To wonder how so many people afford so much nice 'stuff'?

[EscapingBiology]

So many people, who earn seemingly average incomes just seem to have loads and loads of nice stuff; constant new clothes and shoes, kids all decked out in expensive branded clothing and shoes, kids doing every extracurricular club under the sun, having 3 different expensive prams for one child, constantly re-doing their houses and buying new furniture and accessories. The list goes on and on.

How do people afford it? We have a decent income but there is no way I could afford the nice items that some people buy. I know we all have different incomes and circumstances but I'm talking couples who live on a single income, with one partner doing an averagely paid job. I don't live in an area with very high wages, there are certainly no bankers living round here, or people who appear to work in a call centre but who actually earn 100k!

Brittbugs is a good example of the point several of us made about holidays being a really bad indicator. This will probably only increase with Air B and B. If you have at least a few hundred to have a holiday with, you can near enough decide how far you want that to stretch. Within reason obv.

There's also a point to be made here that often it's the people with the most money who can afford not to worry about looking poor. Whereas if you actually are poor, you often need to make sure you don't seem it.

It’s all relative I suppose - but to some people I probably have quite a lot of expensive clothing jewellery shoes bags etc and go on numerous holidays
I save my expenses from work, buy and sell on eBay and used to deal at antiques fairs
I buy much secondhand, live off the reduced counter food wise and drive an ancient car, am frugal with heating, lighting, water and phone bills and always shop around to get the best deal

I guess we fall into this category. Neither of us have debt and don’t buy anything we can’t afford.

We both save a lot. I get a generous clothing allowance and discount for family through work, which kits us out in decent quality clothes for very little money. We have low living costs - we deliberately live in an area that’s cheap as chips and our mortgage is only a tiny fraction of our joint income:

Neither of us earn much but we don’t have lavish lifestyles. Cheap cars, plus a low mortgage and no credit card debt or anything means we can go abroad or for weekends away, and go out for meals or whatever fairly often.

It’s just a question of priorities. Not everyone who earns little is automatically in debt.