To ask you to tell me the bad things about living in America?

[Witchofzog]

Ever since I was a child I thought I would live in America. Any visits I have made there reinforced how much I love it there (I am aware a holiday is not real life) but for various reasons it never happenned. I am now early forties with a mild heart condition and I am aware it is probably too late for me now.

I went to uni with a lovely woman who has literally got the life I wanted. She now lives in a sunny state with her husband who is handsome AND kind and has made lots of friends out there. And I am both happy for her and envious as hell. I know comparison is the thief of joy but today I have been unhealthily fixated on how her life compares to mine and I find mine sadly lacking. I will pick myself up tomorrow, re-evaluate and am already thinking of what I can do to make my own life better but still I feel sad that I never achieved my dream.

Please be kind. My uni friend is beautiful inside and out and she deserves everything she has - and she worked hard for it. But I really need to snap out of this somehow hence asking for the bad things about living stateside. I am aware my spectacles may be rose tinted so some perspective would be really helpful

@queenofarles

I’m not sure it’s really that impossible to live well on an average salary. It’s just that we want and expect the best of everything.

My parents paid their bills, didn’t have credit cards and rarely went out to dinner. My mother had a friend color her hair and painted her own nails. They had one telephone, one television and one car. They took driving vacations, stayed in motels with swimming pools or went camping at the lake. We wore hand-me-down clothes and didn’t have a ton of gadgets or toys. Mom stayed home and raised us until they divorced.

Many people now in US get nails done every week or two, out to eat for lunch, dinners out weekly, new cars every few years, live on credit in houses 3 times the size of the one my parents had. Kids have $800-$1200 cellphones. 3-4 TVs with $200 cable package, multiple computers. Kids play travel sports. New clothes for everyone constantly. 2000 thread count sheets. $180 Nike’s for the kids (I know a kid that had more than 8 pairs at a time, and his parents aren’t wealthy!) It’s never ending.

I think what’s changed is that we all, regardless of income, expect to live in a way that not even the super wealthy expected 40 years ago.

But it’s truly a beautiful country, I hated the big cities, even NY, far to loud and gritty, but places like Connecticut with its charming towns are so picturesque.

This put me in mind of a quote from E. B. White in his 1948 Essay, Here is New York

There are roughly three New Yorks. There is, first, the New York of the man or woman who was born there, who takes the city for granted and accepts its size, its turbulence as natural and inevitable. Second, there is the New York of the commuter — the city that is devoured by locusts each day and spat out each night. Third, there is New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something ….Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness, natives give it solidity and continuity, but the settlers give it passion.

**

It can be loud and gritty, but the urban energy is the yin to Connecticut's yang.

@MissConductUS that is a lovely quote.

As you may know EB White was the White of Strunk and White which for many of us was the bible of style in writing.

I've read all of Roger Angell's memoirs (He was White's stepson) and they are fascinating and wonderful.

The idea of E.B. White or Roger Angell or Marilynne Robinson being denigrated becaye "the bread in the cheap aisles is too sweet and lemonade doesn't mean what it means where I come from ... "

The idea of E.B. White or Roger Angell or Marilynne Robinson being denigrated becaye "the bread in the cheap aisles is too sweet and lemonade doesn't mean what it means where I come from ... "

And Whitman, Salinger, Faulkner, etc. Or Gershwin, Copland and Samuel Barber. But here on MN we're all a bunch of thick, ignorant rednecks.

I was aware of White's role in authoring The Elements of Style. And who doesn't treasure Charlotte's Web?

He was also one of those loud, gritty New Yorkers too.

@HannaYeah - well said, and you are quite right about the way people expect to be able to live now.

Goodness, what is everyone else doing that is getting them more than 20 days annual leave here in the States?! In the three workplaces I’ve been at, I’ve had 14, 12 and 15 days annual leave. It’s one thing that really gets me down about being here. People really do live to work here though, many colleagues struggle to take the meagre amount of time off that we DO get!

“Walk the Bowery under the El at night and all you feel is a sort of cold guilt. Touched for a dime, you try to drop the coin and not touch the hand, because the hand is dirty; you try to avoid the glance, because the glance accuses. This is not so much personal menace as universal — the cold menace of unresolved human suffering and poverty and the advanced stages of the disease alcoholism....”

“...but the Bowery does not think of itself as lost; it meets its peculiar problem in its own way—plenty of gin mills, plenty of flophouses, plenty of indifference, and always, at the end of the line, Bellevue.”
― E.B. White, Here is New York

E. B. White was very un-gritty and not at all loud. He was a remarkably quiet, publicity-shy individual who used to escape the offices of The New Yorker down the fire escape when members of the public came by asking to see him.

E. B. White was very un-gritty and not at all loud.

I know. The whole point of my post was that not all New Yorkers or Americans are loud, pushy gits. Hence the list of notable literary and musical figures.

@HannaYeah I absolutely agree with you, somethings are getting more accessible, TVs and electronics are much cheaper now, traveling abroad is sometimes cheaper than staycations, clothes are so cheap . We are spending so little on so much stuff But in the end it’s costing us a fortune. but we don’t see it as excessive, somehow we believe we are being frugal!

But That’s not what I meant.
If We are to move to the US and expect to live in a similar lifestyle to our UK one, we’d need to make 3x what we are making now!

  <strong>MissConductUS</strong>   Coming from London , maybe I’ve  set the bar too high <img loading="lazy" class="inline-flex mumsnet-emoji" alt="Wink" src="https://www.mumsnet.com/build/assets/wink-ClU7UaDM.png">, 

NYC is my least favourite place I’ve ever been to, and I’ve traveled a lot, it’s like I’m on the edge all the time. But you are right going out of the city and it’s another world, I do want to visit more places in New England, Vermont and Nantucket are on my list!

I’m not sure it’s an easy comparison because the cost of things isn’t a simple translation from GBP to US.

Housing is a good example. Salaries are definitely not 1:1 after translation.

Cost of living is so varied in US depending upon location, too. I wouldn’t try to live in NYC on twice what I make, but it’s a very good quality of life where I do live.

@queenofarles

Have you been to Chicago? I have a theory that there are Chicago people and NYC people. If you love one, you probably won’t love the other.

Chicago is very clean and just so different from NYC in many ways. It’s missing the things that probably cause you anxiety in NY.

One big difference (I’m told) is that people tend to move to Chicago when young then move to the suburbs when they have families. While many never leave NYC, lots of people stay and get old there.

The older NYers I’ve known are just phenomenal, too. Intellectual, worldly and adventurous. They seem to stay young longer, probably because of walking everywhere and having easy access to so much culture.

Work culture, always doing something, no rest days mentality, is big in America. As far as time off goes for work you usually have Paid Time off (PTO). At my job we accrue something like 6 hours of time off each pay period (every two weeks) so a little more than 1.5 days off a month. The accrued time off does add up and carry over year to year until you reach a certain (very high) amount.

However, this time off is to be used for any and every reason you may need time off for work. Sick days for yourself or member of household (kid is sick and you need the day off to care for them), vacation days, you just want a day off to relax. At my job any federal holiday that falls during the work week (Thanksgiving day, Christmas day, New Years day, MLK day, Labor day, Memorial day, 4th of July) has a PTO day automatically applied to it.

Since you accrue PTO each pay period you start out with zero days when you start your job. If you need to take time off before you have any days saved up or not enough days to cover it then you take that time unpaid.

I try to take a week's vacation every year but the rest of the year I'm pretty strict with my PTO days. I have one or two co-workers who rarely take PTO outside of one of the federal holidays. You just never know when you're going to need time off.

There is FMLA which is up to 12 weeks of time off in one calendar year but it is unpaid. A few co-workers who were pregnant used a mix of FMLA and saved up PTO for maternity leave. Using PTO was the only way for them to be paid during maternity leave. I think they were back to work maybe 4-6 weeks post birth. I don't know how they did it but I'm sure they didn't have a choice.