To sometimes wonder how people afford their lifestyles?

[Babysafari]

Most people that I know appear to have really nice lifestyles. New cars, really nice houses all done out immaculate and on nice roads. Holidays abroad several times a year to nice places too. I've also noticed that most of the parents at school pick their dc up themselves (I'm on maternity leave). There are loads of dads at the school gates too and a lot of mums and dads do the school runs together. A lot of these people are really young too.

One of the dads is a road sweeper so won't be being paid loads and his wife doesn't work, yet they are always doing the school run together but they seem to have the above lifestyle.

Me and dh have a decent household income, hardly rich but 50k, we're not struggling at all but our cars are old, we can only afford cheap holidays, dh works really long hours and is never there for school runs.

I'm not being deliberately envious, logically I know they could have family help or anything I guess people just make it look so easy, I wonder how they do it.

[GreenHen]

I guess we look at bit like that to our neighbours/acquaintances and possibly some friends too.

DH and I both work but have managed our hours so that we have been able to do the school runs, and chat with parents before and after school, between us. DH is based from home and I am a part-time teacher.

We now have two 'nice' cars (a fairly new thing - we did share a more modest car between us for quite a while. That was my choice - the current situation is DH's) and over the years have done quite a lot of improvements to our home (a modern 4 bed detached that DH bought for £94K in his early twenties when he was earning approx. £25K/yr).

We are now in our early forties and as our household income has risen we've largely kept the same lifestyle (apart from the cars and maybe going a bit more luxurious with the home improvements) - we both have a small wardrobe of fairly cheap clothes, DD goes to state school, we like camping but occasionally take a more expensive holiday (never more than £4K to date and that isn't every year).

We've had quite a few subtle comments that make it clear that the neighbours think we are going into debt to have the home improvements/cars. A couple of people have hinted that they think my FT wage would be larger than DHs. One SAHM made the comment to me when I talked about work that she was really lucky that she didn't need to work like me because her husband has a good job. I've never corrected them.

The reality is that DH often gets up at 5 am to get into London returning 9pm and is away for days at a time. Car is still on the drive though so it looks like he is at home, especially coupled with the fact that he is working from home several days in the average week. Our household income is c£275K/yr, we have no mortgage, we have a lot of savings and investments. DH and I both came from fairly low income families and there has been no handouts at all and if there is any inheritance in the future it will be very modest - so we are careful - there will be no bail outs if things go downhill (and we have weathered periods of unemployment for DH - living on my teacher's wage).

[rollysuitcase]

holy crap, household income of 275k per year green! do you mean 27.5k per annum?

on paper, we should be doing much better than we are due to DHs job title and salary but he only sees half of it due to his tax band/pension/student loan.

we dont struggle at all but i do feel we should have more to show for his earnings than a titchy tiny 3 bed new build semi and an 12 year old battered cheaper brand car.

i think its got a lot to do with buying your home pre 2005, good salary, where you are located work/ property wise and help from family financially and childcare savings from that help.

[AElizabeth]

This could hugely depend upon the area you live in. If it's an expensive area or a particularly good school, most people will have had to have some money behind them to live there in the first place - inheritance, savings etc. But if that's not especially the case, I do think debt is a reasonable suggestion. A quick google reveals that the average (non-mortgage) household debt is £13,520, and it's worse than that for families with 2 or more kids. (www.independent.co.uk/money/is-britain-facing-a-debt-disaster-a6808086.html)

If your personal debt is less than that, take comfort. Keeping up with the Jones's will be bringing at least some of those happy families at the school gates secret misery.

[bibliomania]

An important factor I haven't seen emphasised on this thread is who you partner up with. I earn slightly above the national average salary. If I had a partner with a similar income, I'd probably be in a better house for a lower monthly outlay, as we would have a bigger deposit (I scraped together a 5% deposit on a basement flat at the age of 41) and we'd also potentially have a much bigger disposable income.

As things are, I'm a single parent bearing all child-related costs. My ex isn't paying child support at the moment (I'm waiting for CSA to find out how he has managed to evade it yet again, when it's meant to come directly from his employer). More significantly, he's dragged me back into family court again and again over the years, costing me the best part of £20k in legal fees, while he mostly got legal aid, before the system changed.

I'm not complaining - I love my flat, and I love being the one who makes all the financial decisions in my household, so that I can priorities the things I value, which tends to be experiences over material objects, so no car or new clothes, but we are having a good holiday this year.

But the fact that I made a poor decision of who to marry and have a child with has had a huge, huge impact on my finances.

[UnGoogleable]

I have been asking myself a similar question OP.

I have never in my life bought a 'new' car, I've always had old ones, never paid more than £3,000 for one. And yet most people I know own brand new cars - and these are low income couples, single parents, my friend's young sister who is just out of college.... they MUST be buying their cars on credit, there is no possible way all of those people have a spare £15-20k cash hanging around.

I have zero debt. I paid off my student loan as soon as I could. It makes me very uncomfortable to be in any debt.

Some people choose to live like that, I don't. But I do sometimes wonder whether my life would be better if I allowed myself to rack up some manageable debt like everyone else seems to...!

[SausageDogGeorge]

I know what you mean - people probably look at me and think I'm one of "those" people - I recently bought a new car and we've recently moved to a big house in the countryside. I pick my DD (age 11) up from school every day so perhaps people who don't know me think i don't work BUT I can do all this because I work for myself from home - I don't really take a lunch break then break off at 3.00-3.30pm to pick her up from school and carry on working when we get home. My partner has his own company and earns a good wage but the downside is that he doesn't get home until 7.30/8.00pm every night. We have to watch the pennies though (shop at Lidl) so that we don't overspend as I don't want to get into debt - I've been there before and its a horrible feeling (for me).

[LettyJane]

There will be a good few people on the thread earning (or their husband earning) £275k a year.

That is why I want my teenagers to look carefully at what you earn in particular careers. It can be so arbitrary that one teenager picks X career (low pay) and another picks Y career - chance to earn £275k a year and they don't realise at the time the implications of the choice.

My son and his friend (only boys in the class that day) were given a test by the economics teacher recently - they had to put down the price for things for an average family like gas, food etc (a very good idea for schools to do ) and my son tended to put a price that was lower than average and his friend vastly higher sums.

[HolditFinger]

We have a new SUV which is a company car, and because DH downgraded from what he could have had, the company pays him the extra every month which is paying for my new car. Our house is fairly nice, but the mortgage is much, much cheaper than what we used to pay in rent. We were gifted a deposit by my parents, which I'm so grateful for. We don't have expensive holidays (been away once to Orkney in about 8 years) but have a fair few days out. We waste very little on clothes or shoes by buying things only if they're needed, but good quality so they last. I budget for the food shop, which I usually do at Aldi and that allows us to live pretty comfortably and maybe go out for a meal now and again.

[sambly]

Maybe it's just feeling that way? One family has new car, another holiday, another something else. Some people spend a lot of time concentrating on making their lives look perfect. Who knows. My best advice just focus on something else

[rollysuitcase]

but really, who earns 22k net a month? i want that job. i thought netting 10k a month was amazing but earning 200k + pa is insane.

[pollymere]

The answer is living in debt. Or sometimes people just work all hours.

[Handsoffmysweets]

Rolly you can achieve that level of income in certain fields - consultancy, banking, property development, rental portfolio. I started with one house and it's grown and grown. I'm not saying everyone can achieve an income like that but with some tweaks I do believe that many people can realise their earning potential waits to get flamed

[irregularegular]

Once, at a drunken dinner party, asked some friends who had just made a massive leap up the property ladder "where they had found that extra million". I knew nobody had died.

I regretted it the moment I said it and was hugely embarrassed. Another guest gave a joke answer and we moved swiftly on.

It was not my finest hour and I don't recommend it. Couldn't look them in the eye for months.

[randomsabreuse]

Cars are a weird one. We have to have at least one estate (or SUV) with a big boot because DH works out of it (vet). That car has to be reliable and will do 30-40k miles per year. Life is more convenient if my car is suitable for him to.work out of when his is being serviced so I can have the tiny courtesy car or do without. So we have two newish big cars.

We seriously looked at lease deals but for the mileage needed it was too expensive but for under 10k mile/year you can cover use, servicing and insurance for less than it would cost to maintain a £3kish car (tax, insurance, MOT, servicing, random minor repairs). The lease cost is also predictable, you might get lucky with the cheap car or you might not.

[Handsoffmysweets]

Oh I wouldn't worry about that irregular. I get asked if I've won the lottery or if we've been robbing banks?! Sometimes funny if I've just splashed out on something, sometimes said with an air of 'why have you got that and I haven't?' A few bitchy women at my gym also like to dig that I'm so lucky to be a lady of leisure and how well I've done marrying DH - DH put them right at a Christmas drinks party the other year and told them they must be kidding, I've made him more money than he ever had before! Their faces were

[windygallows]

I agree with bibliomania's post earlier today. Hardly anyone has mentioned the sheer impact of being in a relationship and having a dual income. It is massive (and somewhat depressing) how much being married or in a relationship accounts for a better standard of living.

And of course some people have done enormously well just through coupling up. A lot of people on this thread would be in a much worse situation if they were to divorce or weren't with someone else sharing the bills. For many women it'll be the difference between being in poverty and not.

Surely that has to be acknowledged as a key reason for an individual's high standard of living... and having a relationship is often down to fortune, although I do know some people who put a lot of hard work into a career in marrying well!

[YellowShockedFace]

digitalsynopsis.com/inspiration/privileged-kids-on-a-plate-pencilsword-toby-morris/

[JemimaBee]

yellow brilliant comics!

[LettyJane]

£22k a a month is £ £264k a year. I thought someone meant gross. HMRC take about half your income at those levels in tax and NI. If we mean net plenty of partners in the successful accountancy practices earn £500k a year and indeed up to £2m a year and that's just the professions like law and accountancy ( women and men). My sons have a week of stuff like careers at school this week so this question of what you want to spend your life doing, what jobs earn, what you enjoy, what are the right choices now etc are upper most in our minds.

(And vice versa, windy, my divorce cost me at leat £1m - a very expensive risk is marriage for women who earn quite a bit)

[throwingpebbles]

Excellent cartoon yellow

[Mov1ngOn]

That's brilliant yellow!

[heron98]

DP and I aren't huge earners (I earn about 20k, he about 18k) but we have what I think is a very lavish lifestyle!

We eat out about 3 times a week, go abroad a couple of times a year, have lots of weekends away.

This is because our mortgage is very low (it's a lovely house but small and in a rather undesriable area),we have no children, pets or car and so can afford to spend our money on enjoying ourselves.

Plus, when we do go away or eat out it's never to expensive places.

[Mov1ngOn]

38 isnt a bad household income. Many (most?) families (us included) are on less than that as either one parent is part time or there are hige childcare fees.

Theres then 4 people in the family to feed,clothe, take on holiday etc.

[kmc1111]

The people I know who have a nice lifestyle like this with average jobs bought property young. They had a part-time job or two the second they were legally able, saved up every penny of birthday money and most of their allowance if they got those things, and by the time they were 18 they had enough for a deposit on a flat. A couple of years later they'd saved up enough for another deposit, then another. They bought smart, made sure the rental income would cover the mortgage plus a little each week to put into a repairs fund.

By their late 20's/early 30's they had 5-6 properties including a very nice house for themselves. The properties are basically their retirement fund, so they aren't as worried about saving as others might be, meaning they have more disposable income. In another 10 years or so all the properties will be paid off and the rental income will be all theirs, so that's a different mind-set too. They aren't necessarily going for big promotions or looking to go up the ladder at all, because they know by the time that would majorly pay off, they'll have at least a thousand pounds, probably quite a bit more, coming in weekly from their rentals.

Two of these people came from very, very poor backgrounds. Their early 20's were rough, they often worked an 80hr week at various shit jobs plus studied, but that bought them security for later. Most people don't start thinking that way (or more precisely, doing anything about it) until their late 20's. If you start saving and investing early you've got at least a 10-15 year jump-start on 99% of people.

[101handbags]

I live in a very very posh area full of people who living in massive houses who all 'seem' to have it all. Yet I know from the many reports in our local paper that by far the biggest issue at the local Citizens' Advice centre is debt caused by a desire to keep up with the Joneses. So those mentioning debt are not entirely wrong although there is much inherited wealth too, I suspect, plus people that sold two properties in London and combined the profits to by one house in the suburbs.