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?

Husband is fairly high up in an IT profession so works from home, always has had the option to do that part time but now it's all the time, and can be completely flexible with his hours. They don't care if he does a set 40 a week, or when those hours are done, so long as the project is completed on time. He can therefore go to events or the school run as needed and some weeks he has maybe 10 hours work, occasionally he has 60 or 70.

I work for myself, I can do 99% of school runs, and after 5 years of doing this I now only have 4 hours a week where I have to be working at a set time, but even that I could arrange cover for if I knew in advance. What isn't seen though is that for 5 years I never took a single day off, not weekends, not even Christmas day, I always worked at least 2 or 3 hours. That's the trade off for having that flexibility and salary.

We paid off our mortgage by 32, so have a lot of disposable income for the lifestyle we want, have never inherited, have no debt, he is just well paid for what he does and has a flexible employer, and I work a ridiculous number of hours to earn what I do and have the flexibility to enjoy my life outside of work when possible.

There's always a trade off. What are you prepared to sacrifice, and what do you want to gain more of? Time, flexibility, money? Decide what is your priority and try and structure from there.

I live in quite an affluent area.

Almost always just one parent on school run. I agree I do sometimes idly wonder what they do to have that flexibility...as they may be wondering the same about me.

For me though, the flexibility is due to wfh since covid. I'm not sure how I would be managing the school run just now if I was in the office 5 days per week.

There is one couple who do a lot of drop offs / pick ups / events together and I always think it's a bit odd to be honest. They attend kids party's together as well and I always think "surely one of you should be at home relaxing / out with friends enjoying some downtime?"

So yeah I don't think there is really any need for two parents to be doing school run and it's really not common around here.

@Eileen101, is that because he is very senior in the factory? Or do you mean your hourly rate works out lower due to working a lot of hours?

Acquired assets before kids.
Senior role that commands flexibility before kids
Have a passive income thats equal to £25 an hour
Live like a church mouse day to day
Pay cash for treats - not literally- but if i dont have the cash to pay off the credit card next month to benefit from the cc’s insurance, then i wont buy it. That includes cars.

Dh has always been in a senior role where he has a level of flexibility so he has generally always attended school events. He now owns his own business and is in a position where he can prioritise the kids so he does nearly all school drop offs and pick ups. He also dresses quite casually for work in jeans etc, even in the office.

I have a boss who allows flexibility so while I’m back in the office, I can wfh on an ad-hoc basis or start late/finish early. That means I make nearly all school events too.

Yeah I think housing is probably going to be at least part of the explanation. Even relatively young people might be in a massively different position to you in mortgage terms if they were able to take advantage of the 2009-10 dip to get on the ladder. There are people who were FTB then who aren't 40 yet.

If say you bought your current house 3 years ago for 300k and they bought theirs in the same road in 2010 for 160k, to pull some figures out of my arse, your mortgages are probably very different. And if the positions were flipped, your DH probably wouldn't be doing the same overtime while maybe they would.

I'm a totally lone parent, and I realised years ago that my previous career would mean DS would be in wrapround care 4/5 days a week. So I set up my own business, which was incredibly hard work, 7 days a week, but on my own terms. So I can pick DS up from school every day and spend the holidays with him. He just has to get used to me having work to do when I am with him sometimes, or he has had to come into work and hang out there. But it's good for him to see me working hard I think... and I have better boundaries now post COVID and good staff working for me, so it's got better this year and i feel less like I am on the edge of a nervous breakdown!

To this point, I am lucky as I bought my first house in London in 2001 for £165k... housing is a huge factor. I couldn't have managed on the tiny amount I earned with the business for quite a few years if I didn't have a roof over my head and a small mortgage. I do not know how people do it today. The system is totally f'd

Both work full time in well paid industries (finance, tech) and have lots of flexibility. But flexibility doesn't mean less work, just about when we do it. My husband could have been working early in the morning because of a release and I'm working later in the evening to talk to the US. So have time to walk up and down for the school runs, do the extra activities but making up for it elsewhere in the day.

Drop off is from 8.20am (or even earlier) well before many have to start work. I see many parents walking their kids to school then continuing on to the train station. Pick up is 4 or 5pm at our school. I can never fathom why parents want to do it together though.

We usually do it together. It's not really for us... The kids love it, having both of us there and one of us can talk to one about their day while the other talks to the other. Lovely undivided attention for each of them. It won't last forever, they will be walking home on their own in a few years. I wouldn't worry about what other people are doing.

Nice walk, time with DC, chance to build exercise into the day.

Surely though one or each could be going on to work ,to be dropped off ? Or being dropped at Station /WFH .Any of these could be possible . The old 9 to 5/ 5 days a week is being replaced by more flexible hours .It doesnt mean anything!Newish cars are often leased as well .Smart clothes would suggest they are going to work . Many people may shop frugally or not run heating /dry clothes indoors for example .

your salaries/jobs are so unbalanced, with you only earning £12k your DH has to take most of the earning responsibility. My DH earns similar at £52k, but I earn £40k myself part-time so I take on my share of responsibility too. I have flexibility as I work 3 days a week, and my DH doesn’t feel huge amounts of pressure to be the bread winner so although he works hard in his job, he takes flexibility and will do nursery pick ups and be around for events.

Can you up your hours so you can earn more and take some of the pressure off your DH?

Er, some people have more money than others?

I don't really get what's hard to grasp about this. It was ever thus.

But the OP is trying to understand the reasons behind that. How people who are roughly like her, how their finances work. I don't really get why people think questions like this are odd; this one has produced lots of worthwhile, interesting answers.

Well it really isn't that simple, not least as nowadays you might have two people with precisely the same amount of money - none - yet one has a brand new car on credit and an expensive holiday on a credit card.

Also, "it was ever thus" is basically straight out of the Rees-Mogg playbook. Yes, there is always inequality, and no-one is saying that perfect equality is what they want... but it is down to government to choose how relatively equal or unequal society is and this government is all about making society as unequal as possible. They don't even represent the interests of the average tory MP, let alone people earning less or less well connected.

We don't have DC but we have a great work-life balance with lots of flexibility.

We have a very low mortgage but our home is a fixer-upper and still needs a lot of work doing to it seven years down the line.
We're both self-employed so we can set our own rates and pick our own hours. I work 25-30 hours a week and DH is full-time, though I'd say he works a 9 day fortnight on average.
Our cars are both 2nd/3rd hand and we bought them outright, so no finance or anything like that to worry about.
We've only been abroad once in our marriage, the rest of our holidays we stay home or go on cheap trips in the UK.
Loads of our stuff is second hand or hand-me downs from family.
We don't have expensive hobbies and never spend beyond our means - neither of us have any debt beyond the mortgage.
We live in a town that's regularly listed on threads about the shittiest places in the country - we're 40 minutes away from cinemas, bowling alleys, swimming pools, McDonalds and ALDI, for example.

DH works lots of evenings and weekends, which gives him a bit more flexible about being around at drop off / pick up time. He works really long hours but it may not seem like this to the casual observer at the school gates.

Good luck in finding something which works better for you though OP if you’re not happy with your current set up.

Well I have a south London accent and h is foreign born (Albanian) so I think based on snide comments the snobs on the school gate (it’s a good school with a millionaires private estate next door) think we are criminals and or on benefits. The reality is h self employed in construction in a skilled area in price roles rather than day rates. we have always invested and lived under rather than within. This means I can be at home - I do the admin and everything related to the domestic sphere. Although I am looking to work a few hours for myself.

Neither, he's a regular Joe - not a manager or anything. He's a skilled worker, so not entry level, but he has the industry NVQ and experience. His basic wage before shifts and overtime is more than mine. In fact, it's more than my FTE salary.

We are both engineers (very different types) and have a lot of flexibility in terms of how and when we work.

We earn broadly similar decent amounts and have relatively low outgoings with no children.

We live in a rural area and I always wondered this but have found that most are self employed so work around pick ups and actually a lot do 6 days a week also a lot so shift work as there are a few factories about. I’d say the juggling is crazy!

Lots of manual work/trades are a) very flexible or self employed and b) very lucrative! Also generally people may simply earn more than you expect?

I earn £100k for working 30 hours a week and I work from home (5 mins from school) so I can do quite a few school runs. I struggle more to do the events during the school day but by catching up in the evenings I manage about half of them.

DH earns more but works more hours, not long long hours, 9-6pm at an office one hour from home so he is almost never at anything at school.

I am pretty sure a lot of the school mums are baffled by where our money comes from. I think most would guess I earn about £40k (one once made a comment that I "must have nothing left after paying childcare". I'd guess they probably think DH is on about £100k because it's hard to describe the complexity of his job, but all in its nearer 175k. We are also quite frugal day to day so the money goes a long way.

Both self employed so total flexibility

my dh is similar and working up to that salary.
It's great, he works hard 50% of the time but the rest he gets to come home early which you can't get in an office based role.

it's the uniform that makes us look hard up but he can pick up loads for working 2 hours.
My dad was a builder/ carpenter/ everything else over his life. Him and my grandad did all work on our houses for free, he's got all the tools and knowledge so that's a 10,000 pound kitchen done for 2.
He eventually settled into a handy man type role for a bug company with lots of offices/ buildings/ shops. He gets paid £300 per job, mostly those jobs are fixing a floor tile or painting a small section of a wall. He sometimes has a full 10 hour shift but they are few and far between. Driving makes up most of his working life and he has a lovely van and just listened to music and audio books, driving and stopping through every quaint little Town. It's great.

Not to mention, there's just something about a man in high vis, steel capped boots and thick gloves that... 👌 it's a shame dh comes home too dirty to wear it to bed 🤣 🤣 🤣