To think it can cost a fortune to keep up appearances?

[ethelfleda]

Talking to my friend this evening...
Her and her partner are wonderful, very down to earth and not at all materialistic.
However, his family are (in his own words) trying so hard to show everyone they have a bit of money that they’ve nearly spent all their money doing so!
Seems like a bit of a paradox to me. AIBU to think that in some instances, those that go for outward displays of wealth actually aren’t that wealthy?

I know quite a few people who view cars as status symbols, for example. The nicer that car, the wealthier they must be. But surely, if you have a fairly regular income and decent enough credit score, a new car is within your grasp - you just need to finance it? Your name brand clothes can be put on credit cards and you can mortgage up to your eyeballs to get a 4 bed detached house (in the area we live, it’s possible to get a very nice 3 bed semi with a large garden for £200k so am not talking about people living further south here that have little choice but to get the highest mortgage they can)

What do you think?

Does anyone actually buy the fancy cars? I thought most were leased and then changed every three or four years.

Also it's not impossible to get a balance. I myself have a nice car, house designer handbags but also have a good pension and a six figure saved. Far from the really wealthy people in society but I'm far from broke but what does that make me? Am I a faker too?

No, of course not. Buying something you want because you want it, and not to impress others is not what I am referring to.

I’m definitely not sneering at people who do this, or looking down upon them. More thinking, wtf is wrong with our culture that some people feel so insecure about themselves that they would get in to debt and/or risk their home in order to impress others?

I’m hating the game here, not the players!

Yes we earned our money ourselves, rather than have it because our ancestors ripped some peasants off

I love this statement, btw!

I live in a part of London where most people would be easily in the top 1% of earners. I guess Range Rovers are very common, but I think must people just lease them because why buy an expensive car that will depreciate massively as soon as you take it out the showroom? Everyone knows the whole “Chelsea tractor” image makes you a bit of a joke tbh, but some mums don’t care because they are quite good if you have multiple kids and a dog; or if you end up giving regular lifts to DC friends etc due to the extra seats I the back. Also, in traffic I quite like feeling a bit higher up, rather than directly behind someone’s exhaust. I think DH might have just leased one actually because he was saying something this morning about we need to get one that’s electric ASAP because of an emissions tax. Anyway, in general, I find that people with money make less effort with their appearance in a way. Obviously designer labels are too much and actually make you look naff, if anything. People keep things low key.

The flash car thing has always been a nouveau status symbol. My Dad comes from old money. Not much of it came his way, admittedly, but he was brought up in that world. His father drove him to boarding school in an old Triumph, while many of the other kids arrived in cars with American-style fins (like in the film Greece). He was a bit envious of their fashion-conscious parents and a bit embarrassed of his shambling old Dad, but the reality is that it had nothing to do with having money and everything to do with willingness to spend it in a flashy way.

I agree there's nothing wrong with enjoying spending your money on things which you love and give you genuine pleasure.

What we're talking about is those who stretch themselves and get into debt to present a certain image to others.

I agree with PP who said the harder people try to look flashy, the poorer they generally are. The flash cars are usually on finance, the branded clothing is probably buy now pay later or whacked on a credit card and they’re most likely broke each month repaying it all.

I buy most things second hand and our car is eight years old. We’re comfortable but don’t feel the need to splash the cash on crap.

I think DH might have just leased one actually because he was saying something this morning about we need to get one that’s electric ASAP

Hilarious...best stealth boast of the thread. Not the fact you're getting one but the casual way you dropped in that you think he might have picked one up like you're talking about a sandwich

@AnnieMated1
Good point but most of the stuff on MN is based on no one else’s business. At least on here we can have a good old wizz wazz in the company of other closet curtain twitchers . A very healthy outlet .

Just to take it a step further some of the richest people I’ve ever met have actually been the scruffiest dressed with filthy ancient workhorses of vehicles . It’s almost as if the higher they go the less appearances seem to matter . I’m talking about country folk largely . The great tradition of the British eccentric I suppose .

A good few years back, on graduating from university, about half my friends rushed to upgrade their old banger student cars with loans and get something more contemporary. Some of those hung on to those new cars for a good few years past when the loans were paid off and they'd saved up ready for the next one. Some rushed to keep up with a string of new cars on finance. The crash hit many of those friends quite heavily and those who weathered tough times the best were those with their cars paid for. One was on the brink of bankruptcy due to a few poor decisions including having to make repayments on the car which he had to prioritise to keep the car to be able to do his job.

In 15+ years of driving, I'm now on car #3. It's still quite shiny and respectable and I'm enjoying the upgrade after a decade with its predecessor. I'm much happier to get something nice, functional and nearly new and know it's mine than to forever be paying for a status symbol that I'll never own.

Status symbols are fine if that's what you like and you can afford it, but they're really not worth getting into expensive finance over, and it can really screw people's lives up if it slips out of control. (Remembers the ex-neighbours who went from X5 to S reg Rover, and the uniforms from prep school to local estate... my sympathies were with the chap banging down their door at 5am wanting his lost savings from his house extension after yet another one of their home improvements companies folded. They ended up bankrupt and divorced in the end. Prudence in their better years could have saved a lot of people a lot of upset).

I know formerbabe, because an electric Range Rover is just about the most modest, least flashy vehicle that money can buy.

With no hint of exaggeration, at around £100k, you could buy a house for that amount of money round here, and in many other parts of the country.

@BarbaraofSeville and such an insignificant purchase that it's barely worth mentioning to your wife

The thing that irritates me the most is when people do sad faces saying they'll never afford a house yet have fancy cars parked on the drive

Hilarious...best stealth boast of the thread. Not the fact you're getting one but the casual way you dropped in that you think he might have picked one up like you're talking about a sandwich grin
Bonus points for virtue signaling that it's electric.

I have lots of different attitudes to money all bundled up in me.

A before children and after children attitude
A before being green and after being green attitude

I was a teenager during the high interest rate period and I remember how terrifying it was. I thought we were going to lose our home.

I love gadgets (and legitimately use them for work) but buy second hand for frugal and green reasons.

We're in debt (mostly the mortgage) but could, if we had to, clear our debt with the tiny amount of savings we have. (Not including the mortgage)

We're insured up to the hilt and save as much as we can into our pensions but if we used our savings to clear out debt we'd then would have no safety net and a redundancy situation would be scary (though both DH and I can freelance in our fields)

We're not wealthy but we are happy and healthy.

Keeping up appearances last mattered to me in high school and that was only due to peer pressure. I hope my children don't get pulled in by that.

We save for our children and have started pensions for both of them.

We hope that if Uni is something the DC want to do, they'll stay local so can benefit from free tuition and not have rent to pay.

I hate money. I have that many people have too much and many more have too little.

I'm very happy with my lot and count my blessings every day.

I don’t think the intent of this thread is to be competitively frugal. It’s more about questioning why people get sucked into a lifestyle they genuinely can’t afford. I couldn’t relax and enjoy the gadgets and cars if I knew that it was all financed by debt and that it wouldn’t take much for the whole lot to come crashing down.
For me the stress of servicing the debt to keep up appearances isn’t worth it.

Apologies, I can see how that came across. Tbh, I have nothing to do with cars and he knows I’m not bothered about this or that car, but there is going to be an emission zone (next year I think)? so many people will have to switch cars to electric ones, if they haven’t already. Otherwise I’ve heard it will cost £20 to take your car off the drive? I could be wrong, but definitely charges are coming if you don’t switch and that can only be a good thing.

Yes and usually has a very smooth way of finding out whether you are worth bothering with or not. They are not fooled by cars!

yes this.

Hmm, I suspect that the “Scruffy old money is so much more classy,” brigade like to console themselves that us nouveau types have it all on finance.

In reality plenty of our neighbours in our big new builds with white Range Rovers on the drive are solid business people or well paid professionals. Sorry to disappoint the envious but it’s not on finance.

Yes and usually has a very smooth way of finding out whether you are worth bothering with or not. They are not fooled by cars!

What does this even mean? That scruffy old money will judge you for having a new car because really, all that matters is which school you went to and how RP your accent is?

Utter snobbery.

Grease - the film.

Sometimes you get the impression that anything by Michael Kors is infra dig. Wonder how that happened?

I think I would like an unpleasant car number plate. Wonder how much it would cost to get one saying clunge? That's what I want for Christmas.

but definitely charges are coming if you don’t switch and that can only be a good thing

Off topic, but that's horribly discriminatory against people who can't or don't want to spend a lot of money on cars, especially in areas where public transport provision is not good.

They were talking about introducing charges in our city, which would mean a charge to go into most of the area bound by the outer ring road, which is about 5 miles out around the city, which would effectively have banned older but still perfectly serviceable diesel cars and vans from the area.

The kind that are often driven by lower income people out of necessity, who cannot afford new cars, whether outright or on finance.

And in our city, it's often not the case of 'just get the bus' as it would turn a 30-40 minute journey into at least 90 minutes if you wanted to get from one side of the city to the other, and that's if the times work for you and buses come on time, which is the exception in my experience. There are no trams or similar and rail provision is even worse or non existent.

Plus we are a very hilly city, which makes cycling difficult, and is already inconvenient if you need to do multi point journeys or carry goods.