to ask how do people afford all these things ?

[kermitspants]

Me & DH have a fairly good/decent income between us. What with the cost of living increases etc and general costs to run a house for 5 of us, we don't/cant afford to have many luxuries. I see FB posts with friends (acquaintances) who:

Were celebrating the coronation at home with Fortnum & Mason champagne & hamper

Purchased a brand new landrover as a gift for their wife for Christmas

Brought their DC a brand new car for their 18th

Pop up marquees in the garden with the biggest TV screen for friends to come over and watch England playing

Christmas and the gifts are ££££££ with some people taking the DC to lapland (in addition of the summer holiday they had) and buying top of the range gifts/food/hampers

Have the biggest Christmas trees (ours is usually around 5 foot and costs around £50 (real tree) which I thought was a hell of a lot of money for a tree). Goodness knows how much the bigger trees cost

New York trips for Christmas

My 'luxury' for Christmas food was a posh bottle of M&S prosecco for the table along side Tesco food. I splashed out on a £14 posh bottle of fizz for the coronation, and that was pushing the boat out.

Am I missing something here ????

NB - those who think I am jealous, need not reply.

@kermitspants how much is your family income?

I think there is a huge gap in what people earn and what people think people earn.

Friend tells the story of her dickhead BIL who constantly goes on about his engineering degree and “amazing salary”. He is condescending and patronising about the fact she left school at 16. His wife let slip that he’d had a promotion that took him to £60k.

friend earns double that (I know because she’s my EA and I do her comp) but he has assumed that as a “lowly admin” she couldn’t possibly be making a fraction of that.

My DB and SIL have had their mortgage (interest only) double recently. Their DS is in first year of school and if DB doesn’t work in summer he’ll mind him otherwise it’s expensive holiday clubs. SIL expecting second DC in October and no idea how they’ll manage with nursery fees, childcare pickups, SIL is a workaholic and often works weekends and evenings. No flashy cars but they need to get a decent one for ulez rules.

Or - as is probably most likely - some people just earn more….and that’s not necessarily just luck

its no great mystery

not everyone has credit. Many people work in finance and other professions but just wfh which blurs the lines

where I am in London -almost everyone I know is on six figure but then people also spend more - the £14 for a bottle is not a luxury but rather a daily occurence

and it’s all about priorities - some we know prioritise private education over the granite workshop in our kitchen or a holiday to the Maldives

others prefer the house

there are a few people who can afford all three

May be they made wise choices including as to career as a teenager and have wlways worked full time. (Eg I chose to become a London commercial lawyer when I was about 14 and worked towards that. I worked full time even 2 WEEKS after a baby was born. Not everyone is prepared to do that.

Yes. No one could ever be earning far more, have made better investments etc and just generally have far more disposable income to enjoy.

I think part of it is that the employment and industry landscape has changed massively over the past couple of decades and many people don’t realise which industries and roles are now the highest paying – and that it isn’t necessarily traditional high status sectors like medicine and law. Add to that, people are often vague about what exactly it is they do. My friends and I will tell acquaintanced we “do something in insurance” or “work in sales” or are “product managers” or do “freelance graphic design.” And this is true – except what we’ve left out is that we’re C-suite for a leading legacy reinsurer, or Global Sales Directors for B2B analytics services, or that the product being managed is Audible, or Uber, or that the design is the UX for a blockchain platform like Kraken, with income levels to match that - whereas from the initial vague descriptions, many people will have assumed middle earning.

My friends wouldn't post it on FB but I know the things they are doing:

1 set are going on a very expensive cruise this summer. Her DF is paying for the entire family.

Another set have just had a huge kitchen renovation that looks beautiful. They've borrowed a lot of money off a family member.

Another family do a lot of travel and do a lot of things which are out of reach for us (weekends away on London, regular meals out etc). Her DF died when she was late teens and she received a decent chunk to put down as a deposit on a house. They bought at the right time and haven't hugely upscaled along the way so their housing costs are relatively low. The DC don't do lots of expensive activities on a day to day basis so they have more disposable income for the extras that they enjoy as they choose to spend their money that way instead.

We send one of our 4 DC to private school. I went back to work specifically for the reason as he has some mild SEN which I felt wouldn't be catered for at our local school. I retrained in a career I knew would pay relatively well . We also spend a sizeable chunk of our disposable income on the DC activities e.g. they all play sport to at least a county level. My lovely friend always talks about how they could never afford private school for her DC but they have literally just spent 10's of thousands on their house (which now looks amazing) whereas our house requires a lot of work which we could afford if DC didn't go private but have decided to wait.

Ultimately, what I'm saying is that there is no one answer. People have differing spending priorities and have different income streams/available cash.

It's not just earning more. It's choosing how to spend what you earn.

DH and I are not flashy clothes or watches people. We do not follow fashion, have expensive jewellery, trainers, handbags. We don't spend money on beauty treatments, botox, personal trainers, gym memberships. All things which lots of other people choose to spend their money on.

We choose to spend our money on eating out, holidays.

Different strokes for different folks.

@kermitspants I'm with you too. DH and I have a combined income of £130k and I think buying a £14 bottle of prosecco is splashing out. I usually spend £7-8 for a bottle of wine. I can only think that those people earn significantly more than us. I don't have a shared token but this sums it up https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/200k-a-year-and-struggling-affluence-isnt-what-it-was-6sdmx3ml8

I reckon those people you are looking at will be over £200k a year. £100k (£50k each) are decent incomes, but not affluent.

Big salaries and/or credit cards. We save £5k every month after all outgoings including treats/day trips etc. So it quickly adds up.

In my case, I earn a LOT more than people think. I'm self employed and do a fairly menial role, which I know people assume brings in pocket money, but in reality, I earn more than most of my customers. I am pretty sure that no one can figure out how we afford nice holidays. I think people who work in Offices (for example) have no clue how much money you can earn doing something less qualified. Your window cleaner, dog groomer, dog sitter, beautician and hair dresser, all probably earn more than you.

Oh I found a archived version of it via reddit https://archive.is/pTcVp

Exactly

I think this thread is meaningless without op giving their household income figure tbh - I don’t think they should bjt that is why this is a meaningless thread

Based on London -if op’s family household income is £400k plus and they are still struggling then there is a real issue!

but tbh the truth is up to a certain point families are just earning more than op - and probably a lot more than what op thinks they are

Also the “same” things often vary wildly in price.

when I went to NY at the beginning of the year I plugged my accommodation requirements into booking.com and there were about 40 options varying from £6k - £40k.

I’m quite sure I could have got accommodation more cheaply if I’d compromised. also I dare say I could have paid a lot more. On face of it, it’s still “a trip to NYC”.

@BeachBlondey I know the plumber who installed our new bathroom earns £100k a year. He was talking to the other plumber about his tax return. They are significantly more than me doing a desk job.

As well as all the above, you have to bear in mind that people don’t post the things they’re not doing on SM. Maybe the family with new cars didn’t have a holiday that year? Maybe the champagne Coronation people have cut back on other treats? Maybe someone bought a bigger tree but stopped sending cards at Christmas? SM makes it look like a constant orgy of consumption but the truth may be different.

What do you class as a large combined income?
I wouldn't class our income as large, though it's certainly not low and we could afford everything you've listed in your post, no debt (apart from mortgage).

It's mostly inheritances, debt, not saving for the future (e.g. in a pension) and a very unfair tax system that makes single income households pay a lot more tax on the same income as dual income households.

For example, a household with two children and two people earning £30k pay a total of £6,972 income tax; £4,183 national insurance and receive £2,075 in child benefit a year. That's a net income of £50,920 (£4,243 a month). A household with two children and only one earner making £60k whilst the other stays at home pay a total of £11,432 in income tax, £4,719 in national insurance and receive no child benefit. That's a net income of £43,849 a year (£3,654 a month). Needless to say, that extra £589 a month could easily cover a Fortnum and Mason hamper or a payment on a luxury car. In theory this extra money should cover childcare for the dual income household, but earning £30k each they get a lot of help too. Often funded by the single income household's much higher tax bill no doubt!

It really doesn't pay to have a SAHP these days (something I argued with my ex-wife about a lot until I divorced her and she had to get a job anyway), nor for that matter does it pay for one person to sacrifice their career to do something part time so that the other can pursue theirs. It makes a lot more sense for both to aim to earn £40-50k than for one to get the going rate of about £70-80k as a professional and the other to aim for £15-20k part time.

Of course, it is not just our weird tax system though. Inheritance matters more and more to someone's wealth these days because the price of housing has become increasingly detached from what people can earn.

And then of course there is debt, another disagreement with my ex-wife. She thought treating friends to expensive food and alcohol on a credit card was "generosity" whereas I think you can only be generous with your own money.

Honestly I think a lot of the time the people who make these threads are just bad with money. Based on your response to another poster you have a joint income of around 100k, but no savings and apparently no idea where your money is going? If you genuinely don’t know then go through your bank statements or download a finance app that sorts them automatically and have a proper look at what you’re spending and on what.

Any number of reasons

-inheritance
-prioritise spending over saving
-debt
-lottery win
-earn more

You're earning 100k plus, £14 on wine is splashing out and you have no savings? Your money has to be going somewhere OP!

Agree with PP that i wouldn't be plastering new range rovers all over facebook but it could be anything from drug dealing to a lottery win couldn't it.

I spend about £15 on a bottle of wine. But on its own, that information is irrelevant. We have a low mortgage, only run one car, don’t have any children in childcare, and most of our holidays are spent visiting family abroad so we only pay for flights. Maybe you spend more on those things that we do?

You have three kids OP, that’s not cheap

Can you tell me what is is so I can do it too? I have a boring middle income office job, and would love to do something else

I don’t think the tax system is unfair at all. Staying at home is a luxury and I don’t believe that should be funded by the taxpayer. Also it would encourage women out of the workforce which I certainly don’t think is a good thing.