Has the lifestyle our parents had become impossible?

[bumblebugs]

My parents had what I suppose you’d call a very privileged/upper-middle or upper-class upbringing. They went to fancy private schools, there was family money around, and when they married they were able to buy a lovely big family home.
Growing up, we went to private school, had nice holidays (often a few a year), and generally had a very comfortable lifestyle. My parents would go to balls, have dinner parties, entertain friends etc. None of it seemed particularly unusual in their circle.
Now I’m married with a child myself, I’m realising that recreating anything close to that lifestyle seems almost impossible.
Between us, my husband and I earn roughly what I would have considered comparable to what our parents earned, and we both work hard. We have a nice life and can just about afford the things that matter to us, so I know we’re fortunate. But private school, a large family house and three nice holidays a year? Absolutely not. Even the social side seems different I don’t really know anyone regularly going to balls or hosting the sort of dinner parties our parents did.
I always assumed if I worked as hard as my parents did, I’d be able to give my children a broadly similar upbringing to the one I had. Now it feels as though the goalposts have completely moved.
Has anyone else from a similar background found this? Is this lifestyle simply much more expensive and inaccessible to our generation, or am I looking back at my childhood through rose-tinted glasses?

That's a nasty and uncalled for response if i may say so.
Controversial OP, but can i ask if you:
Send your children to non-childcare activities
Eat out for breakfast or lunch regularly
Buy takeaway coffee regularly
Run big cars
Buy takeaways
Buy new toys for your children as development tools, not just for birthdays or Christmas
Buy new clothes regularly
Entertain your children at soft play/play cafes/theme parks
Have a schedule of entertainment during school holidays
Get your nails/brows/feet/lips done
See shopping as a leisure activity
Buy 'Finest' or The Best food or shop at more upmarket supermarkets
Buy convenience foods such as chopped fruit & veg or recipe boxes
Regularly refresh your home with new furniture, decoration etc
Enjoy girls/boys/couples weekends away
Have your heating on more than the bare minimum or even constantly

None of these things were even remotely commonplace in the 79s/80s/90s and most only took hold in the last 10 years.

I am NOT saying stop buying takeaway coffee and you can afford private school but all of these tbings have become so normalised that people feel deprived if they don't have them and feel entitled to them because they work hard.

Yes housing can be more expensive in some areas, but lifestyle creep also also plays a part.

Yup, stagnation has made its way up to the middle classes. DH and I have had it a tad harder than our parents - bought a home later, couldn't afford private education (not that I'd have wanted it, but DH and siblings were educated privately the whole way). Our kids will have it infinitely harder - we won't be able to be 'bank of mum and dad' because we'll need everything for our retirement (which we're not making before 70) and basically they'll have to wait until their grandparents die before getting enough inheritance to potentially form a deposit, which please God won't be for some time yet.

I think these days basically anyone with under about £10m in the bank is a political irrelevance now.

This is a good point. Many areas in the UK have declined massively over the decades, areas where a particular industry provided skilled well paying blue collar jobs which also provided a sense of identity across the region. The shift into services boosted some areas and kept others plodding along but now the malaise has spread more widely and the middle classes are feeling it. Even when someone’s situation is objectively ok, we feel noticed a downshift in our situation (and the prospects for our children)
more acutely than when things are stable or improving. A far greater proportion of the country now feels economically vulnerable.

But for many areas, this has been happening for years.

Sounds as if your parents inherited, or knew they would inherit, so unless you also have a very successful business on one side and the CEO of a big company on another, you're going to come up short.

And … I am still astonished when people don’t climb the property ladder with innumerable fixer upper houses. This is the way my family have made it work for them.

Obviously GPs and NHS Consultants are not on the breadline and the Consultants (not the GPs) have had very decent pay rises in recent years, although still below what they should have been earning if salaries had kept pace with general inflation (as it is under measured). I think the pp's point is that the PPP is far lower compared to 30 years ago, which it clearly is. Add on the debt (an additional tax, in effect) and it is even worse.

No doctor, without a very large inheritance could afford anything like the lifestyle that @MixedBananas says her parents enjoyed, as two NMW workers.

As @bumblebugs says, what your $/£ purchases nowadays is a far, far lower lifestyle compared to the previous couple of generations. The only think I am surprised about is that some people are only just noticing this!

Yes, I remember a neighbour once sighing and saying didn't I think it a shame we couldn't give our DC the sort of childhoods we had. Turned out she meant their own ponies and a vast house in the country. There I was, feeling so privileged to no longer be living in a terraced house, and to be surrounded by greenery. Our childhoods had been very different.

Arghhhhh...

Softplay and Waitrose niace ham aren't the problem...

Softplay wasn’t much of a thing when I was a kid and naice ham is probably more widely accessible and cheaper than it was then but housing, energy and - applicable here - private school fees are higher. Add to that societal expectations of more holidays and more and newer “stuff” and money goes a lot less far.

And i clearly said that in my post.

On the face of it their pay is decent but the tax they pay is horrendous. The 100k tax trap has been at the same level since 2010! So any salary increase since then is largely taken off them. Hence they go part time and/or increase pensions.

I completely agree. It just made a very similar comment on a different thread about this crazy tax cliff edge. It makes no sense. What looks like a very good salary on paper a) goes much less far nowadays and b) gets removed in tax and loss of childcare benefits so people decide to stay on lower salaries rather than striving harder.

That's not actually true.
You did say that people feel entitled to all these things and that lifestyle creep is part of the problem. Given that a lot of these things weren't available in the 70s/80s, it's not a sensible comparison.

You also said 'housing can be expensive in some areas'. That's a massive minimisation of the reality of the housing situation. The reality is that it is far more expensive relative to salaries now compared to 30/40/50 years ago. The ratios are 2-3 times worse in many areas. That's a huge difference in expense.
Cutting back on Waitrose Finest just isn't going to cut it!

When was that? It worked very well for some people who were of an age to do this a few decades ago. It won't work very well now though, at least not for many, not in a falling market, where the cost of materials and labour has sky rocketed.

This doesn't really add up.
How can they be affording multiple holidays, eating out all the time, new cars (presumably two), massive wardrobes and regular expensive socialising on one very low, apprenticeship salary and one part time salary.
Are you living at home and being subsidised by parents because these things would clearly not be affordable otherwise on very low incomes.

I definitely think that some younger people are just thinking 'sod it, I will never be able to afford a house, so let's just live for today'.

What do you think the reason for this change is? I’ve noticed it too, and think it’s cos back in the day the kids were just dragged anywhere the parents wanted to go. These days children are prioritised far more and parents tend to build their lives around them, whereas pre-early 2000s it was the other way round

Copilot (for England):

The key measure is not inflation-adjusted price alone but price relative to earnings:
Year
House price as years of salary
1960 3.2 years
1970 2.1 years
1980 2.7 years
1990 3.5 years
2026 7.6 years
A typical home now costs more than double the share of annual earnings that it did in the 1960s, and more than three times the burden seen around 1970. Even after adjusting for inflation, UK/English house prices have increased much faster than earnings, particularly since the mid‑1990s

Yep my husband is going part time next year. He's in his 30s 😅 We have realised the only thing we can buy with our money now is time- either now or in retirement.

So we pay less income tax and have less disposable income to spend to support businesses and the economy. Those who complain that high earners should be screwed more and more, are extremely naive to the wider impact on the economy.
My husband paid £70k in tax last year. Next year he'll pay £28k....

I think it’s with pushing through the 100k stitch up.

My mum was in a 'babysitting circle'; they didn't take us with them. That was the norm for me.

I suspect it's related to home entertainment. I think our parents social lives followed the way their parents conducted their social lives (pre-war, so no TV and defintely no games consoles). If you read, for example, Jane Austen, people spend a lot of time at other's peoples houses.

Our lives are truly more disconnected now. Technology has moved us forwards but also backward.

Depends on circumstances I guess. We can be happy without, and value our time more than 40% of what we could earn.
We don't have kids so don't need lots of extra money. My life goal is to leave this world with an empty bank account 🤣

In 1960s they'd have only used one income to calculate the mortgage.

We were poor so I feel like a millionaire compared to how I was brought up. We go abroad every year, eat out at least once a month, I get my hair done at a nice salon. I live in a beautiful area but my house is small. The sort of things as a girl I could only dream off. I’m sure my battered car and the fact my house is not detached could make some people think we aren’t well off but when you have come from nothing to being able to own your home and pay the bills comfortably life feels pretty brilliant. So I suppose I was lucky really although it didn’t feel lucky back then.

Have you tried it recently?

Higher costs on every move, i.e. stamp duty, mortgage arrangement/redemption fees, solicitors costs, estate agents costs, surveyor cost, and even removal men costs have all risen.

Reliable tradesmen are hard to find and expensive.

Building materials have risen in price substantially.

Building regulations are more strict and more rigidly enforced.

It only really works for people "in the trade" or for professional buy to let landlords/property investors who have easy access to finance and have their own "team" of tradesmen to do the work.

On another thread a while ago, someone asked why "first time buyers" don't buy "do-er uppers" at auctions. Well, firstly, many auction properties aren't mortgageable so only someone with ready cash can buy them. Secondly the professional property developers/BTL-ers snap them up as they're able to pay more. Lots of properties don't even get on the open market because the estate agents already know serial BTL-ers and give them "first dibs" on suitable cheap doer-uppers because they know they're "easy sells" without the hassle of first time buyers who take longer and may be more difficult as they need mortgages etc. There's a reason why the vast majority of buyers on "Homes Under The Hammer" are serial property developers/multi BTL-ers - they're at a massive advantage over first time buyers.