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.

Having a laugh to myself. Originally w/class origin, via life-long education, early house purchase, life experience & cultural taste, I've assimilated into the middle class. I'm a highly qual'd & long experienced professional, now working p/time, 1:1, either on Zoom or in person.
I charge on a sliding scale. But my basic rule of thumb is not to charge less p/hr than I pay MY WINDOW CLEANER! 😂

Snap. I’m a teacher - actually part time. But when I was full time I didn’t consider myself middle class. I’m also a single parent now. Definitely class myself as more higher working class professional.

Agree, we're all working class, we need to earn a wage a living. Some interests and areas may be more expensive but that's all...

Top 5% UK earners is £82k (according to Google).

I was born/ raised WC. 3rd gen immigrant first to go to Uni. Joined a lower earning profession and I am above that earnings threshold (don’t need to worry about day 2 day living but run an old car and only 2 modest hols a year) .

I am still WC. It’s a sensibility and set of values that define MC, and I am not that and don’t want to be.

But remember with MC there was always lower/upper divisions.

The reality is earnings haven’t kept pace with the cost of living and we have the highest taxation and house prices ever. And with the widening access to uni’s it is a saturated job market with those global conglomerates which we support as consumers, offshoring jobs from the UK.

The UK population increased by £4m between 2011 and 2021. Unlikely they are all net contributors so so that impacts housing availability/costs and the taxes we pay to support them.

It's not class, it's being able to afford PE, which many find a means to but doesn't mean they are MC.

i think that’s as a sole salary, not as a household income

Itsbrtnybish

Yes sole income. OH earns similar. We don’t flash cash but my main point of the response is earnings don’t = class system. We are both WC despite working in the ‘professions’ with reasonable income. The other point is how surprising that what feels like a modest income (for 10 years Uni and 30+ years work experience), we are deemed to be top 5% earners. I certainly don’t feel it driving my 12 yo car.

I think there was a thread recently which compared gross GDP (which puts us in the G8), vs income per capita which puts us 20-odd in the tables. We feel poor because we are poor (relatively to industrialised nations).

UK govts (both colours) talk about getting GDP up (productivity). Start by paying all of us better and not just min wagers.

Yes agreed money doesn’t equal social class.

id say im from a middle class background (df MD of a big company, masters degree, me private school, 4 bed detached house, German cars etc) BUT your OH earns more than me.

but I guess 80k is one of those salaries where you need the other partner earning £50k to be well off because of tax and lose of child benefit. you’d both need to be earning 80k to be the top 5% though

That's how plebs define class, not how actual class is defined.

We are having building work done at the moment. Paying the electrician directly. £500 per day. He works 6 days a week (on various jobs not just ours). If he works 50 weeks a year, he's taking home £150k gross. Told us he'd just bought a place outright back home in Romania.
That's not a bad salary in any "class" bracket.

This
The woman who does my botox is probably 10 years younger than me. Lives in a massive house. Drives a brand new range rover.. BUilt herself up. She's lovely and has done so well
I have a professional career. DP has a good job but we live in a 3 bed semi. Not sure where I've gone wrong.

Since the minimum wage came in it has risen. This means companies/state are paying more to the lowest paid so less to pay salaries of higher earners so the gap has shrunk. Plus lots of graduates and few trades people so graduates pay declines and trades increases.

Traditionally middle class was also spending sensibly on long term goals, not swearing and being interested in keeping up standards

Yes, or else they have no savings or kids college funds
When we grew up (5 kids) we didn’t go on many holidays or lead a lavish lifestyle but none of us had student loans as my parents were able to pay for all our university expenses including accommodation etc as they were keen savers and prioritised

You can’t really tell from the lifestyle people lead whether they have money or not as some people are spenders and like keeping up with the jones and some are savers

I’m a similar age and would also consider myself middle class, when I was studying I thought I would end up being much wealthier than I am now, I think most people do, it is what it is though so I’m not going to spend much time worrying about it, there are also many many people worse off than me
I think practicing gratitude may help and also comparison is the thief of joy and completely pointless so try not to do it

'Not swearing and being interested in keeping up standards'? As opposed to the working class who slop to Tesco in their onesies f-ing and blinding all the way, presumably. 🙄

Ah, the feckless working classes, splurging on blingy tat and sweary holidays to Benidorm. How lucky for the aspirational middle classes that they have something to look down on.

Many of the people I know in trades have capitalised on their good wages and ploughed their money and skills in property investments. If you don't think that they have long term goals then you haven't been looking.

Aww, boo hoo, my heart bleeds.
I'd be interested who you voted for in the last 14 years.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong as such with the OP waking up, looking around her and wondering what happened! Nor does it mean that she is a ‘snob’ to question where she is placed in the social and economic landscape.

I am a similar age and one thing that I do remember is that salary profiles were a lot flatter in the nineties and noughties, with far less differential across different professions. Yes, a senior lawyer would always have been paid more than a senior teacher, but it wasn’t three or four times as much! House prices were far flatter too, so a fairly similar middle class lifestyle could be achieved by both families. Also, the availability of information was different, so ‘in the know’ families would utilise opportunities such as the assisted places scheme at independent schools or the friend-of-a-friend’s holiday cottage to buffer their lifestyle. Social capital was maintained by the middle classes via careful sharing of information. But times have changed, we can all research anything at single click, the cottage is now rented out online for £2k a week, City earners can offer way over the odds for a four-bed home in a London suburb and the assisted places scheme has, probably rightly, long since disappeared. These days, money talks.

We are in the middle of a changing economic landscape. Wages are stagnant, jobs are disappearing and I think there may be some uncomfortable times ahead. Job vacancies have been falling for a while now, according to the ONS.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/bulletins/jobsandvacanciesintheuk/december2024

If you work, then surely that makes you working class?

I think I am wondering (not that it matters one jot I know and is very silly) whether one can change class or not and I thought that because my parents were working that I was. Oh crikey it’s so silly and vacuous to be even discussing it!

My nephew is a qualified plumber and heating engineer and works for himself. Definitely what you might call blue collar and makes £130,000 a year.
I also know tutors with no teaching qualifications who make £40 an hour working from home on Zoom. Class does not matter so much these days it all comes down to marketable skills.
I would say that class is more of a snobbery thing than a monetary one. If you call yourself middle class and a teacher, etc and treat people like shit it would make no difference to me if you had money or not you are still not a nice person.-

Every time a thread on class comes up, someone produces this like it’s some brilliant, incisive insight into the class system, when it just betrays a total ignorance of how society works.

@Middleagedspreadisreal , that isn't what it means.

What class would you say someone unemployed was? What about retired people?
If one parent works and the other doesn't, what class are they? What about their children, if they have them?

I've never met anyone who didn't think there was an active and materially relevant class system who wasn't middle class.