If you are middle class do you feel your lifestyle is eroding?

[ceramicwitch]

Now I know that as long as we can afford to heat your home, pay your mortgage / rent and afford to feed yourself and your family you can't complain too much. However I am interested if you feel you used to have a a middle class lifestyle, able to afford nicer bits or activities if you feel that is being eroded?

I think I am feeling it, we used to be quite free with putting nice things in the basket at waitrose (not where we go all the time but where we get treats and more premium things) and not we are holding back quite a bit more. We usually go to the Theatre a few times a year and the ballet, especially at Christmas but this year we are giving it a miss due to ever increasing costs. We've stopped going to cafes if not on holiday.

I have good friends who live in quite an expensive part of town, He is a Doctor and they seemed to be quite oblivious to cost of living the past few years but the other day I was talking to him and he was saying how he doesn't much enjoy eating out these days as the cost of it sticks in his throat, even cheap and cheerful is quite pricy now.

Anyone else feeling that quality of life even for the supposedly well insulated middle classes is in decline?

No. Not much has changed for us.

Although we can still afford it we have cut back on cafes / meals out as we find the quality tends to be poor (unless you are going to really top class places). And I’m fed up spending £20-£40 per head for average food & service! Same with clothes, I now buy everything on Vinted as new high street stuff just poor quality.

Also concerned about job security and we have a DC in private school but are considering state secondary.

We are amongst the Mumsnet high earners, and we have noticed the rising costs. It hasn’t impacted us as much as others though because neither of us has come from well-off backgrounds, so we have always been fairly frugal. Picnics on days out; shopping at Aldi; second hand clothes; no private school fees; we last updated our kitchen 20 years ago and there is nothing wrong with it so won’t be doing it again; we haven’t touched the bathrooms that were last done up in the early 80s. We don’t have many takeaways, and don’t eat out much. We still spend when we think things are good value for money, but we know there are costs coming for university fees for the children, so we remain careful. We appreciate that we are very lucky that we don’t need to worry, though.

Well I think the best way of describing it is there is you now need to be on a much higher salary to achieve that carefree lifestyle, take home (after deductions for tax and pension) of £50k+ used to be a lot but today it services mortgages mostly.

I don’t feel I am less able to do things than before but that’s probably because we’re squeezed in a very small house (so mortgage smaller than average) and there’s two of us working full-time. I eat out a few times a month and take kids on some days out (but also do lots of days at the park with my own snacks).

Our income has gone up hugely in the last 5 years but we now eat out a lot less, because who wants to pay £100 for a mediocre meal?! We also have decide on days out and things like flowers which feel superfluous. I also buy a lot less wine.

Nothing much has changed for us although we have always been savers rather than spenders which probably helps.
Our spending habits haven’t changed although obviously prices have increased.

DH and both work hard in good jobs and yet we definitely don't seem to be able to afford the things we used to. We are a family of 5 with teens who all eat a lot!

Our food bills seem laughably high sometimes but most of our meals are typical spag bol, fajitas, chilli, jacket pots type fare. We never eat out anymore as like others it isn't worth the £200 bill for average pub grub and soft drinks. I used to often treat the dc to a hot choc and biscuit or cake in a cafe in the holidays but would not do that now as it would be about £30.

We have less visits to the hairdresser, less days out, far less cinema trips (we went quite frequently not so long ago) and this summer went camping in the uk as even an Air bnb seemed stupid money.

We have cheap phones from BackMarket on cheap sims, the teens share a laptop for school. All clothes for all of us are from Vinted.

We prioritise school trips, sports clubs & scouts type things for the dc. We are also saving for driving lessons, insurance and uni (but really not sure we can save enough!)

I agree with a pp - my parents were on a significantly lower and often single income but did not have a wildly different lifestyle to that of ours on 2.

I am absolutely not ungrateful that we are in a really good place compared to many, my dc have never known hunger or discomfort and have everything they need and much more.

However, even when I was part time on mat leave I felt less aware of what I was spending and how much things cost compared to now.

Nothing much has changed for us - obviously noticed price rises but hasn't really affected that we can still afford to get what we want. We don't eat out much, the odd meal in a cafe in a gardens, occasional Toby carvery but can still get lovely fruit and veg from our local farm.

Things cost more but we have enough to pay for what we want and haven't cut back.

We can still do opera and dinner at a high end restaurant with good wine 4/5 times a year. We have never eaten out gratuitously for £80-£100 because I can cook better.

However, the £4.50 for Heinz Ketchup made me reach for Waitrose own for £1.75 but that's common sense.

Our personal circumstances improved after some fairly lean years, so we’re not feeling the pinch as much as others. I can comfortably expand our food budget but I’m just spending more on less. A few years ago the difference in our weekly spend would have easily put steak, salmon and a bottle of wine on the table.

Eating out doesn’t feel like a treat, and it’s very expensive for so-so food and overstretched service. I bring my own wipes to the coffee shop because the staff haven’t even the time to wipe the tables.

I can finally afford to buy myself clothes and the quality is shocking so I’m still mooching around charity shops hunting for pre-Covid cast offs.

DD just did food service on minimum wage for a birthday party where the budget must have been around £60k. So some middle class life-styles don't seem to be being eroded at all.

A £60k budget for a birthday party is not a marker of a middle-class lifestyle. That is super-super-rich territory! A ‘middle-class’ party budget would be more like £200-300 (if that)!

Absolutely, I looked up a santa visit for this year, a really basic garden centre one, no extra activities just see santa and get a little token gift, for three kids and two accompanying but clearly not going to santa it was going to cost £100! It seems insane, and I feel like everything is like this now, cost of everything is going up and wages are not.

From a firmly WC background and despite years of being very comfortable we were just starting to loosen the purse, strings when all this madness began so I don't really feel it in that we never established our level and are still able to do everything we want very comfortably BUT we don't have the majority of the MC aspirations.

Agree on the eating out point, it's such poor value across the board I come away feeling annoyed regardless of pricepoint.

@fandango52- ok, sure but that is why the traditional categories no longer work. Super-rich isn't a class, middle- class doesn't indicate wealth.

I don't consider myself middle class, but this isn't an effort to dissect class but I do earn over £50k and I own my own home in London but I am in my 20s and the student loan and p pension contribution mean that yeah it's a struggle right now I thought on this salary I would be doing fine, but I'm not and I've definitely felt myself cut back within the last year.

Is the problem some people feel like they should have more money than others? But it doesn’t feel that way anymore.

The things we value as a family, leisure days, holidays, education, books, food (at home), online accounts. We pay for.

What the teens need, we pay for.

The rest doesn’t matter.

I don’t know if we are richer than our local peers I don’t really care, and eating out is chicken feed to uni fees.

When we had children even looking ahead we didn’t think it would be this expensive but it is and they get everything, basically.

If we didn’t have them we would be rolling in it but we do they are all that matters.

Yes it’s hard, £800 a month net in food and drink at home alone

The most noticeable increase for us is th cost of eating out, which has coincided with having teenagers which has also pushed up cost! Like orevious posters, I do not enjoy spending £200 for us to go out for a fairly average meal so we v rarely do this. Same with cafes, it is only when we are far from home rather than as a treat/convenience.

We prioritise spending for holidays but eating out and theatre tickets feel like an expensive extravagance now.

Eating out is painfully expensive, bottle of house white for £40/50. we get a Cook £15 meal & make cocktails at home if we fancy a treat.

Like others here we have cut back on things that don’t seem worth it anymore. We’re not wealthy enough to not need to worry about costs at all, but do have enough to be able to eat out multiple times a month if we wanted to. But at the moment the prices seem high compared to the quality of food in lots of places so we’ve cut back on that. We spend money on other things like days out, experiences and holidays, have cut back on eating out (taking more picnics out), takeaways and clothes (mainly Vinted now), and save more then we used to.

This.

My parents had one non-professional wage and my mum was a sahm parent. Our house was small but we ate out once a month, went on holiday at least once a year.

We have two high incomes coming in, plus we’ve been gifted quite large sums from in-laws and our lives are not much different.

It’s depressing really.

Were really feeling the squeeze atm with a high mortgage and 2 nursery fees so really hoping it improves as as it stands, we can’t even really afford a holiday abroad.

Yes, I’ve felt a difference in the past 3 years especially in that our quality of life is not as good. Most of our salary goes towards our mortgage. We do enjoy some trips away but we don’t eat out very much and I do a lot of batch cooking when we are at home and I got rid of my car (we used to have 2 cars at home). I’ve also stopped getting as many hair colours and I have found a new hair dresser who works from home to cut costs down there. I get my nails done less frequently.

I'm doing ok. My ds won't notice any change in lifestyle but it's taking more effort to achieve the same.
I buy fewer clothes, am more careful with everything. But my mortgage ends next year so it should get easier in 8 months.

I'm middle class and I will always be middle class. I was middle class when i was on benefits It's about attitude, not income.

I have a life, not a lifestyle. Lifestyle is one of the words I just cannot abide, sorry OP!

BUT, as a middle to above middle income family (joint £75k ish) we are feeling the pinch like everyone else and especially those who have less than us. We have less travel, gigs, clothes, shoes, less heating, swapped supermarkets, we are very careful about what we spend our disposable income on and it is mostly food nowadays, we have our favourite places for cheaper fuel, no longer have the car washed, stopped some of our charity subscriptions. I have stopped piano lessons, exercise class, takeaways except on birthdays, no quick dinners at Pizza Express. Our cleaner had to go years ago. At the moment we are bracing ourselves to get a plumber round to fix a couple of minor issues in the house but we know it will be £100s. Our car is 2011 plate and getting a bit rattly now it's done well over 100,000 miles. Boiler needs replacing = head in sand.