To think some people on MN must have magic money trees?

[CoughLaughFart]

Am I the only thinking there are an awful lot of MNers who have no concept of others being less well off than they are? I’ve noticed a few times, but it seems to be getting really bad lately.

Two threads that spring to mind are the passport thread (where the OP’s partner is being pressured to get one so that he can volunteer for a work trip) and the holiday fall-out thread.

TBF most people on the passport thread seem to get that spending £75 on a new passport when you can’t afford to go abroad isn’t very sensible. However, there are quite a few posts along the lines of ‘Just get one, it’s not that expensive’ - even someone saying the OP’s partner should just ‘grow up’ and buy one and ‘that’s what savings are for’. Similarly, on the holiday thread a number of people are advising ‘Book the first flight out’ or ‘find different accommodation’, without a thought that holidays are generally expensive anyway and that effectively booking a second one might be beyond some people’s means.

These are specific current threads, but it seems to be a general attitude in some corners. ‘Get a cleaner’. ‘Get some nice wine and chill in the garden’ (to someone depressed because they’re skint and live in a rough area).

I’m grateful to be in a decent enough position financially, but I’d never simply assume anyone else was. Don’t people at least consider the potential for different circumstances before offering their ‘helpful’ advice?

I feel many issues come from that phrase "but I work hard to afford x"

It's so divisive! It suggests that if you don't have 2 pennies to rub together you are somehow lazy or slacking and undeserving.

People must be exceptionally stupid to realise that you can work very hard and still be very poor!

For the vast majority of people, having enough (or even spare) money is down to luck and having been born into the right circumstances, and never had a disaster land upon you.

It may not seem like luck - perhaps it's as simple as being born to parents who cared about you, encouraged education, told you you were loved, maybe they could afford to help you stay on at school, go to college or university (even if it was only to subsidise your living costs).... believe it or not, that is down to luck of birth and many people take that early support for granted and don't recognise how the lack of that puts people on a path which is very difficult to recover from.

I know a woman who works very hard, very long days at several successful own businesses and is a genuinely lovely person. Yet believes that luck has had nothing to do with her success in life.

Her parents are multi-millionaires, she lived at home rent free, university was paid for, I don't think she even ever had to have a saturday job, horses were bought for her (expensive ones to boot), and her partner is also well off. She's early 30s and living in a 3/4 million pound house.

You don't have to be ungrateful or a spoiled brat to be lucky, and being lucky doesn't take away from you having worked hard - but it gives you a pretty hefty leg up in life - and that needs to be recognised.

I'm lucky - whilst i never got financial handouts and had to work and save, my parents loved me, made sure i was educated, supported me through university etc - so having those advantages in the start of life has enabled me to find a good job. It doesn't diminish the hard work i've put in to get there, but it gave me the opportunities in the first place!

I have a magic money tree and would be glad to sell the beans it produces at a very reasonable rate...

Oh and "take in some ironing" if you need extra money. Who are all these people paying big bucks for randomers to iron their clothes?

A lot of people on here need to spend more time in reality.

it's the property/housing threads that kill me
if someone has a minor gripe about their living circumstances, people will pile in with:
"well that's why I'd never buy somewhere without off-road parking/a utility room/south-facing garden/a long distance from a school". It seems not to occur to them that for a good chunk of the population, including those on above average wages, there will always be an element of comprise due to financial constraints.

DieAntwort
Idk how old you are and if you have kids but to say you haven’t met a person who hasn’t been to university sounds incredible strange to me. I was the first and only one in my family to go for example. Same with dh. Cousins children on both sides chose not to despite encouragement from parents. My dd is 10 so a fair way to go.

User, your daughter will have lively memories with you no matter what. My sister who made the lovely memory holiday efforts over the years with her 2 says she may as well have stayed at home with a sandpit in the garden as neither of her grown boys remember much other than what there was to play with at whatever pricey destination they'd arrived at.

Lovely memories user. Lively too possibly.

More soul destroyingly than people assuming everyone can drop £75 on a passport (I assumed it had gone up to more than that incidentally - mine's running out and I need to renew it for work ID) is when it comes to SN related issues sometimes.

If you're fighting for a diagnosis for your child and living hand to mouth because of various reasons (often that you can't manage to have both parents working with how you end up running the fun of last minute NHS appointments that aren't easily reschedulable, or kids not being able to be in school successfully or whatever)... it can really really hurt being told that you MUST get a private assessment for X or Y done and that if the NHS aren't providing you will HAVE to get private therapy or your child is essentially doomed.

Those people who say it's all about priorities are lucky to be able to afford to prioritise non-essential expenses.

I could pay £40 a month for a cleaner, but that would be £40 off the food budget for me & my daughter and my priority is making sure we have enough to eat.

I work hard to pay my mortgage, bills, etc. but after putting a little aside into savings for disasters, my salary is spent. I get £45 a month from ExH for maintenance because if I ask him for more / threaten CSA then he'll quit his job (he's already done this once). My parents have both passed away so there's no bank of mum and dad to rely on and there was no inheritance as they died in care.

Everyone's circumstances are different. I do recoil when I see what some people spend on clothes / beauty treatments / holidays / etc but that's their choice if they have the disposable income. However, to assume that people don't buy luxuries because of an inability to prioritise is ludicrous.

“Contact your solicitor”

As if that is something everyone casually has.

MN is largely middle class so things like cleaners and savings are the norm. Many posters don’t seem to grasp that not everyone affords enough to have those luxuries. For many people that £75 would be food for a week or two, they literally would have to starve in order to get a passport.

Idk how old you are and if you have kids but to say you haven’t met a person who hasn’t been to university sounds incredible strange to me. I was the first and only one in my family to go for example. Same with dh. Cousins children on both sides chose not to despite encouragement from parents. My dd is 10 so a fair way to go.

Well I mean adults. I’ve obviously probably met people in passing but everyone I’ve got to know well enough to ask the question “what did you study at uni?” has had an answer for it. No one has said “I didn’t go”.

And it’s actually pretty surprising when you think about it. My dad has 5 siblings so I’ve got quite a few cousins, all of them went to uni. My grandmothers and paternal grandfather might not have thinking about it but they’re all dead and died when I was a child.

TheViceofReason Totally agree. I had a friend at primary school. She was incredibly bright. But her father was physically abusive and she was neglected. At 11 she disappeared from school because she was pregnant by her own father. It is so difficult for someone with a very poor start in life to recover from that. I remember another friend saying she did badly at secondary school academically because there was so much bad stuff going off at home, that doing well in exams just was not a priority for her.

I also know when I was young plenty of kids left school at 16 because their parents could not afford to keep them on. They had to go out and get a job and start contributing. That is why education maintenance grant was so important for the very poorest families.

You don't have to be ungrateful or a spoiled brat to be lucky, and being lucky doesn't take away from you having worked hard - but it gives you a pretty hefty leg up in life - and that needs to be recognised.

^This ^

I know a few men people who spout the 'oh, you make your own luck' bullshit when in actual fact, they came from money. Their parents and grandparents had WEALTH to begin with.

I've heard them say so often that they manage their money wisely and are self-made and hard working but what they fail to acknowledge is the fact that they began life living in a lovely detached house, with caring, interested and wealthy parents and extended family, being given a savings account with £50k in it by the time they were teens (this is going back 30 years so a fortune then), being given driving lessons and their first car. Being given a huge deposit for a house and having that house furnished with good quality basics like a fridge freezer, washing machine, tumble dryer, comfy beds and bedding, storage, new boiler, TV etc.. Not being charged rent while living at home. Being able to study in a warm, quiet, peaceful home with good quality meals made for them and not having to work in a supermarket to support themselves. Living in a lovely area meant they went to great schools so had great friends and teachers with no bullying and anti-social behaviour to contend with. No nightmare neighbours etc..

They don't see the advantage though because to them, it's normal and they can't see an alternative and if they're made aware of the fact that some people don't have that fortunate start in life, they think it's limited perhaps to a few very unlucky individuals, not vast swathes of the population.

I grew up without much money in difficult circumstances but am comfortably off now so I've seen both sides. what irks me is the fact that some people seem oblivious to how others live in such desperate circumstances. Surely they read the papers and volunteer or give to charity?

Oh, and to the person up thread who said they didn't think they'd ever met anyone who hadn't been to university, I hardly know anyone who HAS been to university. One friend has a degree and one family member did an OU degree in his late twenties.

Well I mean adults. I’ve obviously probably met people in passing but everyone I’ve got to know well enough to ask the question “what did you study at uni?” has had an answer for it. No one has said “I didn’t go”.

I will add a counter point to this, I work very senior in the technical side of IT with head offices in silicon valley, it is very rare within my circle of peers for anyone to have gone to university. After a few years in the industry degress do not stand out and its based on your previous experience/work produced etc.

everyone I’ve got to know well enough to ask the question “what did you study at uni?” has had an answer for it. No one has said “I didn’t go”

I'm with mummyoflittledragon here - I have a few friends who I made while I was working at the university they were studying in, but mostly people I speak to went straight into work at 16 or 18. Whether this was by choice, necessity of needing an income or not wanting to get into student debt I'm not sure.

One of the Christmas threads at the moment is along the lines of ‘what’s on your Christmas list’

Most posters saying they want quite normal things, others listing expensive stuff, but one poster said something along the lines of ‘I don’t like it when people buy stuff I don’t want, 10 people spending £50 each means £500 wasted’

I was that not only did they have 10 people buying gifts for them, but they spent £50 each on gifts!

I feel lucky if DH gets me a present, and the few family I have buy for the kids in the family not the adults because we just can’t afford to be doing that.

Mine is when someone is considering divorce and has just said that they have been a stay at home mum for 8 years or only work part time, 'you need to get a solicitor'. CANT AFFORD ONE!!!!!

‘Personally I think it’s ok to take kids into premium economy on a flight, not first class though ’.

what?! Not only does MN seem to have more rich people than a polo club but they also have their very own rule book to deal with issues that would never occur in the average persons lifetime.

Yeah, the 'should I take my kids in Premium Economy' thread. One poster in particular can't grasp that poor people need to sleep too. She keeps banging on about how business class exists so that the rich and important business people have a chance to get their much needed sleep so they can be alert and rich and important and businessy.

She claims to be pregnant. I actually hope it's true. Imagine thinking that business class with a baby is a hardship and then having one yourself...

it’s like listening in on a Waitrose conversation.

I find ‘leave the bastard’, said without more, difficult to read. Obviously not when it is said about butter in the marmite or similar when it is funny. Reality for most women, shockingly, still, is if they are finanacially and domestically (children housing etc) entangled with a man who they want to leave or should leave they simply can’t. Ftaod I am not talking about when it said ironically nor when it is accompanied by thoughtful support. My job puts me in regular contact with domestic violence/cruelty/inequality/abuse etc so maybe I’m just too sensitised to it to let it go unnoticed?

I completely agree and get very disheartened by the comments that suggest Im choosing to be poor and if I just “worked my socks off” I would magically earn double the salary.

I walk round the supermarket with a calculator to make sure I have enough for the shop. I put treats at the end of the conveyor belt so they can be taken off if for any reason the till says more than the £45 per week I have to sound. I went to the shop the other day with envelopes of £1 in change so I could put £6 on the electric. It’s humiliating and made all the worse by assumptions that I’m just not trying hard enough.

As an amused by stander, ie my 'children' are in their 40s, to baby management, I read many posts and get the distinct impression that there is a lot of 'performance posting', to paraphrase MN, people posting to strangers to impress them with their alleged lifestyle. Every time I watch Motherhood on TV I think of MNers!

I agree LTB is not easy and when you do and have to claim help you get called all sorts