AIBU to think lifestyle expectations and spending habits have risen enormously?

Not everybody had an endowment mortgage strange though that may seem.
And the interest rates were around 15% at one point. Not 10%.

You said it was complete anathema to older generations?

Im intrigued as to what you class as old. Is it based on biology or feels?

It starts at a young age hence my wish that some things were stopped. Nursery graduations, school proms, for example.

yep

Ive gone back to a ceramic dripper
Got sick of fancy coffee machines that needed even more stuff to buy to descale and clean them.
It broke and couldnt be repaired and I felt sick at buying another one to landfill so £10 on a white ceramic dripper, its a lovely morning ritual with paper filters
Coffee is single origin though

I think it really depends on your circle, no one in mine or DH's family or our friends (including us) have new cars or kitchens or multiple holidays.

Very much the opposite really. People who could afford a new car, have cars 10+ years old and everyone in our circle the kitchen that was there when they bought the the house.

I also grew up in the 70's. Middle-class family in the SE of England. Our life seems very frugal when I look back but I had no complaints at the time. My dad always bought second-hand cars, he would save up and the car would be his pride and joy. Our holidays were with my grandparents in their Devon bungalow. My mum made her own beautiful clothes from Vogue patterns.

One thing that strikes me these days is the number of Range Rovers in our modest housing estate in Scotland!

I wouldn't say foreign travel is more affordable. I'd say people expect a lot more comforts. We backpacked, slept in trains, took frightening local buses, ate bread and fruit from the local supermarket and stayed in cheap fleapits. You could do that very cheaply, but that's pretty much gone now.

I grew up in the 60s/70s when lifestyle expectations were very low. It does seem that life is more luxurious now, which seems at odds with the fact everyone’s supposed to be broke. My ‘coffee station’ is a jar of instant on my shelf. 😁

@MademoisellePraline

Yes mum, but your house cost 50p for fuck sake. And your wages were higher in proportion to the house prices. 10% of sod all is sod all. 4% on £750k is a LOT.

She’d also have got MIRAS income tax relief on the interest which would have made the 10% more like 7% depending on year. They forget that too!!

I think what you are describing is things becoming normalised
Daily coffee is just daily coffee vs having on on a friday as a treat

Back in the day we had F&C on fridays only, then shopping with mum on a Saturday , I would buy a Jackie magazine and a rinse in and out hair colour had to be rinsed out by school on Monday!
There was a divide, it was something to look forward to
Now theres this dissatisfaction with e erything, people purchasing their entire personalities
Ive cut back, one item a month but it can be high end , using what Ive got
Bizarrely theres far more enjoyment in choosing and pondering than just randomly buying things

You're not being unreasonable, you're absolutely right. When my ex and I (both very early Gen X'ers) were in our mid-twenties, both young professionals with degrees from a top university, we went abroad on a cheap package holiday maybe once a year max. Going to the cinema was a big treat. Our usual weekend was a country walk and then card games with friends. We ate out maybe once every couple of months. We cooked everything at home, ate so cheaply I can't even believe it looking back (":curried beans on toast with fried tomatoes" was a standard dinner) and for a long time did not run a car. We did, however, own our little London flat. Everything in it was hand-me-down. When we had our first baby, everything e.g. crib, push-chair, pram, clothes was hand-me-downs. The only things that weren't were the car seat and the cloth nappies.

I look at how my son and his partner live and it couldn't be more different. They recently went on holiday to a popular "exotic" location. When my ex and I went there in the 90s we went with Encounter Overland We stayed at the cheapest guesthouses or wild-camped and lived on food we cooked ourselves. My son and his partner are having the 4 star tour guide experience. I simply would not have dreamed of forking out for something like that back then. It was Lonely Planet backpacking or nothing.

But like I said - we owned a property. We also quit our jobs to go on the big adventure trek, knowing we'd easily get new and probably better ones when we came back. Few people would risk that today.

I don’t. Think it is exclusive to younger generations.
Your idea of older/younger and mine are different.

I think I get that….

I think social media has led people to confuse looking affluent with actually being wealthy. They are buying into the image of wealth but don’t have the foundations underneath it.

Both my DC went to independent schools and the prep and senior schools had thriving second hand shops. There was no stigma to wearing second hand uniforms, it was seen as sensible and environmentally friendly.

The real wealth is the savings, the investments, the rental properties, the pensions, the mortgage free houses. The money that’s been accruing for the DC for years. It’s the not needing a full student loan and having a Masters degree paid for. You don’t get to see any of that.

I do now spend a fair bit on nice coffee beans but it is a fraction of the amount I save and invest each month.

On the other hand I can see why for some people the cost of housing and the prospect of having to work until you drop could lead to a what the hell - I’m going to enjoy life now mentality. The old ideas of being sensible and frugal seem much harder when you have to save for so long for a house deposit, it may feel like you are putting your life on hold for a very long time.

That is shocking! I didn't realise.

OP, i do think your friends are a tad shallow and materialistic. Not all are like that. But I agree with your general point about expectations and standards.

The world has changed. Foreign travel is now much more affordable. There is much more access to credit too, so personal debt- both secured and unsecured - has increased.

I don’t know anyone who has a £3k coffee machine or could afford one. Mine cost about £150 off EBay.

I grew up in the 70s. It was shit! The only reason I had a holiday was because my grandparents lived in mainland Europe and I’d spend every summer with them. My parents smoked 40 cigs a day each, my dad went to the pub every night without fail. So they wasted plenty of money.

Yes I do want and expect a better lifestyle than we had then. I’ve worked hard to be able to be able to spend my money on the things I want. It’s irrelevant if other people think it’s a waste of money. I’m not going to willingly live in the way we lived back then. Why would I?

“The average non-mortgage personal debt for people over 50 in the UK varies by category, with typical unsecured balances including £3,922 on credit cards, £5,793 on personal loans, and £1,575 on overdrafts, alongside larger secured consumer borrowing like car finance averaging £11,375”

Definitely not just young people utilising debt.

According to Google

Ages 25–34: This group holds the peak level for individual non-mortgage financial debt (such as credit cards, personal loans, and overdrafts) in the UK, with a median of £5,300. Half of the people in this bracket owe more than this amount, and half owe less. 1]

Ages 18–24: Young people in this bracket owe an average of £2,989 in unsecured borrowing

So the majority cannot be driving expensive cars with 7 holidays a year.

I'd agree about the friendship groups being a good way to have a well rounded (or not!) view of aspirations/lifestyle. My teenage years in high school meant I mixed with a wide variety of my friends from different backgrounds, so wide that some parents were hugely wealthy in massive houses and swimming pools, while others were single parents in deprived council estates and they were really struggling. So even back then (I'm not old, only 45 lol), I could see how it was easy to aapire to a bit of an unaffordable lifestyle.

Even now, my eldest daughter is at private school on a bursary and scholarship, and some of her friends are absolutely loaded. Wealthy is probaby an understatement.

I think a lot of it is that people have lost the concept of saving up to buy something they want/need, rather than put it on a credit card. When my parents got married and bought their first house, all the furniture was either given to them or bought second-hand (and my father was a doctor, so reasonably well-paid). I can remember how overjoyed my mother was when they could finally afford a fitted carpet in the sitting room!

I have to say I have always had new cars, apart from my very first, and have always saved up and paid for them. That is my 'thing' - I've lost interest in holidays, never liked eating out much, don't drink coffee or have takeaways.

I do think younger people fritter money away without much thought and also I think that using cards to pay rather than cash has made it 'easier' to spend money.

Agreed 💯 percent. When I was a child we went out for dinner maybe at a birthday or special occasion. I'm late 30s as well

Older bird here…….save for things I need, no extended credit - mortgage free - save every month - eat out maybe once a month - regular car owner, not at all impressed with high end models - perhaps two holidays a year but certainly not extravagant trips - thought of spending beyond my means would scare the shit out of me!
My mum used to say ‘cut your coat according to your cloth’.

YANBU. I work with someone who constantly moans about her rate of pay. Pay is higher than minimum wage and she says she on nmw like everyone else is on more than her. She has a husband and working son. But constantly goes on and on at me. Im single, living on one wage but managing. She is is currently on her 2nd holiday of the year, paid for her son's driving lessons, goes on weekends away at xmas etc but is always poor me.