To be angry about my dreary suburban life

[Peachypear10]

After getting a good degree, building a desirable, professional career, living/working abroad, I've somehow ended up living the life I wanted to avoid - living in a shoebox in British suburbia, watching TV every night, a Saturday curry or Nando's being the hightlight of my week. I can't believe I'm nearing my 40s and can't even afford to rent a place by myself. I'm furious.

Some of this is pandemic induced but mostly it's that I can't afford to do anything or move anywhere else. Is this just most peoples' destinies and I should accept it?

@squashyhat

So this is really about being jealous of your parents' lifestyle, which no doubt they worked hard to achieve?

The ‘hard work’ myth again. OP’s parents won’t have worked any harder than she is, but they’ve probably benefitted enormously by living through more prosperous times, watching their house shoot up in value, retiring earlier with a better pension etc.

@colosmbo

So this is really about being jealous of your parents' lifestyle, which no doubt they worked hard to achieve?

Bingo! 😆

Well mine and DP's retired at 50 on a final salary pension scheme/milked the sickness leave policy for years and all did jobs which would require a degree now and quarterly performance reviews, so they would have been kicked out on their arses rather than the jobs for life and 5 bedroom detached homes they enjoy.

DP's father in particular has sat on his backside since reaching 50 and benefitted from two inheritances which has enabled them to travel the world and have second homes, not hard work. They could also drive to their work on relatively uncrowded roads and park for free/not be taxed for it as a work benefit. They're hardly the only ones.

I feel for you - the divide between what your parents' generation could afford to do and how they could afford to live through working hard at average jobs, and what you can afford are miles apart. But that doesn't have to make life dull. What we have that they didn't is instant access to the vast brilliance of the world.

You can watch amazing films, recordings of world class theatre, incredible TV series. You can stream the best performances of any music you like. You can look up incredible recipes and access their ingredients.

You can sign up for online courses, learn languages , coding, design your own app, work out with brilliant trainers all for free on the internet.

You can decide to get super fit, go for runs in your safe suburban area, or out to fitness classes. Suburbia everywhere has them.

These suggestions are just to make daily life at home more interesting.

Save some money and go off at least once a month to do something interesting - go to a festival, or to a nearby city to see a show.

Pack a rucksack and go wild camping at weekends.

People all over have adventures for little or no money. You just have to research and plan for them then do them.

@SucculentChalice I meant bingo as in the usual nonsense that younger generations don't work hard.

there used to be a TV ad that had this jingle

If you hate something
Change something
Hate something?
Change something
Make something better!

its good advice.

[quote colosmbo]@SucculentChalice I meant bingo as in the usual nonsense that younger generations don't work hard. [/quote]
Ah!

On one of those boring evenings sit down and commit to paper an outline of your perfect life. Where would you live, what job would you do, what sort of interests/hobbies do you like?
Then work backwards how you can achieve these in tiny incremental steps. So you want a more exciting social life? What does that mean to you? Travelling, clubbing or out walking and birdwatching.
Decide what you want and how you can achieve it. No you won’t get the perfect life, who does? But you can take control and move in the right direction.

@NoSquirrels

The baby boomer generation were able to get on and climb the property ladder and save into golden pensions in a way that's out of reach for subsequent generations. Working hard had nothing to do with it.

Just because they had advantages that subsequent generations won’t have does not mean individuals didn’t work hard throughout their lives. They also had challenges subsequent generations will not have. Swings and roundabouts.

That wasn't the point though. The point was this generation didn't accumulate all their wealth just through hard work.

It's the Mollie Mae argument that completely ignores the underlying privilege. Do you think people in Britain work harder than people in Somalia or do you think there may be other factors that influence their respective wealth? Did the baby boomers work harder than their own parents/grandparents?

Get a part time job which is sociable & you meet people

Start a new hobby

Start a course

Do some things outside your comfort zone

@1Week2Day3Month

Get a part time job which is sociable & you meet people

Start a new hobby

Start a course

Do some things outside your comfort zone

Most professional jobs have a clause in the contract preventing you from doing other paid work. I wanted to lecture at my local university in the evenings and I had a huge amount of trouble getting permission from my (then public sector) employer to do it and in the end it was granted 2 months after the start of the semester. Which meant I missed out on the opportunity.

My best advice to the OP is...move abroad.

@YetiTeri of course I understand all that! I just think this stuff becomes ridiculously divisive and unhelpful when talking about the privilege of baby boomers because by and large, most people work hard and aren’t in control of when and where they are born, as you say with your Somalia/Britain example, so it is with Baby Boomers vs Millennials. It doesn’t solve the problem by dwelling on it or, indeed, being jealous of not having what you’d hoped.

Would you have been better off if you didn’t spend years at uni ?

[quote NoSquirrels]@YetiTeri of course I understand all that! I just think this stuff becomes ridiculously divisive and unhelpful when talking about the privilege of baby boomers because by and large, most people work hard and aren’t in control of when and where they are born, as you say with your Somalia/Britain example, so it is with Baby Boomers vs Millennials. It doesn’t solve the problem by dwelling on it or, indeed, being jealous of not having what you’d hoped.[/quote]
I think saying something is ‘unhelpful’ is a way of avoiding discussing elephants in the room.

Of course the fact previous generations are sitting on a disproportionate amount of wealth and housing affects the rest of us, in conjunction with other factors of course.

The boomer generation lived through Thatcher, record unemployment, power cuts during the 70s miners strikes and very high interest rates. It wasn’t all roses.

Yes millennials have been sold a lie.

I find it good to use 2 tools:

A 5 year plan- write out your ideal (but not lottery crazy) life in 5 years. Don't have more than 5 things ie buy a flat, have a baby, change jobs, get fitter, learn a new skill.

Also do a ring of satisfaction.

Draw a circle of 8 aspects of life on the circumstance. You can adapt this but suggestions include:
Health
Family
Friends
Relationships/sex
Spirituality
Money
Work
Appearance

Mark out of 10 how satisfied you are with each and make these wedges in your circle. It's a good visual aid for what's going well and what you can improve on in life. Then revisit this once a year and update.

You can change things. Focus on what changes would make you happy.

Myself and DH have very good well paid jobs but because we were living in London, even that would only get us a very small property in one of the (fairly central) areas we liked. The alternative - that lots of our friends took - of moving to an outer suburb just wasn’t appealing to us.

So we moved cities, took new jobs and now have a city centre home which gives us access to all the stuff we want to do - eating out, cultural stuff etc - and we have a better work/life balance.

I’m not saying it’s easy but if you’re not happy explore your options and what you can change.

@godmum56

there used to be a TV ad that had this jingle

If you hate something
Change something
Hate something?
Change something
Make something better!

its good advice.

I'm glad someone else remembers this - I loved that ad and I sing it to myself often when I'm starting to get resentful about something!

OP, what changes can you make to improve things? Is your career not as well-paid as you initially hoped, or is it that the cost of living has scuppered you?

I work for the public sector and have a paid freelance job that they are aware of. It may depend on the particular role or department, so I think nowadays many jobs are actually OK with this . When I worked for a PR agency, lots of staff did freelance PR work which again, everyone was aware of.

Do you need some adventures? Go dancing/wild camping or swimming or something else that will give you a feeling that you are really living.

My comment above was in response to @SucculentChalice

Why do you need to watch TV nightly? I am not British and I thank the lord every day for all the free stuff there is to do in the UK. Many other countries have absolutely no libraries, free museums, art galleries, exhibitions, evening classes....

Nothing wrong with identifying that suburbia isn't for you.

Beyond that it's difficult to advise really, because without knowing how you got yourself into suburbia/Nando's land, it's impossible to establish how to get you out of it again. No one here knows your family/dependants circumstances, work situation or finances, and without that we're all just pissing in the wind really.

Really laughed at the suggestion that OP should consider teaching as it’s reasonably well paid! As a classroom teacher after doing a year’s training I doubt you could afford a rental on your own, let alone a mortgage in most southern cities. The papers today all have articles on the feelings of teachers on their workload, a huge number are hoping to leave soon.

The boomers lived through the 70s and recession of the 80s with high mortgage rates (14%) and waiting lists for mortgages. Things worked out fine for many now but pretending their 30s and 40s were easy is misleading from my recollection (I was born in the 80s but know money was tight at times and there was a very strict budget in our house and most families we knew only had one car - never new unless you had a company car)

Comparing yourself in your 30s to parents in their 60s is mad.

There is definitely a sniff of American dream to some MN posts, this idea that if you are aspirational and work hard you can have anything you wish.

It’s patently not true - probably most of us are familiar with life’s (it’s a bit cringey but gets the idea across) and even if you are one of the people with nothing really holding you back, sometimes it’s just sheer good luck that propels you forward.

My DH is an example of this, he has just been in the right place at the right time his whole life!

I worked hard at school and at university and I trained in a job where I knew I’d never be unemployed and had opportunities for promotion.

But I still started university just when grants were scrapped and I left university just when house prices were becoming unmanageable. DH is a year older than me (but two academic years because of when our birthdays fall) and as a result graduated three years before I did and was in a position to leave without debt and to promptly buy a house cheaply.

I explain this to show that sometimes it can be something as simple as when you are born that skews the odds.

I bear no resentment to the ‘baby boomers.’ My own parents were both born in 1945. Lovely people but this idea they worked hard is nonsense. Yes, they worked but no harder than I did!