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

[sleaf]

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.

Yes

This is the internet so there will obviously be people from all walks of life. Just as if you drive or walk about, you will see a range of people of vastly different incomes, ages and ethnicities. This is Britain. The question to ask is - why WOULDN’T there be loads of high income people on MN? It’s a free chat site available to everyone. Of course you will read about lifestyles different to your own. I can’t relate to quite a lot of it on here to be honest and I often find it very depressing (if not shocking) - but they doesn’t lead me to conclude that people are making posts up!

Don't see why anyone would bother lying either!

Depends whether or not you want free feedback for your latest creative writing exercise, or care about impressing a bunch of fonts.

But what is the point of lying under an anonymous username? Nobody knows who you are so it’s irrelevant!

I have been accused of ‘trolling’ quite a few times - simply because I live in central London, am a SAHM, 4 kids in independent schools etc. But there are millions of people like us and they are just as likely to be in MN as someone on benefits. It’s the internet! Should you have to pretend you live a different life just to be able to post?

@Saltisford

I like to refer to myself as ‘upper working class’

Me too @Saltisford

Skint but luffs me a good book for learnin fings.

But what is the point of lying under an anonymous username? Nobody knows who you are so it’s irrelevant!

But people do lie though, I don't get it either but people do make weird shit up.

simply because I live in central London, am a SAHM, 4 kids in independent schools etc. But there are millions of people like us and they are just as likely to be in MN

There aren't actually millions of 4 child families in the UK.

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

I think it's a privilege, I also lived at home but not with my partner as my mum didn't want that. I was only charged a minimum rate to live at home.

rent not rate

I've noticed that quite a few on here mention their salaries of £50k, or their skiing holidays, posh houses, etc. I haven't been on holiday anywhere for 4 years.

My husband works hard, in a factory, for £26k. I'm not earning as I'm still recovering from a stroke last July. We've got a car each (mine's a battered 59 reg, his is a 25 year old Merc that he bought at auction and did up). We're using our overdraft to pay for things......but you know what, I feel lucky. Our house is paid for (we're in our 60s and the mortgage is paid off), we've been happily married for 41 years, our 2 sons are in work, and are happy and healthy. Other stuff just doesn't matter now to me.

@dafey lucky to have supportive family for sure! A leg up for sure! But I wouldn't say its entrenched economic privilege. There are far bigger privileges which make a bigger difference in the greater scheme of things. I mean my SIL could both have lived at home, but they both chose not to. my MIL would have wanted them far more than she wanted us :)

I once asked MIL why they didn't value having a london based mother which would allow them to earn london salaries while paying little, giving them options.She smiled and said when you are born with it, you don't value it. to be fair, i may have a dystopian view of what would happen if you rent in your old age; maybe we would have rent controls in London by then and I would have be the silly one who sunk all her savings into her flat when I could have moved into a rent controlled apartment and invested my savings in something sensible. Tbh i wouldn't be totally against rent controls, but I wouldn't want rent controls right after I upgraded my flat and paid the high price only to get rent controls. I would prefer rent controls to be brought in within the next few years (when labour get into government hopefully); my flat price sinks but then hopefully the bigger flat would have sunk in price and I can upgrade at a lower cost...

Of course there are bigger privileges but it's still a privilege.

Earning enough to save 70k in 3 years is a privilege. And living with family is a privilege. But we're all privileged in some way.
I don't think I'll ever own a home. But I'm privileged in other ways so all is well!

lucky to have supportive family for sure! A leg up for sure! But I wouldn't say its entrenched economic privilege. There are far bigger privileges which make a bigger difference in the greater scheme of things. I mean my SIL could both have lived at home, but they both chose not to. my MIL would have wanted them far more than she wanted us

It’s definitely an entrenched economic privilege. If you grow up in a family who are on benefits and live in council housing you literally can’t go home and save after uni - you will immediately be seen as the ‘earner’ of the household and forced to pay full rent and council tax for the house your family live in for free.

Not saying that’s wrong as such, but if your parents are working and have their own property which you can live in, for free, to save up for your own home, you have a huge privilege that those born in very low income benefits families simply do not and will not have.

It means too often the poor stay poor. It’s incredibly hard to leave the family home and go straight to university, pay for accommodation, get a career and then have to pay rent, and somehow also save up enough for a house deposit. You don’t have the opportunity someone who is more privileged has to get a good chunk of savings behind you because as soon as you earn money you need to support yourself. You’re not able to live with parents and save all that money.

I would say it’s quite short sighted not to realise that that is a huge privilege when you’re trying to buy property.

*lived in for free I meant. So if your family lives in free housing on full benefits you’ll then need to pay rent for that home and council tax, and it could also lead to your parents losing some benefits as the household income would be seen to go up.

So obviously anyone who can live at home and work while amassing savings is at a huge advantage and is very privileged.

@Kanaloa my MIL was really lucky to own. She bought in 1997! Her house cost £100k. I remember she may have been on tax credits when I was living there...but I don't think household income affects some other form of benefits..the last SIL living with MIL is on UC and her mum's income is not factored into it at all even though her mum pays for all her expenses including food, clothes, holidays etc

Yes obviously it depends on which specific benefits you receive. I was referring to those on benefits who don’t pay for their housing, and was just saying that if your parents own and you can live with them and save money while working then you of course are privileged over someone who is trying to break the cycle of benefits and basically needs to pay out the minute they are earning.

I don’t think it’s a bad thing though, to be privileged. I hope I can allow my children to stay at home for as long as they want as I’d love them to have a big chunk of savings when they go out to make their own way. But I hope they’ll be aware that it makes them very privileged.

@Kanaloa it will be the norm in future. Like the equivalent of funding children above the age of 16 which wasn't always the norm.but now few parents would ask a 16 year old to get a job as they are expected to be in education until 18. And as for the impact on benefits/council housing, fewer people would live in council housing compared to now. Multi generational living is the norm in most countries; generally the richer the country is, the more likely it is to have smaller household units. In the UK, the trajectory is that the middle class is shrinking and so we will have quite an interesting time ahead. When I went to the museum of the home in hoxton, it used to be a kind of shared accomodation for poor pensioners where each person paid very low rent for a room. I think this sort of HMO set up for older people will probably return while young people will stay with family due to lack of availability of rental properties, possibly partly due to rent control but also because of lack of supply. I think for people of my age in London, it was something like 30% of 20 plus year old DC living with family, 25%-50% getting cash from parents for deposits etc. In future, it would be 90% of DC and no chance of buying property without cash from parents, even saving money from earned income may not be enough. In Shanghai, property is 41 times an average salary- buying property is a communal decision- grandparents, parents and adult child buy it together, child marries and thus wife is a contributing earner.
China also has extremely high home ownership, nearly 90% but no one is a lone owner! No doubt China is an inflated market but London house prices are actually only 11 times average income so we do have scope to grow even if we may stagnate in the medium term. Definitely for the rest of the country, I can see a lot of prospects for the house prices becoming at least 10 times average income. Which would then mean families have no choice but to band together or face destitution in old age in an elderly HMO

Okay, perhaps in this possible future where very few people live in council housing it will be the norm.

In the current present it is still a privileged position for your parents to own a home which allows you to live with them and save money while working. It gives you an advantage over the poor and those with parents on benefits who simply can not do that. To deny that by insisting it will be the norm in the future/it’s done in China just sounds a bit daft really. It might be YOUR norm, but relatively it does afford you a privilege.

It's the threads about how much people save for their kids that make me feel bad. We're doing £10 a month and regularly go into overdraft so can't really increase

Plenty of people don't have the space for dc to stay with them or are not in a good location.

@TheGoogleMum

It's the threads about how much people save for their kids that make me feel bad. We're doing £10 a month and regularly go into overdraft so can't really increase

Don't feel bad. Parents in different circumstances offer different things.My parents never saved for me, literally hand to mouth, but I couldn't have felt more supported by them. I knew they did everything they could, and their love and encouragement was worth more than any money. I am independent and anything i achieved i know i got for myself, which is good for my confidence. I'm also not sure it would have sat well with me to take their money if I knew they had scrimped and gone without to give it to me. Anything they did have i would much prefer spent on them as i had decades to make my own future. From the other side, I didn't save for my DC either, as rightly or wrongly in MN culture, we spent our disposable income on having experiences together as a family. I also helped my parents where I could. Now DC are adults I have no regrets. Realistically the amount I could have saved for them would have been of limited value, particularly as they both very good jobs and earn a lot more than I do already, in their 20s. They tell me they have lovely childhood memories and it would have been a shame to have restricted what we did for the sake of a (to them) fairly irrelevant sum. I suppose if you can save enough for house deposit that is more beneficial, but that would never have been an option for me.

@Kanaloa to be fair, it is the norm in my DH's community (he grew up in london) for adult children to live with parents. Less common after marriage though! The ultra orthodox Jews marry really early and they have a far lower employment rate but they do live in social housing on a mass scale. In my MIL community (regular/modern orthodox), they do work full time but do need the same range of communal facilities as the ultra-orthodox so can't just live anywhere and so many london councils have moved their council tenants outside London. my DH has a friend who is living with his grandma in a 1 bedroom assisted living flat so that he can be living with the community. We are less religious but do still prefer to live in a Jewish area, esp me! My MIL is unable to come to us on Saturday if we don't live in the neighbourhood as she isn't allowed to drive or take public transport on Saturday.

But the relative expense of Jewish areas in the UK has meant that both my SIL have chosen Israel to move to after university graduation, even though on the surface it is more expensive than London; the Israeli government does give financial support to all new immigrants. Which I suppose is a privilege as well; I don't know of any new countries who give money to new immigrants irregardless of financial circumstances.

But that still doesn’t mean you’re not privileged by being able to live at home so you can work and save.

I’m not sure why you are trying to make out that you’re not because you’re Jewish/it will be the ‘norm’ in the future/people in China do it.

I wasn’t trying to insult you, I was just responding your assertion that it ‘isn’t an economic privilege’ because in fact it is. It gave you an advantage in being able to purchase your own home and represents a privilege not available to people like care leavers or those with parents who are on benefits/addicts/abusive. You can pretend you don’t think it’s a privilege if you want but it very much is one.

I think there is also cultural factors that come into play. Using @only's example, I think she said her MIL's house is a 3 bed terrace. The MIL was willing to give up her reception room to house yet another child and her husband. This sort of intentional overcrowding is common in Asian households in UK too, to facilitate children getting married and saving money. There is absolutely no way my white, British parents would be allowing this, and I think most would be the same. @onlychildhamster