Is MN middle class? Feeling inadequate and that my life is boring.

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Is MN mainly full of middle to upper class posters?

Having read through some of the threads, especially tonight's holiday thread where everyone appears to be having multiple holidays this year, I'm feeling very low and inadequate, and that there's something wrong in my life

Oh well, comparison is the thief of joy and all that.

@ComtesseDeSpair *low interest rates

I've been thinking this. Always thought of myself as middle class and reasonably well off...but then you read some of the threads on here and it feels like the enclave of wealthy London, DC privately educated and six figure earners! Was reading a thread on the HE topic (no idea why, my DC are barely primary aged) dissing 'low ranking' Universities like Glasgow and Edinburgh. One of which i graduated from. The mentality of some on here is seriously privileged.

Don't see why anyone would bother lying either!

Don't see why anyone would bother lying either!

I dunno either - but it’s amazing when you see it “live”, so to speak. Am suddenly recalling the poster who years ago posted a Rightmove link for “their” (big, expensive) house asking for advice on making the house even better for more viewings and offers - only for somebody else to pop up to point out “err, that can’t be your house because that’s very much my cousin’s house and your posting history shows you clearly aren’t them.”

Funnily enough, the OP never came back and the thread was pulled by MN “for privacy reasons.”

@user5656555 I would generally be able to pay £1500 from our savings. I guess thats why its not as appealing to me! i don't think its that unusual though. my MIL had a tooth extracted and she is on a low income but she is paying £4k for an implant using cash from savings. It was a sudden event that she didn't foresee...

[quote onlychildhamster]@ComtesseDeSpair but 15k would be something even a young professional would easily have in their savings...Let alone £1k. Its not something you have to save towards. I would agree with stuff like loft conversions- taking out finance against the value of your house is a good idea as loft conversion would increase value.[/quote]
You must know this isn't true? You must have some idea of how expensive houses can be and how much of even professional salaries mortgage repayments eat up, leaving little available for savings. Even more so if you are young and haven't been on that salary for long, and may have not had a gifted deposit from your parents, so had to save for that too? You cannot be so sheltered from reality (even MC reality) that you think a £15k kitchen is not something to save up for.

@onlychildhamster do you think interest free credit and credit in general would be so widely popular if it was "unusual" to not have 4 figures in the bank to hand? You're incredibly sheltered if you think that's the case and validating what the OP is raising!

For context, 10% of people in the UK have no savings at all, nothing. (And that doubles to 20% of people in their twenties.) Another third of the population have less than £600. So if you have over £1,500 in your savings, you’re immediately doing much better than half the population (and even more so if you can afford to raid those savings for an extravagance like upgrading furniture.) Over 70% of people overall don’t have enough in savings to pay the bills for three months if they lost their income. Having £15,000 “easily” saved for a new kitchen and being able to talk about it as a fairly trifling amount that you wouldn’t need to save for, is not the reality for the vast majority of the UK.

@5128gap I own my flat in London with my DH. I am also 29 years old and we bought 2 years ago. We saved for our deposit and no we don't have high salaries. I guess I have been lucky in the sense that I didn't have any crazy bills after buying my flat so i could save steadily for a year to build up our savings before now concentrating on overpaying my mortgage and looking into investing. I overpay an extra £1000 every month into mortgage. But thats I guess if I really needed to replace the boiler or something, I could stop overpayments for 2 months to replenish the gap in savings.

I do understand the need for interest free credit for people who are financially struggling, i dont think they should go without furniture. But MC people need a financial buffer anyway, they have higher outgoings due to mortgage and bills and benefits will not cover their expenses in the slightest! My Dh and I have a savings buffer for 1 year of expenses if we both lost our jobs.

Also, it depends how you define, 'middle-class', I know people who have windfalls from moving down from London to where we are in Sussex but they are 8+ years old and are basically just living that lifestyle because they are older - it is a simple as that but that is about assets not class!

Older not old

@5128gap so yes for MC people with good salaries, I would expect them to have higher savings which should cover spontaneous furniture purchases

Kitchens are a different thing, i guess, depends on how big it is, and if you bought a doer upper, it would really increase the value if you spent more on doing it up. Might be a different story if you have a big house and therefore would spend many thousands. my flat is a small 2 bed flat, so I don't have that problem.

This thread is about how the low income can't afford savings or to buy expensive sofas and furniture. I fully get that. But then you were saying even people on good incomes benefit from furniture finance. My argument is that people on good incomes would and should probably have more savings as they are far more exposed if there are any problems. They also have the means to build up savings unlike the low income.

Don't see why anyone would bother lying either!

Because it's what liars do

Back in the early days of the internet fully anonymous posting was a huge part of it, something that isn't actually so common anymore. People could be whoever they wanted to be. Women could present themselves as men and not find themselves automatically dismissed on account of being a woman, disabled people could present an able bodied life for themselves, quiet people could be outgoing and no one would ever know. Not all lying on the internet is even a negative thing. Leads of the posts on Mumsnet are a creative endeavour. Most of the classics are such obvious troll fodder. They're still funny/moving/whatever as hell and they enrich the forum/internet experience, which if you removed all the fantasy would be comparatively boring

@ComtesseDeSpair Yes but the vast majority of people in the UK are poor/getting by. Yes its not surprising that poorer people would find it difficult to afford basics, let alone thousand pound furniture. Or have no savings for a rainy day. But my comment wasn't about them at all. You were talking earlier about how people in your income bracket benefit from furniture finance. My reply was that if someone on an average london income like me and DH have savings for furniture upgrades, then why not someone on a good income?

@onlychildhamster you're not a high earner but you own a flat in London, have at least a year's worth of savings in the bank and over pay your mortgage £1000 a month. I know you're young and clearly quite sheltered from reality but do you have any idea how stupid you sound? How out of touch? Read the OP again.

@user5656555 MC Londoners have way more than that! They own a £1.4 million house, 2 kids in full time childcare (cost of £3000 per month), but still can afford multiple holidays and lots of days out and activities for the children!

@onlychildhamster oh indeed that well known London middle class. So that makes you what, London working class? Assuming sociology isn't in your list of qualifications...

[quote Kanaloa]@VelvetChairGirl

EVERYONE wants to drool over RDJ!! Please start that thread because I would much rather hear people’s top 10 Tony Stark outfits than hear about people going to Cancun or wherever.[/quote]
I do have a tonne of nice pictures on my HDD

@user5656555 DH and I are slightly below average london income. DH actually grew up in London and qualified for free school meals. He is the grandson of a london black cab cabbie so yes technically working class. His mum's side is richer, but my MIL is a bit of a hippie who eschews materialism and had 4 children and earns below london living wage. She does have a house in London bought in 1997 and we stayed in it for 3 years while saving to buy our flat. in the 1990s, a lot of immigrants like my MIL didn't leave London despite it being desirable to move to the Home Counties. We saved 70k living at home for 3 years and that was our deposit. I really don't think living in a tiny room and with no functioning cupboard for 3 years due to lack of room (we used an ikea box) and with my MIL and her 3 daughters makes you esp privileged. Lucky maybe but I don't exactly think that is the MC experience. I am from overseas so from a better off family but my parents have never given me any financial support or helped me with deposit after university ended. We were even more overcrowded than the HMO down the street.

I guess we have savings cos we didn't move out of home before we were established even if it meant having to live out a suitcase, sharing a bathroom with 5 other people (once i got staph from one of my SIL and had to undergo an operation) plus my MIL's house is extremely run down. this meant we could begin our life in our flat with a bit of a buffer and ability to build a buffer before starting to overpay the mortgage. I was once astonished to learn that my friend in yorkshire had the same expenses and running costs as I did despite earning half of what we earned and in a place with far lower property costs; and this was when we had moved out, was paying the mortgage and bills etc. She didn't have a child then just like us. This was on account of debts built up during the pandemic, car finance, furniture finance. She was quite frugal in other ways, far more than me! I am lucky however to have a supportive MIL; just before I bought my flat, she said that if we had financial problems, we should just rent out the flat and move back to live with her. While we were living there, she was even planning for her daughter and her son in law to move back with us too (they were apparently going to live in the reception?). I think they were not too enthusiastic about that and prefer to rent. We are lucky but I wouldn't say my DH is privileged!

On the thread about Restaurants today, there was a lot of people going out to Harvester or Beefeater and Pizza Express as a 'treat'.
What does that tell you?

[quote onlychildhamster]@user5656555 DH and I are slightly below average london income. DH actually grew up in London and qualified for free school meals. He is the grandson of a london black cab cabbie so yes technically working class. His mum's side is richer, but my MIL is a bit of a hippie who eschews materialism and had 4 children and earns below london living wage. She does have a house in London bought in 1997 and we stayed in it for 3 years while saving to buy our flat. in the 1990s, a lot of immigrants like my MIL didn't leave London despite it being desirable to move to the Home Counties. We saved 70k living at home for 3 years and that was our deposit. I really don't think living in a tiny room and with no functioning cupboard for 3 years due to lack of room (we used an ikea box) and with my MIL and her 3 daughters makes you esp privileged. Lucky maybe but I don't exactly think that is the MC experience. I am from overseas so from a better off family but my parents have never given me any financial support or helped me with deposit after university ended. We were even more overcrowded than the HMO down the street.

I guess we have savings cos we didn't move out of home before we were established even if it meant having to live out a suitcase, sharing a bathroom with 5 other people (once i got staph from one of my SIL and had to undergo an operation) plus my MIL's house is extremely run down. this meant we could begin our life in our flat with a bit of a buffer and ability to build a buffer before starting to overpay the mortgage. I was once astonished to learn that my friend in yorkshire had the same expenses and running costs as I did despite earning half of what we earned and in a place with far lower property costs; and this was when we had moved out, was paying the mortgage and bills etc. She didn't have a child then just like us. This was on account of debts built up during the pandemic, car finance, furniture finance. She was quite frugal in other ways, far more than me! I am lucky however to have a supportive MIL; just before I bought my flat, she said that if we had financial problems, we should just rent out the flat and move back to live with her. While we were living there, she was even planning for her daughter and her son in law to move back with us too (they were apparently going to live in the reception?). I think they were not too enthusiastic about that and prefer to rent. We are lucky but I wouldn't say my DH is privileged![/quote]
You have a strange way of looking at things. If you had 3 years rent free living in London courtesy of your MIL, that's a great deal of help. The woman enabled you to save £70k.
Its a bit rich to present it as a huge sacrifice you made because the conditions weren't great. What about the sacrifice made by your MIL and 3 SIL who had to share their home with an extra two people, to no benefit to themselves?
Its also a bit much to live, and leave them living, in a property in a state of dilapidation while you were sitting on a pile of savings and paying no rent.
So yes, you did OK for yourselves, but it was on the back of other people, which is an option a lot of people can't, or wouldn't, take and therefore they may be significantly less well off than you.

@onlychildhamster I think I love your MIL!

@5128gap I think in today's world it is a sacrifice. Most people from the 20-30 age range will not want to squash into their parents dilapidated home to start their married life. At least in a house share you can close your bedroom door and only socialise as much as you want, but when living with family you have to make more of an effort. Imagine having sex and your MIL and SIL are on the other side of the walls shudder.

@5128gap we offered money many times to help my MIL repair her home, she doesn't really want it. she thinks its fine. I mean, i used to get upset about it but what can you do when she refuses the money?I do acknowledge its a lot of help, but it doesn't mean that you aren't poor just because you have a parent with a room in London. There are so many Londoners from WC backgrounds who have the same.

We have helped out my DH's family, my DH bought one of my SIL her laptop and phone, we have paid her council tax while she was studying in manchester, at the start of the pandemic, my DH offered part of his savings to his mum; she rejected it and said she had the furlough scheme. One of my long term financial goals is to save up care fees for her; my MIL has no pension but she would always have our help. She wouldn't be too expensive to feed cos at least she owns her own home and qualifies for state pension, thank goodness, so we will top that up. , i don't know if my MIL thinks this way but traditionally, this has always been why people helped out their children. better to help out the kids when you are 50 and still can work; so they will be in a better situation to help you when you are 80.

I do have a SIL who chose to move to Israel and rent privately and is renting in a fairly dodgy area. I have another SIL who chose to do an unpaid internship in Israel even though she was on UC (we aren't in the house anymore) so there is plenty of space for her, and there are plenty of internships in London. I mean, of course its their choice, but it would be much harder for them to buy their own place or save. I don't think home ownership is the be all and end all, but what it does is fix your housing costs for at least 5 years and protect it from inflation and allow you to erode the debt with any savings. A lot of young people don't value home ownership in the same way, there was a really interesting article in INEWS about it!

Single mum working a part time minimum wage job whilst attending college here. I get why you feel this way tbh!

Never even been on holiday abroad. My holidays are in the UK and rarely every year!

The quoted poster who said they saved £1400 a month, well, that's a pre-tax earning of what? £18k pa? So you are looking at a couple that can relinquish £18k of their combined gross salary a year into savings.

There are a number of viable ways to do this, in my view. 1) They live off one salary and save the second. 2) They live very cheaply, ie. no mortgage and both earn reasonable salaries. 3) One of them earns a shit load over £100k, and they live cheaply according to their income level.

I think you are overestimating how hard it is to do this for people who don’t have children. We save more than that (more like £1600), I earn £46k and DP £14k. We live in the SE so our mortgage is over £1k a month. But not having kids makes it pretty easy to save.