AIBU to feel middle-class luxuries have become increasingly out of reach?

I love Hobbs - but I love it even more on ebay. You can get great pieces on there whether used in great condition or from British Heart Foundation which seems to receive a lot of their stock.

No not unreasonable, everything is through the roof now. If salaries had kept up with prices a bit of occasional luxury would be achievable, but not now. I won't even buy ready made sandwiches, because £4 for 2 slices of bread and filling is just too much to stomach

That’s how I shop too - never buy this seasons until the sales. Am in my 50s so don’t feel the need to wear ‘this years’ designs. Perfectly happy to pay 25-40% for last seasons.

I did buy a cheapish house, repossession, but I was at uni, had one child, and my husband was in the Army on about £25k and our mortgage was still 4x his salary. And we borrowed more to extend. The same house today would cost around £375k (not extended). Up north.

We were paying £1.5k on average years ago. Not recently. So what people pay for the same today isn't exactly comparable. I think in the last year of the mortgage we overpaid £1k a month and then I paid off a £7k lump sum at the end. So more than £1.5k a month.

But as I said, a large part of having money now is that we bought when we did and had children when we did.

Pre-pandemic, I would mindlessly buy Costa coffee. You know, if I was out and fancied a coffee. It was a treat, I knew I was paying more for it than is necessary - but it wouldn't be a treat I'd think too hard about.

Now I go nowhere near the place. HOW MUCH?!

I did the same as you in Joules recently - not a shop I go in very often. There was a gorgeous white summer dress - a day dress, nothing fancy. £75! I remember Joules being for yummy mummies and not 'cheap', but £75 for a sundress is ridiculous.

I buy my clothes on Vinted, from charity shops and Tu at Sainsbury's. And in fairness, it doesn't feel like a hardship because I have particular taste that only occasionally aligns with what capitalism thinks I should buy this quarter. But I'm bloody lucky I feel that way. Skincare is also Cerave and The Ordinary - but at least they're good...

I used to consider myself middle class. Now I think maybe I'm working class - haven't been able to afford a holiday for two years, money worries consume me... My job hasn't changed, my income has dramatically reduced as a result of the economic landscape, and the cost of everything has sky-rocketed. I hate it.

You can be loaded and frugal. The op isn’t really talking about the obscenely rich people, just ordinary ones who have tried to get on and have good jobs and do all the right things , yet they cant have a treat as it’s so much more pricy than it used to be.
We can all argue that it’s not and you don’t need these things in life, but if the middle classes are struggling each month, it doesn’t bode that well for the economy as a whole really.

Gawd. She is rich. Yes. But for a rich person she is known for being frugal.
You can be rich and frugal. Frugal means you do not go around splashing your cash. Frugal means you are thrifty. You dislike waste. And she is like that.
It doesn’t equate to poverty necessarily.

I think the real point is that you must have bought a cheapish house and were able to extend it. You also had your kids at the age many now are just out of uni and settling into a job.

Your mortgage was very low- many new grads pay that now for 1 room in a shared house (ie £1500K a month.)

I know people now- friends of my adult children- who are only buying for the first time in their late 30s, as they settled down later, and are buying in the SE for upwards of £750K+, and earning 6 figures. But with big loans.

HUGE difference in house prices north and south.

I agree with this even in recent years, we had our fixed term end after the mini budget fiasco and our monthly payments jumped from 900 to almost 1500 a month for the same house, a 3 bed semi.

I think such shopping then in those sorts of stores would have been undertaken by upper middle class people.
They may well have had a lot of visitors. To gawp. But those shopping would have been a lot less than the number visiting.

Anyway, I suspect you understand my drift. For modern day consumers, shopping has become more of a regular hobby/activity.

My old sofas were well over 20 years old and past it. The prices were astonishing and the material isn’t as good , but I had to buy something and with interest free loans , it wasn’t a terrible deal and will ‘ see us out ‘
I was still surprised how much some of the sofas were and I didn’t go anywhere that posh either. Like clothes, the materials used and the manufacture is definitely not as good.

me too

Horses, private education, chefs, gifted homes etc are not what I would call a frugal existence even if you do rewear clothes but you can disagree!

I think a lot of those middling brands are priced to go into sale these days. I don't remember the last time I bought something from white stuff or Boden without either a discount code or in sale, but that's very geared to online and they wonder why the high street footfall struggles

Somewhere (maybe the Times) I read a really good article a few months ago, where the author said that to save money she'd decided not to buy a new sofa, and then listed all the events downstream of that if everyone else acts similarly: less money for the furniture shop, for the textile factory, for the warehouse operators, for the cafe near the factory, less paid in tax.

The British economy relies very heavily on services and consumer spending, we can't wish that away. But if we don't produce and manufacture then there'll be no money for goods and services to prop up what's left kf the economy.

I'm probably upper working class. I don't work, I've not finished my degree. I had kids at 24 and 27. Bought a house at 26, extended it and paid the mortgage off at 40, 2 years ago. We've taken the kids to over 60 countries (some more than once) and to 20 US states, never Florida! We usually go away for 5 weeks in summer, this year we went for 6, mainly in China. We drive a £600 Vauxhall, I don't get my haircut because I hate having it done! My husband earns a decent wage but it's not as high as some you hear on here.

We can treat ourselves, but we were paying £1.5k a month, on average, when interest rates were low, when we could have paid £300 a month. We kept reducing the term and overpaid on top. We are better off than we would have been because of that, and because we had kids younger, and because we bought our house in our 20s.

@Monty36over 1m visited in the first week, you don’t think they were part of the general
population?

Her mother gave her that as a wedding present.
Yes, she is rich. No denying it. But she is also frugal. Believe it or not.

I definitely think wage stagnation has a lot to do with it, especially as many wage rises are based on the notional inflation rate. The inflation rate takes an across the board look at things, so some items I would consider luxury or at least non-essentials are included. There needs to be an inflation figure for just essential items like basic food, energy, petrol/transport - these care the things that have gone up in cost the most in percentage terms recently.

I got an inflation linked pay rise this year. I worked out that this covered the increase in my petrol costs and council tax increase, with about £20 a year left over. So I'm worse off by everything else that's gone up. Food, heating & lighting etc, household essentials like cleaning products & loo roll, clothing (even I can't get a t shirt to last more than 12 years very often), insurances...

Yep, I agree with this. 53 and finally able to spend a bit of money on myself. However, the cost of living has shot up, the purchase price of most consumables has gone up at a huge rate yet quality is going down. I buy everything second hand, not only because I am cheap and I love a bargain, but because clothes from 20 years ago are often better made. All my go to brands have gone down so badly in quality in recent years.

The other saying is that the poor can’t afford cheap clothes, meaning that good quality clothes last well. PA has very good quality clothes. Being frugal doesn’t make you rich, but if someone is rich, they’re much less likely to be generous.

Gatcombe Park is what 6m? Frugal indeed 😆

Why would your earnings peak in your early forties? I started work at 22 and expect to work till I’m 70 - my early forties weren’t even halfway through my career.

I’m 53 and I earning a lot more now than I did ten years ago.

On a horse she would. But by all accounts she is, like her mother was, fairly frugal.

I was talking about the general population.