To be confused by other people's finances...

[Haudyerwheesht]

I know it's none of my business obviously but still....I want to know!

For example how does my neighbour who only has one adult working in an averagely paid job afford to go to Florida and do Disney / universal etc twice in 6 months?

How does another person I know live in an enormous house and wear designer clothes and have lovely holidays etc when they're 24, with 3 kids and don't work (husband does). I kind of know the answer to this as they're both from wealthy families....but I want to know the ins and outs because I'm nosy!

Why does my friend rent for 1.2k a month and fritter money away when they could ft a mortgage much cheaper if they had a deposit?

How can my sister moan about money when she has no mortgage or housing costs, no council tax and her and her husband both work full time??

Obviously aibu to be so nosey but I'm not the only one am I?

My DB and his DP have 2 teenage kids. She owned their house a long time before my brother moved in. They are on a low income, and get tax credits, but DB has all the latest tech at home...Alexa, cinema screen, all the consoles, kids have got widescreen tellies in their rooms, decent phones, it goes on.

I live in London with DH. We live in a tiny flat, with DD. I am on £38k, he's on £26k. We do eat out a fair bit. We spend a lot of money on food at home (Husband cooks fresh food from scratch). Our main expenditure is bills, like mortgage, service charge, council tax, utilities etc. We go on a two week summer holiday in Europe and a weekend away in Autumn each year. I manage to save about £200 a month for the rainy day fund. Our flat could do with a complete revamp! We plan to move out of London to improve our living situation. It was fine as a place to start, but a move it overdue.

My brother thinks we are rich but we aren't really. We cannot afford a house like his and his partner. My brother lives off our parents a lot. We are self sufficient. We cannot afford a car, he manages to run two. But I get free travel from work (TfL) as does my husband.

Friend on a low wage has a house mortgage free bought for her by her parents. So has a much better lifestyle than her wage alone would allow.
Another friend inherited a lot of money when her mum died, and so at 50 no longer works.
IME bank of mum and dad.

People earning £26k pa won't be putting their DCs in full time expensive nursery that costs £20k pa. They simply can't if they want to also eat, pay for utilities and actually have a roof over their heads.


They will either have a SAHP, alternate shifts to eliminate/minimise childcare or use childminders or unpaid family members. They may also be entitled to tax credits to help with the cost.


No obvs someone on £26k patently can't afford nursery fees like that. That's my question about how someone on an average income affords childcare! A typical childminder in Hackney is £8 per hour per child - so that's easily £10,000 a year for one child.


Not everyone can do shift work and surely a lot of family members also have jobs and can't provide free childcare


We earn significantly more than the average wage, as do my friends, but the cost of childcare for even 2 children eats up a significant amount of the family take home pay


Unfortunately we can't have children, but our hopes and dreams of a family never included more than 2 children, even as top rate tax payers - as the cost of childcare for an additional child would be astronomical.


So it's genuinely interesting to understand the finances of those who have larger families!




without sounding bad I have 4 DC but have no idea how anyone could afford £40K on anything

If doesn't sound bad at all. It sounds very sensible! The obscene amount of money we've spent on fertility treatment is because we desperately want a family, and we are fortunate enough to be high enough earners to be able to stretch to fund treatment (though obviously we don't have any luxuries like holidays or fancy clothes, all our money goes into medical bills). Most people who can't have children can't afford multiple rounds of IVF. If it's expensive to have children, it can be significantly more expensive to try and make them if you're afflicted with infertility! Unfortunately this insane amount of money hasn't enabled us to have a family, because money doesn't cure health issues.

We are in a very fortunate position and it's a result of a lot of the reasons outlined. DD is 8, and before she was born we were averagely ok but couldn't really afford kids.

• Bought in London pretty much straight out of uni so now have a 5 bed with v low mortgage.
• Had a decent inheritance when expecting DD which paid all the fees when we moved from a flat to a house, as well as a bit towards a loft conversion.
• DH started a new career at this time which quadrupled his salary over time.
• My parents gifted us a significant amount which has gone towards our current house and enabled us to buy a btl (still has huge mortgage though). On the downside it's because my dad is sick, so while amazing, it's bitter sweet.

We save a fair bit, pay into pensions and spend our money on the house, holidays, eating out and extra curricular stuff for the DC.
However, we also shop at Lidl, use heating sparingly, fly any old airline at really antisocial times to get cheap flights, never buy full price clothes, prefer to go to the park with DC than cinema/theme parks, I eBay the kids decent old clothes, use vouchers for meals out, I walk rather than spending £1.50 on a bus fare, take sandwiches to work, packed lunches to days out ...... I'm frugal at heart.
DH's boss thinks he's tight because he buys suits at TK Maxx and doesn't use AC in his car.....

But we still didn't do it all under our own steam.

"No obvs someone on £26k patently can't afford nursery fees like that. That's my question about how someone on an average income affords childcare! A typical childminder in Hackney is £8 per hour per child - so that's easily £10,000 a year for one child."

Which is why nobody in dh's job actually lives in London. Far cheaper for one person to commute from somewhere cheaper on the south coast than to pay for living expenses in London.

If you have two earners in the family London may be more affordable- but then you will also have two wages paying for the childcare.

Some people are just rich some are in debt in not all but some cases. I work in a supermarket, dh is a builder, our cars are 5 years old. However, we are quite well off in comparison to many people around us as we have savings, equity and disposable income every month. I know some people would assume we are at the bottom of life's ladder and couldn't bare to live where we do, drive what we drive etc. But we can sleep at night. I think for some, looking successful is more important than actually being successful.

My DB and SIL are like this - expensive holidays, massive TVs, new kitchen, tons of presents for every birthday, pony for DN.... well in excess of their incomes. Actually, they are burning though inheritances from SIL's parents who have both died young. DH and I have a much more modest lifestyle even though we have "better" jobs and education (we also live in an expensive area of the country). I wouldn't trade though; better to have one's loved ones than any amount of Florida holidays

I have the opposite problem - people who I know earn a lot more than me saying they can't afford to rent a flat on their own. Why can't they afford it? What I'm thinking is that they're saving and/or paying into pensions and they're looking at the money that's left after that.

we are fortunate that my husband used to be in investment banking at a time where it was good - he's since got out of it and is now self employed (still in finance) and does well - earns nowhere near as much as before, but upside is he works from home so spends a lot of time with children and we save a lot on food/transport. I am on maternity now but have an average paying job in the energy industry. We have a flat we rent out and have a very low mortgage on our house. Big savers too - most of our food is bought on discount and frozen - don't really eat out especially with two young children. We own a 4x4 but was bought seconds hand and is over 10 years old. Hardly use it (husbands family are about 3 hours from us) so its in great shape - my daughter has terrible motion sickness so drives these days are few and far between.

Holidays are not that huge - but we do travel to an 'exotic' place almost yearly and people have commented that we must be really rich to go back yearly - the truth is my family are from there so we really are just spending on flights . We do a stop-over in Dubai for a few days en-route and people always think thats flash - actually, no it isn't, flights are way cheaper when broken up like that as opposed to a direct flight to our destination, and we get mates rates for the hotel in Dubai because my bestfriend's husband (they live there) well, he's the head chef of said hotel. People just don't ask and assume we're rich - we're not!

I don't think anyone has mentioned air miles. People who have to travel widely for work can collect vast numbers of them. My friend's DP worked for a bank and flew on average weekly. They collected BA miles and once a year they could fly return to Florida 1st class. Since he retired they don't go 1st class. Lots of people get some air miles through business travel. My DH does some business travel and we have just got 60,000 air miles awarded. He doesn't usually go long haul but this was. I think that would pay for a family trip somewhere.

Also airline employees get amazing discounts and freebies so they're another group who aren't wealthy but could do Florida.

By the way my DC have all grown to adulthood and seem to have survived without ever visiting Florida! They also got over "only" going to Euro Disney Paris!

Bet everyone in receipt of benefits has a huge tv right Try keeping your nose out.

The ones I know of are drug dealers

I have a friend who lives in a massive 4 bed house, has a brand new 4x4 every year, holidays, 3 DD's who are constantly getting new clothes and shoes all do dancing classes, have extravagant birthday parties etc etc. My friend works two nights a week in a care home. Her DH is a gambler, bets on horses and greyhounds, really knows his stuff and wins all the time. They claim HB and CTC based on her wages and don't declare a penny of what he wins

They don't need to Shutty, gambling winnings are not classed as income.

We are not rich, or in debt. I am very frugal in many areas, so we have fabulous holidays - all planned out to be as economical but as amazing as possible. I'm actually bloody sick of people raising eyebrows or asking quite rude and intrusive questions. Some things we do to save money, is cook pretty much everything from scratch, never ever buy takeaways. Buy kids clothes etc either on eBay or out of season in advance - which really makes a huge difference across the year. Buy furniture and things for the home from auctions/and eBay, and do all decorating and repairs ourselves. I look after our things, clothes etc really well so they can be used for longer and can be passed down to my younger kids. I also constantly change all of my providers at the end of contracts. My gas/electric/sky etc is all way cheaper than anyone else I know. It takes lots of planning to save so much money across the year, and that's how I plan and manage money, thinking across the year as a whole. Wish people wouldn't ask me "but how can you afford it?" In some kind of accusatory tone whenever we do anything, it's so rude!!

I've just been able to jack my job in as it was shite.

Luckily, when I sold my house in 2007, I made lots of money on it, and paid into Dhs house when we married (though I'm in the deeds now) this reduced the mortgage massively, and Dh earns well.

We don't have fancy cars, as there's nothing wrong with mine. But, we do have an AI holiday every year, and another week away somewhere.

Dh can pick up bits of work on the side, and he'll get paid something stupid for it.

People don't see that as he'll be home working, and me and the dc get ignored. He gets forgiven as it pays for our holidays.

We can live off Dhs wage alone, mine's just extras, but people must think we're well off, most of my clothes are from TU at Sainsbury's and I save the nectar points for school uniform.

We live in a 4 bed detached in the 'posh' road, and the mortgage is nearly done (Yay!)

Not been to Disney, as I'd rather stick pins in my eyes thanks!

People who have to travel widely for work can collect vast numbers of them

But do they actually get to use them for personal travel? They belong to their employer and my employer at least doesn't allow them to be used for personal use. In reality they probably don't collect them or use them.

mygorgeousmilo You sound like the sort of person I referred to above, the sort who gets twice as much for their money as those who just buy things as and when from the first place they see.

I bet you never pay 'full price' for the sorts of grocery items like coffee, tinned tomatoes, rice, toilet roll, cleaning products, shampoo etc, that are always on offer somewhere, do you?

But if you told them how you did it, a lot would probably say 'oh I couldn't be bothered with all that faffing to save a couple of quid' even though it's not a couple of quid, it's probably hundreds of pounds a month when it all adds up - take care of the pennies and the pounds take care of themselves.

Barbara - do they actually get to use them for personal travel?

Well my friend certainly did. She has worked for a number of big companies over the years, top 4 accountants, plus others, and used to travel at lot with work. She and her DH (50s, no DC) have had a US holiday every 2-3 yrs and they have never ever gone economy, they have always bought at least 1 ticket with her air miles, sometimes both. So, yes, in her case, they have used them for personal travel! They are quite frugal, despite her earning very well, so would not have bought business/1st tickets without the air miles.

An interesting thread, as a friend once said, why worry about other peoples money, its not yours and never will be! But human nature makes us be interested I suppose.

Like Lazy - my late teens kids have survived without going to Florida, and with only a couple of trips to Eurodisney, one tagged onto a french holiday. We are going US this year, but neither wanted to go Florida, so we going W coast instead.

Its only the second long haul holiday we have done, we have preferred flexibility of caravan hols when DC younger, despite having a decent amount of disposable income (due to being old enough to have bought houses straight from uni!).

I however feel slightly embarrassed talking about the holiday, not sure why, I suppose it feels like bragging and I almost feel embarrased about being very comfortable financially. Most poeple know that my mum died last year, so could extrapolate that I probably had an inheritance, but even so, my nature is keep a low profile on the money front!!

It's two-fold for us,too. DH works in the same office as he did at 21 - he and a load of his mates worked there. His friends have all moved on and his salary has now more than doubled (over 10 years) although on the face of it he does the same job he did back then.

We are also mortgage free due to only-child DH's parents dying when he was in his teens. Our long standing friends know that, of course, so could extrapolate re inheritance but I guess other people might wonder how we got our house, probably not so much now that we're in our late 20s / early 30s though. In our area most couples can buy a 3 bed house in their mid 20s with perhaps just a couple of grand towards fees from their parents.

We save large amounts, so don't have an extravangant lifestyle, just comfortable and don't have to fret too much about spending money.

Which is why nobody in dh's job actually lives in London. Far cheaper for one person to commute from somewhere cheaper on the south coast than to pay for living expenses in London.


If you have two earners in the family London may be more affordable- but then you will also have two wages paying for the childcare.

But plenty of people live in Hackney. Plenty of low income people (it's one of the most deprived London boroughs http://www.londonspovertyprofile.org.uk/indicators/boroughs/hackney//_ - as well as pockets of significant affluence). Plenty of people have more than one child. Higher than average number of lone parent households too. Inner London is densely populated and the schools full - not everyone with kids moves out and commutes. And not every household has two wage earners. I'm just fascinated by the finances to understand how it works. I would just love to know the economics of childcare in a city where there's high levels of deprivation but childcare costs are high. I profess total ignorance of the kinds of sums that tax credits will bring to a typical household - but is this enough to cover obscene childcare costs? Thread is about understanding other household finances - I'm just genuinely curious how families manage it.

I'm quite fascinated by it too, bananafish. I can only assume that the people who demonstrably manage to live in Hackney on one low wage must have some kind of informal arrangement.

bananafish many of the low income families in Hackney will have grown up there and have established family/community networks for childcare.

The private nurseries will mostly be used by the professionals in their 20s/30s who moved to Hackney once it became 'cool'.

Very few families will move to Hackney with just a single low earner and no existing connections to the area.

But do they actually get to use them for personal travel? They belong to their employer and my employer at least doesn't allow them to be used for personal use. In reality they probably don't collect them or use them.

We do - DH travels for work (US) quite a bit and his employer doesn't claim the points. Last year they paid for business-class return flights to Japan!

I think people sometimes look at us and wonder - we're in the (lovely) ex-council flat I bought as a trainee lawyer, our car is worth about £300, but actually we're both high earners who just don't spend ostentatiously. We're about to move house and have a miniHummus, so let's see how long that lasts .

Yeah, I wonder too. I know a family member who gets paid an extra months average salary into their account by Dad. And their grandparents are adding more via direct debit too. We are not supposed to know though, and they always say to me she and her OH are only living on one wage blah blah.

They are exceptionally careful with their money too in terms of if we go for a coffee then we always split the cost, whereas I would occasionally pay for the coffees and a cake or two.

I dont mind people with money, in fact very happy for people around me to be comfortable - but I detest hearing about people who we know to have money and COMPLAIN that they don't have any when I know their bank account has almost 500k in savings alone on top of the monthly extras they receive.

I'm on a low wage, DH isn't. But we also have a business that I run which takes a few hours up from home and earns well and property that only tenants, family and a couple of friends know about. Pretty sure our neighbours don't. We certainly haven't told them.