I'm genuinely sorry if I have offended you. I did NOT mean to belittle your experience as a single mum which sounds very similar to my own past experience in fact.
By "lucky break" I meant that for some people who work hard, they are fortunate enough to have all their effort come to fruition .... call it "luck", hard work, right place, right time or whatever. However, there are plenty of other hard working people who slog their guts out, miss out on their kids (yes, I did it too ... though I stress I am not whingeing about MY current situation) and so on who are unlucky enough for it never to all come together, however hard they try (you just have to read many of the stories on here). What I am trying to say is that for many people it isn't simply a question of working hard - do you get it ? .... they will never find "success". That you have is great, but it does mean, as with any success that you were fortunate enough to have all the various elements which contributed to that success come together at some point. Face facts, not everyone gets what they deserve from their hard work - life remains sh*t for many .... and therefore, in comparism to others who have worked equally as hard as you, in equally trying circumstances, you are, to an extent "lucky" because something, somewhere along the line has gone right for you.
I apologise again if my unfortunate choice of phrase made you seethe - it wasn't meant to ..... and say, for the final time ('cos I really can't be bothered to spend time on people who swear at me) that ALL I was trying to say was that I think there was no need (in this post, or in similar) for you to quote figures which could make other people less fortunate feel rotten. I would never ever walk into a mixed group of people (whose backgrounds I couldn't even begin to imagine) at a social gathering, say, and announce I was thinking of spending £xxx. I feel the same about MNet.