I’ll admit I very rarely go out with friends because I often can’t afford to be spending £50 at least on just me.
The way I see it is that we aren’t high earners, I’m on just over minimum wage and DP slightly more so we must budget our money accordingly, surely that’s acceptable?
I’ve been invited on a ‘mummy’s night off’ 
which is where a group of mum’s from DC class go out to the city centre for dinner and drinks, then on to a club afterwards.
I can’t afford to go, we just haven’t got the money spare.
So I politely declined last week, explaining that I couldn’t afford it. She replied saying ‘you can’t afford one night out?’ So I said along the lines of not at the moment but I hope they all had a great time, sort of thing.
Her ‘come out! you’ll have a fab time?!’
Me ‘as I said, I can’t afford it’
Her ‘the others can chip in for your dinner and you’ll just need to pay for drinks, how about that?’
Me ‘that’s really kind but I still couldn’t stretch to it, have a great time!’
She hasn’t responded to that.
She has however been talking to the other mum’s about me and DP and how we appear to waste our money.
I went to the school coffee morning yesterday and some of the other mum’s told me what she’s been saying.
- She often sees us unloading ‘bags and bags of shopping’ from our car.
I can only imagine that’s the weekly or monthly shop, and Aldi, we’d have been to Aldi, we have ourselves and 3 dc to feed!
Or, perhaps she saw us returning from the school uniform shopping trip and saw some clothing bags, shoe boxes and the like?
- We can afford a big car.
We have one, paid for, family car and it’s not high end or anything!
- She knows ‘for a fact’ that me and my DP drink beer and wine at the weekends and thinks if we can waste money on that then I can afford a night out.
We do like a drink and choose to drink at home to save money! No babysitter, taxi etc. My wine is £5! I wonder if she knows I sometimes buy another mid-week too 
DP beer costs similar.
- She’s seen on my Facebook that I ‘go out loads’
The only times we’ve been out all year have been as a family, with close friends or just me and DP. And there haven’t been many, not even once a month. Just occasionally a birthday lunch and a wedding that we went to etc.
She has come to the conclusion that I could be snubbing the mum group and tasked the mum’s attending the coffee morning to try to talk me into going.
I explained that I can’t afford it, and that even if there was £50, £60, £70+ sitting in our account, I couldn’t justify spending it on myself. Christmas is coming and we’ll really be watching our spending so we can afford our family celebrations.
Other mum’s have warned me there’s going to be a Christmas one in December, I’ll have to decline again and dread her seeing me tagged in anything on my work’s do! (Paid for in instalments over the last few months)
I do understand that it’s good to get along with the other school parents (and I do) and I will try to go along to some of the nights out but it won’t be this side of Christmas.
It’s not very nice having to justify myself like this. Why can’t I just decline and that’s it?