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?

I work part time from home 3 days a week and am fairly senior so have flexibility, plus we have flexitime, plus I’m the only one in the company who does my role so I largely do wot I want.

DP works full time, from home 3 days a week, also senior and in the kind of role that’s “get the job done over the long term” rather than “present at precisely these hours”. He’s also the only one in his team with his skills, which are hard to recruit for, so they bend over backwards for him.

We didn’t have kids til we were 39/40 so already well-established in careers.

I’m a lawyer at a large international firm with a few years of experience under my belt.

My cousin is a roofer and earns more than me. He’s in massive demand.

I wouldn’t automatically assume people who look like they engage in “manual labour” don’t be earn a lot.

For the third time, I didn't mention manual work in relation to earnings. I mentioned it to highlight that they are not working from home.

The households you mention seem to have two working parents, and both wfh roles and trades can be very lucrative. The dads could be self employed tradesmen who set their own hours and are very much in demand. And people working in the home at desk jobs could be doing a massive range of roles.

Then there's all the other potential explanations when people seem to have more money than you'd expect: income streams you aren't aware of, debt, family help, one of them happened to get on the property ladder in the right place at the right time.

In terms of flexibility, our household income would be fairly similar to yours, and we've both chosen to prioritise flexibility so have been around a lot even before covid kicked in. We go on holiday, could probably run to another couple of hundred quid a month car lease and posh clothes are fairly easily available for a reasonable price if you Ebay hard enough, I am reliably informed. You don't necessarily need a massive amount of money for the lifestyle you mention here? The thing that seems to be missing from your list is a DH with flexibility, and it's not like there aren't 50k jobs where that's doable enough.

We do the school run together most morning and afternoon. You would look at DH and think he did manual work though, he wears paint stained joggers most of the time! But he works from home and has a high salary. You just cant judge people's jobs or finances on how they look .

I would guess they are their own bosses then, and have a high hourly rate. Perhaps a few do shifts.

Also I drive a tiny unglamorous car, because it's just not a priority to me. I have friends who earn far less and have very ostentatious cars. Different priorities

@LuckyAmy1986 yes of course appearances can be deceiving. There's one dad at the school who always wears 'work' trousers and boots, I found out he during conversation doesn't actually work at all they are just his clothes.

I do know that there are thousands of explanations, they could have just come off a night shift.

My dh just appears to be one of the only ones that doesn't have much leisure time.

@ApplesandBunions you're absolutely right. It's the flexibility that's missing. I'm not complaining about our lifestyle at all, we are quite frugal but we still have treats, I've stayed part time so that one of us can be flexible for school stuff.

I've just noticed over the years that probably 75% of the parents at school seem to have both parents able to do school runs/school events on a regular basis.

I know quite a few people like this.
They do work in that when you ask them what they do they reply with a career e.g. jewellery designer, writer, film producer (usually low budget arty films etc) etc but they often work very few hours, have massive long holidays and like you say, are around in the day a lot. They also seem to have an affluent lifestyle, live in a big house etc.
It took me quite a long time (I’m not from the UK) to work out that it was family money and an independent income from a trust fund or property that allowed them to live this way.

Where I come from, when you ask someone what they do for a living, you really mean where do they get the money to live on. So, I spent many years wondering how people managed to afford that sort of lifestyle by designing jewellery that they only sold to a few friends or writing when they only published one book every 10 years etc. until I worked it out 😂

How do they compare to you age wise, out of interest?

I only ask because you mention a big mortgage, and with parents of primary school aged children there can be massively different experiences when it comes to housing costs even in areas where everyone is of similar socioeconomic status. There are people who are in their mid 40s who have DC in primary school and one or both of them bought a shitty flat in 2001 for peanuts that ended up setting them up well, and in the same class there could be parents who are maybe 32 and bought last year at pandemic increased prices.

It feels like a part time job in itself keeping up with school stuff too.

We both work from home. There is at least one of us at school pick up every day, and we both try and make it to events like sports day.

The key to a tradie making money whilst being flexible is to make the business work for you. I see many of my fellow trades dropping the kids off, picking them up, having days off, etc. When my children came along my business hrs were made to suit the kids.
Being employed as a trade, well forget flexibility, it's long hrs and constant graft. Setting up a business or becoming self-employed and controlling demand is the key to being around for the family in any field of work.

As for lifestyle, we've bought a do-er-upper, so our house isn't as grand as some.
But we do have a lot of holidays, trips away, etc.

Yeah, they just WFH or have a job with flexi hours.

I personally find it weird when both parents rock up to pick up etc every day. It's a boring, tedious task & I don't see what they get out of it at all.

Just nosey, bored & overly involved in school life usually, in my experience.

@ApplesandBunions variation of ages. We've done ok out of housing but just ending up moving somewhere a bit better. Housing does make a difference I know some people have much smaller mortgages so perhaps have more flexibility with their work to do less hours?

@StaunchMomma I'd love dh to be around more for school stuff, although I'm glad that one of us can be, but maybe if he was the novelty would wear off.

For us, it's a mixture of:

• High prior earnings. I used to earn a lot and husband still does, therefore we put a big deposit down then overpaid the mortgage. Now I work four days a week in a remote, flexible job. Makes it very easy to be written off as the "little woman" by outsiders, but actually I make more money informally on my day off than I do on working days whilst appearing to be a lady of leisure.

• Invisible non-spending. We have nice, refurbished phones on sim only contracts. We don't spend much of grooming. We don't have an expensive TV package. When we go on holiday, it's on £40 flights and three star hotels. But it's never obvious what people aren't spending on, only what they are.

We both have flexi time and dh (engineer) works from home earning over 60k, we share drop off and pick up and sometimes I can work from home (I earn over 40k) and we can do school runs together sometimes. My brother is a manual worker and earns over 80k, he works 4 days on and 4 days off so he can do drop off and pick up for his kids alongside his wife.

we also have no debt and no mortgage so it makes lie a whole lot easier.

Life not lie

I work very part time in marketing. DH works long hours in finance but mostly from home and has enough trust from employer to book an hour out for school events (but not all the time)

I'm a part time teacher at my kids' school so there for every assembly / sports day / they come with me to and from school. Dh works from home so can do school runs for me if I have a meeting or something. I work 4 days, dh works 5. Combined income about £80k

You'd think this of us, DH works 48hrs a week but shift work means he can sometimes do a whole weeks school run. I wfh FT but it's extremely flexible with good employer so I can be available.

We are frugal in day to day so can afford the Disney holiday and new kitchen.

Tbf as a gas engineer your dh income is quite generous. While dh was on the tools he brought in around 26k.

we both work ft, earn about 30k each. Dh is 8-4 I’m 9-5 so I do every school drop off (10 min commute) and he picks up from childminder.
low mortgage (live in North east) and a prioritisation of home, especially while the kids are little are what allow us to do it: we could each earn more but for much less flexible employers.

@QforCucumber it's bumped up from a lot of overtime but the salary is good with his particular company for a reason, but it does leave him feeling a bit stuck. Similar roles elsewhere would mean a drop in money potentially.

For us it's senior job roles that allow flexibility and both our main roles are part time.