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

I mostly stick to eBay and get other stuff in the sales. I agree food is going up alarmingly. We have mostly given up meat, but fish is really dear now. I’m glad I can cook from scratch. But libraries and parks are still free and other free activities are available. My DH volunteers for a food bank and referrals are rising quite dramatically

Think we'll only get that after a massive, painful, crisis,I'm afraud: we wont do it by choice,so it'll hurt much more

My family were very definitely middle class but my parents would never have spent money on coffee and cake in the 70s. In the 80s and 90s I would have coffee a lot in cafes but not cake too.

The middle classes always had to work too.

I find it really interesting that people want to chop up 'working class' into sub categories based on things like how received your pronunciation is and whether you have sugar in your tea. Retirees are working class they are simply retired workers. A lottery winner would be the rare exception of someone who (if they had worked or relied on benefits) would arguably not be working class anymore, as they would not need to exchange their labour to live. They find themselves in a position where they must learn from those who are not working class about how to keep their money working for them.

What I mean by the 'incomprehensible' difference is that the differences between someone on £26k and someone on £70k seem really big to most of us, but the difference between those two people and those who do not have to work to live is much, much bigger. This is simply something that doesn't occur to most people. Possibly because they're too busy working and keeping the world going. I do concede that people have these very set notions of how they can differentiate themselves from others by say their salary or how many times they got ripped off by a university, and that's a very human thing to do. But if you rely on the money you make from work to live, you are working class, believe me.

You think buying clothes and cosmetics and having a coffee is a "middle class pursuit"?

Believe it or not, the lower orders do it too. They even have holidays and drive cars.

@ElleintheWoods what are you defining as a generation ago? I thought it was usually roughly every 25 years.

If so I remember as a teenager in the 90s buying clothes from my Saturday job wages. Other teenagers did the same then. My mum went shopping every Saturday too and often bought clothes. So not true that a generation ago clothes were a rare treat!

Unless you are thinking of generation ago having a different timeline?

If she can’t afford it she can’t afford it. Don’t confuse afford and justify. I’d want to have thousands in the bank before I’d be indulging in such unnecessary spending.

It has never been the norm for the majority of the world’s population. 100 years ago houses didn’t have indoor plumbing or electricity.

Isn’t it depressing that a coffee and a cake are out of your reach? For centuries a version of this has been the norm

Class isn't really about income, it's about educational achievement and social status.

Working class are those people who left school at 15/16 and do manual or semi-skilled jobs- childcare, factory work, council workers such as bin men, shop workers, manual labour like builders, gardeners, etc.= basically jobs that don't require a degree.

Middle class are usually degree educated professionals- doctors, teachers, solicitors, accountants and so forth. This a wide ranging group with varied incomes. You can move into this category from working class within a generation.

Upper classes are those with family with inherited and historical wealth and power- people with titles and ties to aristocracy. You can't join this class, you have to be born into it. You would remain upper class even if you lost your wealth and were destitute.

Then there are those that I think of as the underclass- those that have never worked for several generations, the long term unemployed benefit claimants, the criminal classes, the tax evaders, the professional shoplifters and petty thieves, the perpetually sick etc.

I agree which is why I buy almost everything in charity shops now. One of the local ones does 2 books for £1 and as long as you’re not looking for the brand new releases you’ll always find good paperbacks. My treat now is to pop to the charity shops for a browse (last week I got a seasalt dress and a monsoon dress with tag still on for £5 each) and then go to Waitrose for a few nice bits and get the free coffee as I have a mooch around.

It's always harder when you have young DC at home. When my DC were young I could rarely afford a coffee out and a piece of cake would have not even been something I'd have even considered. Now DC are grown and in their own homes I am far better off. I can afford little treats and to treat my adult DC and DGC too.

You spent too much in those years. That’s when you should have been saving the most. Lots of people make the same mistake. They think they will always be in the same situation and don’t adequately plan for the future. I’m sure you’ll survive without organic chicken.

Make hay while the sun shines was coined for a reason.

I think people should learn to expect what they can afford. Going to university isn’t a big deal in 2026. It won’t afford you any specialist treatment. I have a friend who expects to be able to afford music lessons and dance lessons for all her children. Then expensive trips out at weekends because she works and they deserve it ? Why do they deserve it? If she can’t afford it she can’t afford it. Deserve it doesn’t enter the equation. I have to constantly bite my tongue.
There ia no point comparing our times to the generation before. If anything they were an anomaly unlikely to be repeated in our lifetime. Lower house prices when more women were starting to work for better pay. Families could afford more luxuries. Then houses started costing more because people could afford larger mortgages with two wages and so it snowballs.

Most people aren’t middle class tbh. That’s just something the upper case want us to believe so we don’t come for them. We are all mostly little workers paid just enough to keep the wheels spinning.

Oh, I agree @Catsandcwtches

We also knew it at the time.

This ⬆️

The kinds of things that one considers ‘everyday luxury’ now used to be actual luxury a generation ago. For example, going out for a coffee/ meal or to buy clothing was a rare treat or done because it was needed.

Nowadays everyone at every income level expects a real excess of consumption as ‘the norm’

But you can afford it, you say yourself you save for things instead.

bit condescending to think that the majority of people find wealth 'genuinely incomprehensible.' There are a lot of things I find incomprehensible like the size of the universe - the concept that some people are very wealthy is hardly rocket science.

besides which 'people who don't work and don't rely on benefits' can include a huge variety of people, from the Duke of Westminster, to retirees, to fairly modest lottery winners

Average UK salary is about £37k, if someone in their 40s 'only' won about £800k on the lottery, then they'd be able to retire today on an equivalent to their earnings.

I say 'only' £800k, not that I wouldn't appreciate it very much, but just to illustrate that you don't need riches beyond imagining to not work. Look at FIRE for example, very normal people who have prioritised a bog standard income to retire early.

I’m so sorry about your husband x

Who could have predicted that a race to the bottom on wages via outsourcing work to cheaper countries and insourcing workers from cheaper countries would result in the workers in previously wealthy countries in the West slowly but surely becoming more impoverished. Brought to you by globalisation, staunchly encouraged by the Right but aided and abetted by a played Left.

It feels like you can't win. DH and I working class,really struggled to raise 3dcs over the years in a rented flat.
Now,dcs are adults and mortgage paid off. 2 dcs desperately looking for jobs so need financial help,dh was latterly on disability benefit and died in July. So,despite a degree and 40 years of work am still scrabbling about for money.
I earn a reasonable middle management salary, buy second hand clothes,shop at Aldi and can't afford to retire

I get your point, middle class used to be a very wide bandwith, and perhaps it's narrowed, but the higher echelon salaries don't automatically make higher earners Upper Class.

The uplift of any 1985 middle glass salary in inflation terms relative to current salaries for same type of job is much the same whatever part of the middle class band a particular professional job sits within. And of course, the larger percentage of net income needed for housing costs has exacerbated the effect on middle class disposable incomes on many middle classes ( as well as the JAMs, and working classes)