in my permanent teaching post, my HT informed me that teachers should expect to be sworn at.

It's gradually become worse. I know of several instances of pregnant women being hit in schools. As I've said elsewhere on these boards, it happened to me.

I have no idea why but around 2000 there was a distinct shift in attitude. When I was a young teacher, it was safe for a woman to break up a fight between two boys - there was an unspoken code of honour that meant that a teenage boy wouldn't hit a woman. Not now.

Between 2000 and 2018, I twice had a desk thrown at me, once was punched in the stomach whilst pregnant, and once was kicked in the stomach after suffering a miscarriage (not the same year). Misogyny has definitely increased: in both cases of my being hit in the stomach, the teenager concerned most definitely meant to aim for the stomach area. They were laughing while they did it.

The second time I was trying to keep out of reach since I was still uncomfortable - I'd miscarried at home - and the boy actually jumped up on a desk so that he could take aim at me with his feet.

I recall boys discussing how they had 'fun' at the weekend - they'd look for a loan teenager to jump. (A colleague's son actually sustained brain damage after such an attack. A young male teaching colleague was attacked at a bus station.) There is a different mindset nowadays and (in Scotland at any rate) the police avoid charging anyone under the age of 16 and current sentencing requirements mean that anyone under the age of 25 is unlikely to get a prison sentence.

I cannot tell you what the outcome was, but a teenage boy at a school where I worked some years ago used a pencil to stab a woman teacher in the neck. The police did attend. The local FB page was full of his neighbours complaining that it was the teacher's fault.

I did do a tiny amount of supply after my husband died but I couldn't go back full time to that, I really couldn't. In one week I was hit twice whilst stopping assaults, a young teacher was punched on the arm and a Pupil Support Assistant (whose wage is risible) was hit in the corridor whilst pregnant.

Those outside the profession have no idea of some of the things that happen. On several occasions, I've raised concerns about boys displaying behaviour that suggested that they were going to become sex offenders.

In one case, I was literally laughed at. The boy left school at 16 and committed the assault he'd described in his work - only the victim was much younger than the victim in his story.

So far as workload is concerned, I always refused to do exam marking [ETA for the exam board] though I can tell you from my experience of marking mocks that some subjects are less onerous to grade than others. (Unusually these days, I was qualified to teach three subjects and there were some years that I graded mocks/prelims for all three.)

My main subject took the longest to grade. One of the things that i definitely don't miss is spending most of my evenings and weekends marking.

It varies from school to school, but promoted staff at my school gradually lost their managerial time, so eventually we finished up doing all our paperwork after to hours, to the extent that I wasn't leaving the building until 7.30 pm (unless it was a parents' evening).

The final straw for me was when I got home late from work one night to find that my husband (by then a stroke victim) had scalded himself at lunchtime trying to make a coffee. That was when I tendered my resignation.

I only tutored twice - once as a favour to a friend where a youngster needed to learn English and once for a pupil who was being home schooled by the LA because he suffered from Cystic Fibrosis. I only saw him for maybe three months, just enough to supervise his coursework and mocks.

I wouldn't advise any young person to go into teaching these days. Possibly for a subject like P.E., but even that has its challenges nowadays. If you teach a subject that is allowed to be selective then that's possibly not too bad.

So far as primary is concerned, I've no first-hand experience, but I gather that the forward planning is dreadfully complicated and that the behavioural challenges are catching up with those in secondary.

Edited

This broke my heart ☹️.

I've always supported teachers and think most people still in teaching these days should be sainted, because you could offer me all the money in the world and I wouldn't.

I know you retired in less than ideal circumstances, but I'm glad you're away from that awfully dangerous environment.

BewareoftheLambs · 12/04/2026 07:54

TheMustardSeed · 12/04/2026 07:51

This is increasingly common as schools are cash-strapped, and what initially started out as a pay-scale which reflected length of service and experience is now increasingly and cynically misapplied by schools' HR departments to only apply if teachers agree to take on leadership roles in addition to their classroom teaching.

In many larger schools there aren't enough leadership positions for every teacher who has reached the top of the main pay-scale to step into in order to be able to apply for the upper pay-scale.

It is also an open secret that as schools struggle with funding salaries, they are incentivised to keep teachers on lower salaries and that more 'expensive' colleagues on the upper pay-scale are managed out through what is cynically referred to as 'support plans' which they inevitably are engineered to 'fail', and are then hoofed out with a non-disclosure agreement in exchange for a reference. I have seen this many, many times and it is so very sad. It's a relief that this practice will soon be debated in parliament.

There used to be 'pay portability' in teaching, where, if you had achieved a paygrade on the upper pay-scale, this was 'your' grade and you could expect to earn this if you applied for and secured a new role in a different school. Now, this is no longer the case and applicants are expected to take the salary offered by the hiring school; needless to say, this is rarely at a salary point reflective of experience or length of service.

As a result, many experienced colleagues chose, in some ways against their better interests, to remain on the lower pay-scale, earning what they earned in their first decade of teaching, as applying to access salary increments on the upper pay-scale effectively paints a target on one's back.

Yes, the conditions are continually getting worse. For recent joiners, contracts are often temporary now and so they are expected to give it their all and work uundreds of unpaid hours without any guarantee they'll have a job for the next year.

TheMustardSeed · 12/04/2026 07:51

Lilylady · 11/04/2026 21:49

I don’t know if I am out of touch but in my experience, a teacher earning £44k near retirement is at the lower end of the scale. From your original post I assume you are still teaching - what is your salary if so?

This is increasingly common as schools are cash-strapped, and what initially started out as a pay-scale which reflected length of service and experience is now increasingly and cynically misapplied by schools' HR departments to only apply if teachers agree to take on leadership roles in addition to their classroom teaching.

In many larger schools there aren't enough leadership positions for every teacher who has reached the top of the main pay-scale to step into in order to be able to apply for the upper pay-scale.

It is also an open secret that as schools struggle with funding salaries, they are incentivised to keep teachers on lower salaries and that more 'expensive' colleagues on the upper pay-scale are managed out through what is cynically referred to as 'support plans' which they inevitably are engineered to 'fail', and are then hoofed out with a non-disclosure agreement in exchange for a reference. I have seen this many, many times and it is so very sad. It's a relief that this practice will soon be debated in parliament.

There used to be 'pay portability' in teaching, where, if you had achieved a paygrade on the upper pay-scale, this was 'your' grade and you could expect to earn this if you applied for and secured a new role in a different school. Now, this is no longer the case and applicants are expected to take the salary offered by the hiring school; needless to say, this is rarely at a salary point reflective of experience or length of service.

As a result, many experienced colleagues chose, in some ways against their better interests, to remain on the lower pay-scale, earning what they earned in their first decade of teaching, as applying to access salary increments on the upper pay-scale effectively paints a target on one's back.

BootMaker · 12/04/2026 07:49

Look @TheAngryPuxie I am a risk-taker.

I've been bankrupt twice, I suspect you would not have coped well with that. It was annoying at the time but actually did me no harm.

But that is me, I will always take the risk, I love a throw of the dice (not a gambler btw).

But two teachers aren't risk-takers. That's a very safe path. And that's YOU!

It's a different personality type and you have a lovely pension and sitting pretty well.

And life is just a joke really so I love to fuck around with it, but you don't.

So Enjoy your safe path, you're sitting pretty. It's fine. you are not in a bad situation.

topcat2014 · 12/04/2026 07:47

The mistake you both made was choosing public sector jobs, albeit worthy ones.

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