To wonder how some people afford/manage their lifestyles?

[Sunseaandicecreams]

Having had two children go through primary school I've noticed how many mums and dads manage to drop off and pick up the dc together each day and go to all of the events together as well as being quite involved in every day school life.

I'm sure that most of these people do work or at least one parent works, and some of this is way before working from home became a big thing, or the dads will be dressed as though they do manual work. They seemingly have nice lifestyles with nice clothes, two nice cars, holidays.

This isn't a jealous rant I'm just genuinely curious how people manage it.

Dh earns 50k and I earn around 12k working part time, we do have a nice lifestyle, our mortgage is quite high, but we only have one very old car, but dh has to do a lot of hours meaning he's rarely/never around at school pick up time. Unless he books the day off he's never at the school.

I suppose what I'm asking is if you have a really good work life balance and are working outside of the home what do you do?

Open a magic pie shop in Morecambe? There's a well known family who manage a millionaire lifestyle on the income from a pie shop.

I work for the local Council. As long as I do my 37 hours each week they don't care when those hours are done.

Senior role for me that allows flexibility and contracted hours for DH that mean he can do school runs on certain days.
decent earners but not private school level. We budget very carefully, shop at Lidl/Aldi and go on UK holidays.

Software. We both have flexible working even before covid. It was never a problem to take a half day off (and not as annual leave) to do school events. It's only if there's something very important in the calendar made by someone much higher up that you can't shift a meeting.

The school dads are dealing drugs and the mums are on Only Fans. Guaranteed.

Senior(ish) role so flexible and decide my own workload and work patterns
Bosses who aren't CFs

Others - self employed / use AL / flexi / SAHM

Not sure what your point about money is.

A lot of Mum's in my youngest GC class claim seperately. They are starting to take 16 hour jobs because their youngest is/has turned five. My DD gets a lot of family support. She doesn't ask for it, I'm happy to buy GC school uniform and me and two other family members buy clothing and take them on holiday. Lots of my friends also give to their adult children/GC. However work can be 24 hours a day. I know plenty of parents and people who help out with school pickup who work evenings, nights and early mornings. Some do short days but six/seven days a week.

@ImJustNotMeAnymore they don't claim to just live of the earnings of the pie shop. They state that they get paid to go to theme parks, on days out and holidays. They get lots of freebies and earn from their SM accounts.

DH has quite a good work-life balance because he is able to work from home and set his own hours as long as he gets his work done. He does 5-3 so has after-school time with the kids. So often does either school run, or we do it together. Think since covid lots of people pop out for the school run when previously they were in the office.

My DH works in tech, entirely from home and pretty flexible hours, and earns a v high salary. I’m a part-time postgrad student, also working (mainly) from home. We can both be around for school drops offs and pick ups, kids clubs etc. and have a lifestyle where we are genuinely equal parents. It’s ridiculously cushy and I don’t take it for granted for a second.

This comes across as snobbery, how could manual workers have a better lifestyle than you🙄
Most tradesmen/ self employed ppl are the higher earners amongst anyone I know, out earning doctors, professors etc, I'm self employed, work long hours but have flexibility.

I expect people look at me and dh and wonder this . Neither of us work now due to being carers. Might look like a nice lifestyle where we can do picks up etc together but we are exhausted most of the time

I think quite a few families in our area have a buy-to-let (expensive area) so they have a good income even before they work iyswim

DH is self employed, probably works about 3 hours a day, I'm a stay at home mum. It wasn't always like this, we struggled for a long while before it al fell into place. That's why I don't judge when it comes to this stuff, you have no idea what they've done to get to that point, or what's going on behind closed doors

DH and I both work full time but we have enough seniority to have flexibility.

This is probably the most likely answer, I reckon. Most people can't just take a few hours off when they want to, but the higher you are, the easier it is to arrange.

We prioritise fun / holidays over other things

Really budget for our weekly food spend, batch cook, take lunch to work, very rarely buy clothes, don't get my nails done or anything like that! very rarely get take always and things like that. don't have a car anymore as we don't need it really (live in London)

We then have the money to spend on a few holidays a year

Husband & I can afford nights out / festivals etc

We have money to do days out and things we want to do

If we have something big planned I just have a very cheap month literally hiding out at home

and yes in my job I can kind of work my own hours really so that makes things easier

Erm, I mentioned people being dressed as if doing manual work to highlight that they're not working from home. I was expecting a lot of replies mentioning people working from home. How in any way is that snobbery?

I'm a part time teaching assistant and dh is a gas engineer so I'm not sure which bit of my post is snobby.

I work 3 days a week but long days and DH wfh with flexibility . Some people's working patterns isn't 9-5 .

We live near the school and wfh.

We have 1 child and are prioritising doing everything with that 1 as we are only doing it once.

If we had 2 kids we probably wouldn't get to everything for each child.

Is this the family with over 20 children? I'll never get my head around how they manage that.

I have flexi working, time off in lieu and generous annual leave.

I don't have a nice car. I have nice clothes but not many of them!

If you're a self employed tradesman at the moment you're laughing, money is good. In Scandinavia, tradespeople are very highly regarded, it's just in this country there's a snobbery about it? I don't get it. I've seen a lot more dads on the school run recently but I guess more wfh is allowing them to do so.

We have spoken about dh getting a different job or changing/cutting his hours but I think deep down as much as he'd like more time, he likes the money that the overtime brings.

Some people seem to be able to manage a similar lifestyle to us but working less hours.

Example there's a family at school, the mum definitely doesn't work, they're about to have their third dc, the dad works in a local factory but is always around for school stuff but they appear to be doing ok.

I can only think that either their housing costs are much lower than ours or they've cost another income/family help. I know that you shouldn't compare because appearances can be deceiving.

I'm not sure where the idea has come from that I'm being snobby about tradespeople? My dh is a tradesman but he doesn't have any flexibility.

Although he may do in another job perhaps.

We both WFH. Dh starts early so he can do pick up. I start late so I can do the morning drop off. Both fairly senior so flexible for jubilee picnics etc etc etc. This is all a big change since COVID. Before that we were both out of the house for long hours commuting and DD went to a childminder before and after school.