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

I’ve managed to get used to reading on a Kindle, despite being 72 and having two degrees. I still read dead tree books but not often.

Me too (although I am only 60)

I love my kindle. I share my library with my son and DIL. We have over 1300 books! Imagine trying to house all those physically?

This screenshot shows nothing. Post the breakdown of what that universal credit entitlement is made up of because it will be more than two adults and two children.

Echoing what PP have said, it’s definitely not impossible to get that much UC with that income coming in but there will be other elements on there. PP have already posted proof you just can’t get that amount otherwise.

I didn't say the Middletons were upper class (although tbh if we were 200 years ago they probably would have been given a quick baronetcy before the marriage!).

Basically the whole class system is nonsense. For it to make any logical sense it would have to be split roughly into thirds. The middle would be exactly that - the middle third, covering the average (whether that's salary, income or overall lifestyle), then upper would be the third below, and working the third below that.

The situation we have now where upper class ONLY covers the 0.1% of people who have a title, working class is supposed to cover the lowest earning 10-20% while we all pretend to ignore the fact that the poorest levels of the population actually aren't working at all, and 'middle class' can cover, depending on who you ask, literally the other 80-90% of us, from the parents of the future queen to a single mother living in social housing and receiving UC, because despite earning less than £30k a year she works part time in what was traditionally a MC job like a solicitor, or went to private school or shops in M&S or whatever ridiculous definition people go by!

100%. I earn £80k and a few years ago I considered myself very comfortably off. Could buy most things (obv not luxury goods) without thinking. Now, I’m really feeling the cost of living issues. I spend very little outside of what’s needed.

I used to go out to eat non-stop. These days I’m just always shocked when I do go.

@3luckystars hi, can you say more about how there is no class system in Ireland? I'm always fascinated when people from other places say this. Surely there must be evidence and reactions to people's education, politics, wealth, culture, etc etc? I find it hard to believe nobody notices or cares about those things.

OP, what are your wages and what is your mortgage? Or major outgoing e.g school fees/nursery?

Yep! I earn a decent living and get a reasonable amount of child support from ExH but am still skint. TBF I do like to go away with my two teens a couple of times a year - a weekend skiing in France and a week's summer holiday in Europe somewhere - but these aren't really wild extravagances are they? I don't eat out loads or spend tons on hair and clothes (although I'd love to). It just seems like the general level of lifestyle maintenance - by which I mean fixing bits of the house as they inevitably break (there's always something (expensive) that needs doing), making sure the car is running and has an MOT, school uniforms etc etc - is outstripping very average earnings these days.

You can change the screen background colours, font, brightness etc.

That might help?

That's a shame. I think you'd love one otherwise.

Is it just me that thinks this is awful?! The school let her set up a small business on their property? She pocketed the money for herself? It wasn’t raised for charity?

Fair enough!

Charging her Dad too. I wonder whose electricity and kitchen she used to make them? And who bought the ingredients for her to then sell them at a school her Dad was paying for her education in?

Cheaper to buy her a few ingredients for cakes than spend £5K on a car or a pony for her though!

Fair play to her, I say. I wish my kids were that entrepreneurial, would save me a fortune!

I wouldn’t see it’s entrepreneurial at all, sounds like a chancer to me. I wonder why the school let is go on?

did any of the students propose to do a similar thing and were allowed? Selling rival brownies or something…

We are one income family. 2 adults 2 young children and 2 older DC that we help support (both work but I do them a top up shop etc)

We used to eat out more, now we don't.

Still go away but do it on a budget. Tent in summer, days inn during summer if we go further. Booked a caravan holiday for September for 250 for the week in Cornwall!

I still buy books but get them from charity shops or car boots.

I buy puzzles at car boots for me!

Shop mostly on vinted for clothes.

Buy budget brand lollies and chocolate but I still buy it.

I use box dye for my hair

Yep, the cup cake girl needed the competition! The monopolies commission won’t like that kind of business thinking. lol. Plus with so many allergies, im surprised she was allowed to sell them unless she was able to list every single ingredient in them ( which she may have done tbf)
5 k is a healthy amount to raise though.

It definitely wasn't for a charity!
I agree, I did raise my eyebrow at the school allowing it.
She's a really lovely young woman though.
At a dinner with a few mums it came up, and the focus was on more how impressed we all were at her ingenuity!
My own daughter would no more bother her arse to do something like this.
I think this type of energy is just innate to someone.
She had her full licence 2 weeks after turning 17, despite us being very urban.
It also gave me the push to insist my youngest whom her siblings call "princess", to get out there and get a summer job when she was balking at the idea.
If it wasn't for her buddy I might have let it slide a bit.