How are people affording this lifestyle?

[AmusedTaupePlayer]

Just curious if anyone can shed liJust curious if anyone can shed light on this. I know a couple a few years older than me (late 20s/early 30s) living in Newton-le-Willows. He works as an admin/warehouse inventory clerk at some small frozen and she did not go to uni, she has no LinkedIn, never mentions any kind of work or side hustle.

And yet they’ve been on a couple of holidays in the last year, seem to eat out occasionally, and post pics of family days out etc. It’s not luxury by any means, but still — two kids and one modest income??

Are they just really good with money? Family help? Universal Credit top-ups?

Genuinely trying to understand how people make it work on paper when everything is so expensive these days.

I don't know if it is actually. I've never been jealous of what others have in my life. When I bought my two up two down my friends all had bigger houses than me and I couldn't have cared less. I'm now in a very large house and I'm pretty sure my friends also couldn't care less.

Comparison is the thief of joy.

I had to re-read this - What - NO LinkedIn?? Actually going on holiday?? Is their surname Escobar??? Do they have shares in Wind in the Willows copyright??
Love your jokey thread, at least it made some of us giggle.
(BTW - We are not rich / not poor - I am not on LinkedIn, we do dare to have holidays occasionally - oh, and we went out for lunch the other day - and live near Virginia Water). - I didn't know I may be reported for this, oh my)..but really - ...please get a flipping life love (with kindness) x (by the way - when I was on LinkedIn, a long time ago it was the only account I had that was hacked.....so I closed it).
(Oh, have you checked that their car has an MOT yet?) xx🌹

I'd like to know how so many obviously lower rung people swan around in £60k plus Mercs and Range Rovers ?

Well perhaps they're not as 'lower rung' as you assume?

Perhaps they can afford them? Appearances tell you nothing. If you looked at me you could assume that I'm scraping by on a bit of PT work with an on/off similarly lower rung partner as we live in a scruffy house in a perfectly fine but non MN approved area.

We'd never pass for middle class by MN standards although an interrogation of our interests, politics and spending habits would likely lead to that being assumed.

We don’t have anything flash or spend much on keeping up appearances because we're not particularly interested and likely both have ADHD so motivation for anything non essential is non existent.

We have 2 10 year old boring vehicles that are owned outright. We could go out and buy a couple of £60k Mercs today if we wanted to but they're not for us.

But the reality I that I'm a well paid professional who mostly works at home and DP is a self employed contractor who's well paid work takes him away for around half the year. We earn well over £100k between us and are mortgage and child free with a decent amount of savings.

Neither of us are on LinkedIn because it doesn’t work like that for DP and I've worked for the same employer for decades and have little desire to move. My current 5 year plan is to increase savings for a few years and move to a nicer, well maintained, house and sell ours as a doer upper.

At the same time I will be able to partially retire and take about half my pension with hardly any actuarial reduction alongside working around 50/60% FTE.

None of the above assumes any inheritance because our DMs are both widows, MIL lives in a council house, DM owns her house outright but it's not worth much and I have 4 siblings.

I don't give much thought to anyone else's circumstances because appearances are often a poor indicator of the reality.

Just out of interest what makes a person obviously lower rung?

Also what qualifies a thread as a zombie thread these days?

Well clearly it requires some sort of skills, whatever an admin clerk (are we back in 1952?) does. Surely more likely to be a warehouse manager / stock controller / shift leader / team manager kind of role? These could pay between £35k and £50k, and its a cheap part of the country. Not really seeing what the issue is

This.
It's discustin. I'm fummin on OP's behalf.

He probably works lots of hours and get over time. Not being on LinkedIn does not equal not having a job. She maybe does something fairly menial that isn’t worth her shouting about but with minimum wage as it is could still be pretty well paid for the area they live. All sounds very manageable. None of it seems extravagant

In all seriousness though, why do you even care?!
It could be any matter of reasons.
Not much outgoings (as in mortgage paid off so even got disposable income on minimum wage)
Family chipping in/paying for holidays.
Jealousy is a curse. Mind more about yourself, and what you have instead of fixating and comparing to others.

Could be anything - maybe she sold an app or wrote a book when she was younger that brought in a lot of money. Maybe they have family money. Maybe she sold a patent or he earns averagely but they paid their house off.

I know a woman who gets £2,200 a month every month until her death because that’s what her dad left her in his will (some kind of pension from the U.S.) she is 27. So with that and her salary she’s pretty well off.

I know someone else who’s mum left her a block of flats and she gets income from that as a landlord but someone else manages it.

They're clearly not as lower rung as you think. Maybe you're lower rung to them