Middle class but no money

[roopiea]

Does anyone else feel like this?

We would say we are middle class. Both university educated and privately schooled. In our 50s now. Parents had similar professions to us.

We work for the public sector, a teacher and management in local government. We live in a pretty reasonable part of the country. But we still feel we have no money for being in the middle class? We probably earn a combined 80k a year but live in a pretty bog standard 3 bed semi. Have holidays in places like Spain or Greece.

Whereas our neighbours are blue collar workers but seem to have so much more money than us. My best friend and her husband work similar jobs and they have a nicer house and better holidays than us.

@Shityshitybangbang
I'm in Scotland too, never come across this class nonsense.
I think OP assumes because they're educated it makes them MC, what a shame for them all these tradies out earn them, they'll be weeping into their linen napkins

Social class is v dated now and so odd. Also, there often seems to be a big difference between how we see ourselves and how others see us. DH & I would describe ourselves as working class - parents did 'working class' jobs, both were the first in our families to go to Uni, better of than our parents were when we were kids. But some people on low incomes would consider us middle class.

Well clearly the OP and some other PPs do feel money and class should be related, as they feel perplexed and aggrieved that their middle class background should be reflected in their monetary wealth.

The OPs post smacks of snobbery and bitterness that working class chavs should dare to have more money than her and her DH.

Had no desire to do university or nonsense as no point

I don't care at all about "class," but I find this kind of anti-intellectual, had-enough-of-experts-style inverted snobbery profoundly depressing. It is why populism is the current political flavour in the Anglosphere.

80K between two people is not middle class, sweetheart. Wake up.

Me and my brothers are middled aged. Me and one of them were the 'academics' - did post grad qualifications, phds etc. The other left school at 16 with little qualifications. Im a social worker, hes a uni lecturer - other bro runs a building firm and is hugely successful! I live in a shithole without a pot to piss in, lecturer bro has more but still modest, bro lives in a mansion with a pool, flash cars the works.

Not sure what that means for our 'class' as we all grew up the same. But the different in our lifestyles is absolutely huge. The biggest difference though is what we can talk about. Topics of convo and discussions are very very different with one brother to the other. It is like a huge cultural difference despite the fact we grew up in the same household.

Interesting...

Do you think cash in hand cleaners pay any of that?! You are somewhat deluded if you think so..,

I agree with this. My brother and my dad are both in the building profession and they both clearly earn a lot more than I do (and I work in a highly regarded so-called ‘professional’ role). They have big houses and drive swanky cars. My parents go on multiple holidays abroad every year. My sister in law once made a disparaging remark about the building trade be ‘manual Labour’, knowing full well what my dad and brother do for a living. She and my mil are intellectual snobs but I can guarantee that both of them earn more than my sister-in law does.

Same, I'm in South West and literally the only time I've heard middle class being mentioned it is as derogatory term- generally as meaning pretentious, snobbish, very aware of being Better Than. Definitely not something to strive for or boast about. Truly upper class people don't need to tell you they are upper class or ask people if they qualify, they just are, and it doesn't matter what they wear or how they act, it is inbuilt.
The upper middle class around here would be more the landed gentry type. Often skint, but skint in hard wearing tweeds in a big house with a roof they can't afford to fix.

I am in my 60s. When I & my generation were at university in the 1980s students initially received grants which acted as an incentive for young people from all backgrounds/incomes to study......this encouraged social mobility at a time when a secure profession was a passport to a certain income level.

Decades later, during my working life of course I meet many young professionals who are managing student loans for the foreseeable future. So, once upon a time students were paid, now they have to pay. Set this alongside the fact that a degree or higher qualification doesn't now guarantee anything in terms of either income or security.

My adult DS has severe physical and learning difficulties, he will never work. What class would you say he was?

BTW the snobbery inherent in believing one has an entitlement to a certain income level is a result of the class system embedded into British (or at any rate English) culture. It is underpinned by the monarchy which we inexplicably cling to like a comfort blanket but I think horribly skews our outlook...once you accept inherent privilege at that level it is easy to accept it right across the board.

It makes a difference when you’re living in a country with free education and lower house prices on average.

It’s all very well complaining about class - personally it’s only on MN that I come across such complaints. The fact is it’s becoming a survival factor. Health inequality is real. Increasingly we are conflicting over resources that are needed to live on, and nothing is going to improve in that regard with immigration and population increases, the physical pressure on food and the environment. That’s what class means. Having increased access to resources, increased opportunity to gain more, and therefore increased chances of survival.

Only the rich can claim that money and class does not matter, or those with family security. Some of us have neither and relied on our ability to work. We’ve been had.

@WaryCrow
I've worked hard since I was 14, no access to family £, education, abusive parents, I've had no privilege or foot up, neither has my DP, both from very low working class if we need to class it.
The OP here thinks her education and job merits her to be MC.
I've lived in Scotland my whole life and never heard anyone describe themselves or anyone else by class, it is very English and seems to be an obsession by many.

The middle and upper classes as my mother succinctly put it is about values darling, and culture. Not about money. Apparently.

However my ‘gifted’ and privileged brother did not amount to very much after achieving his very average degree. He ended up with a working class job - moved to a working class area, so his children now sound very different to everyone else in our family.
His children go to a school that is very average, and they carry none of the values my mother tirelessly instilled. How would anyone categorise my brother or his children for that matter?

Money in this instance would make the world of difference to their trajectory.

maybe because this has been the case for pretty much the entirety of history until very recently? It was almost always the case that the 'workers' earned less and the managers/organisers (i.e. merchants who were the precursor of the idea of 'middle class', when previously it was the 0.1% and everyone else) more, and then the owners (of businesses, or land), i.e. the upper classes, earned the most.
That's where the entire idea of a class system came from. It's only recently that random stuff like how you pronounce certain words or what you like doing in your free time became conflated as part of class identifiers.

For pretty much anyone who started university in the last 40 plus years, they were encouraged to do so with evidence confirming exactly how much more someone with a degree (and, therefore, graduate job) would earn over the course of their career than someone without one.

I agree that it's not automatically the case now, and some traditionally working class careers (particularly trades) can earn a lot more than some traditionally middle class ones, but that doesn't make OP foolish for believing what was until very very recently a commonly held assumption of truth.

How would anyone categorise my brother or his children for that matter?

Working class.

Yes, they may not pay any of those things. But they then come very unstuck when illness /old age hits

@Bromptotoo what on earth does the below have to do with m actual post though?

*The Teacher's pension scheme, like pretty much all the others in the public sector is 'pay as you go', there's no fund and pensions are paid by the taxpayer.
Governments of all stripes have deemed that the cost is partly born by current payroll hence the so called 28%. Unlike in my charitable employer's DC scheme that money's not going into a fund with 'Miss Jones's' name on it!!(

It’s like the state pension, of course there is no pot! But thats irrelevant when discussing contributions…

Growing up in Central Scotland, I was aware of income differences but not class differences. Doctors’ and accountants’ kids ate the same things, did the same activities and broadly had similar holidays to plumbers’ and shop workers’ kids.

V different in Edinburgh!

Plenty of the public sector schemes have funds - huge funds - I do work from them.

And the pensions are not always even paid for by the tax payer. There are quite a lot of public sector jobs that are self funding (eg.developer fees pay the salaries of town planners)

Two teachers here - also in 50s. Honestly, compared to the younger teachers I see were bloody lucky. Bought in 1990s when house prices were cheap, childcare also comparatively cheap. We’ve put three kids through private school - albeit with fee reduction and have modest Victorian terraced house.

This just shows the impact of housing though, people can’t afford 3 dc now let alone put them through discounted private school on 100k and presumably you were on less than that if that’s what you on now?

From what I remember of 70’s sociology lessons Marx classified as
…working class lived solely on their wages
…middle class lived partly on wages & partly on investments
…upper class lived solely on investments
It was so long ago I’ve probably totally got this wrong but seems sort of a sensible definition.
Id love to know how mumsnetters considers themselves as middle class

Where did you get £20k from? OP said they earn £80k combined. I said my income is less than half of that, it's more than £20k! As for free school meals, my DS isn't at school any more and he wasn't entitled to them when he was at school, I work full time, to get FSM you need to be unemployed or have an income below around £6k.

I don't think you can necessarily say that 🤣 who knows their finances

I think the problem is many were sold the idea at school that university would lead to a house, car, a nice enough life and 2.3 children. With minimum wage practically level with so many entry level graduate jobs and non grad jobs paying more, people feel misold and fed up. Not so much about class, more just about being able to have the moderate life they expected having ticked all the boxes. Work at exams, go to university, get a graduate job, work your way up.