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

The odd treat meant once a year not weekly fifty years ago. When a nice bar of soap was a real treat at Christmas. My parents didn’t buy stuff every week. Or every month. And neither did I. We did have a trip to London. Once. In my 18 years living at home.

a lot of people do have odd treats - books and clothes are still selling well.

clearly you can’t afford everything you want at this point in time but I think you are drawing the wrong conclusions

@Daisywhatsyouranswer can you explain why Labour is solely responsible for that?

I think people need to readjust the concepts of middle-class. What used to be firmly working class, growing vegetables and going on dog walks got repackaged into aspiration activities.

Honestly it’s totally nuts.

Obviously everything has gone up, suppliers have increased bills energy, transport, wages.

I will never not buy new books though, I don’t want literature to either be just written by the wealthy or AI slop, even at £15 for a novel it gives 7/8 hours of joy at least not much is £2 an hour. Use it or lose it really.

And yes coming out if the EU was shooting ourselves in the foot, utter insanity, but that was project fear.

I don’t think considered consumerism is such a bad thing really.

Believe it or not people didn't live in sack cloth and ashes in the 70's, 80's and 90's

Yep, but it’s the MNs narrative!

Laura Ashley launched in the 50s & expanded to more than 100 stores, strange how they did that with everyone window shopping!

Everybody but the very rich is getting poorer. Even people who think they’re comfortably well off.

How often are you expecting to afford the things that you mention, and what's your actual income/area of the country? You list wanting to spend the things in your OP as 'treats' (birthday, coffee and a cake because you rarely go shopping, birthday trip), so if I'm honest I can't see why you wouldn't be able to afford these things as one of treats if you consider yourself middle-class and both have decent jobs. The money must be going elsewhere as a choice.

'Every day' middle-class spending is more like H&M, Zara, Next – which is not £80-100 dresses. And paperback aren't routinely £14.99 – they are £8.99 – £10.99.

I do sympathise with the cost of living, 100%, but it seems as if your money may be going elsewhere by choice (or by short term pain such as young childcare) if you can't afford the things you list as a one off every now and again.

You can’t be serious, liz truss;s budget is confirmed by all fiscal bodies as not remotely close to as damaging as what Labour has done since in power. Our tax burden is now the highest it’s been in decades . It is now the highest it’s been since 1945.

You have an after housing cost income of over £5k per week? That’s definitely not middle earning and £100 for a shirt sounds like it would be small change to you.

Exactly. We've just come to view those luxuries as inferior and our modern ones as essential. I will say increased marketing has a lot to do with that.

But although socialism wasn't about rampant consumerism, it was very much bread AND roses. We must have some nice things in life as well as hard work.

The cost hasn't risen, wages have stayed low

https://www.livingwage.org.uk/news/current-state-low-pay-uk

But with that per week net income after housing costs you very easily could? But as you note, you’re the top 1% so hardly the squeezed middle

I do too. They also look at families in the US on SM without realising how much debt, insecurity and high prices they are wrestling with.

@Gibgerteaproductivity was struggling before Brexit though and it’s one of the reasons why the vote went the way it did. People were feeling poorer so voted to make it worse.

A huge part is the crash as I said & our housing situation

I’ve had the same summer clothes on for years ! Any Photos of me over lockdown and before and I’m in the same tops and skirts. I wash them all and put them away safely for next year. I did buy a top in the sale , but it was heavily reduced. My friends are the same too. I find clothes hard to source as it is as they all seem so cheaply made and a lot more pricy than they used to be. I feel for families as children have to have new things and even kids clothes don’t seem as reasonably priced either and they have to buy uniforms and school shoes. It must be a nightmare for families.

It’s a big part, Liz Truss’s mini budget and Ukraine too.

I don’t think high street clothes shopping or buying a cake and coffee qualifies a person as being middle class.

It's set to get worse with El Niño affecting food prices. Energy bills going up. Tax rises in the Autumn budget to fund more benefit increases.

@dustabsorberSo you agree with me, wages haven’t kept up! Because the post I replied to said they had…

I can’t imagine posting that, why on earth would you, for a woman struggling.

The large ones can, but shareholders would grumble.....

Yes broadband, sky etc didn’t exist, meals out were few and far between, families often had one car, houses were not being renovated repeatedly, new clothes was not a weekend hobby, take away coffeee was unheard of.

I do think social media has a lot to do with it. Not the op, but people post a lot of aspirational lifestyle stuff and others look and can’t understand why they can’t do that,

I would consider myself to be firmly in the middle class camp and I feel your pain. I ran our household income through the Institute of Fiscal Studies calculator and got this conclusion:

With a household after tax, after housing cost income of £5197 per week, you have a higher after housing cost income than around 99% of the population - equivalent to about 67.6 million individuals.

Well, I don't feel that wealthy when I walk around John Lewis! I balk at the idea of spending £100 on a shirt!

Hard to judge what?

Sorry are you saying housing costs haven’t increased & food prices haven’t been impacted by the war?! 🤦🏻‍♀️