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.

Has anybody figured out the basis of this thread yet? Has OP come back to share her household income. Without that, it’s a pointless question.

@kermitspants
@kitsuneghost These are all different families on FB

There is your answer
Where someone's treat may be a hamper, another's may be a big christmas tree
The cars it isn't unusual to have big debt for cars
Some people like having family round with marquee and football as opposed to having nights out (which can actually be more costly long term as I am assuming they keep the telly and Marquee)

You have many different families and amalgamated in your head they have it all
They don't. Each only has one thing you don't.

I know it is out of reach for many people, but a F&M hamper once a year for Christmas isn't a huge extravagance. Many people could stretch to it if they prioritised it.

People inherit massive amounts of money these days. The 40-something woman who inherited her grandmother's house in a street near us recently has just inherited £200k from her father, who was divorced from her mother, and has said casually in passing to me and others that she expects to inherit from an aunt and her mother and step-father too. She's an actuary (high-earner) and has more money that she knows what to do with.

More income
Lower outgoings
Credit or loans
Inheritance
Lottery win!
Gifts
Different priorities - ds is nearly 15. He's abroad (and then only to Central Europe on Jet2) twice, but we've paid off the mortgage. (Just as well since dh has just been made redundant).

House prices - huge variation across the country and big rises in the last 15 years or so.

Mortgage term - longer mortgage = smaller monthly repayments.

So many variables

We spend a lot on holidays and I am asked all the time how I afford it. I do not ask them how they afford cleaners, tutors, pilates, gyms, gin subscriptions, exercise bike subscriptions, pet insurance etc etc all of which I do not spend £ on.

Age is a big factor. I’m late 40s. No uni tuition. Bought house early 20s no deposit needed (builder paid it and 95% mortgage) House jumped in price within a couple of years. It was norm in my peer group to do this. Result is much more disposable income than someone with a student loan and only getting on property ladder recently doing same job.

My husband and I are surviving on an average of £1060 a MONTH before any bills. (he's on SSP, I'm on Pip, he gets a small pension, quarterly.

We haven't got mortgage/rent (own our house) but have all the usual things to pay for -

Today's our 43rd wedding anniversary, so we got each other a card, no present. We'll go to the pub for dinner tonight, and that'll be the treat for the week. We live according to what we can afford. I'm not bothered about what anyone else is doing.

I don't know why so many people assume that anyone who spends more money than them must be in debt - it's such a common attitude on here for some reason.

DH and I earn well but not six figures - we can afford what we do because we don't have children, we have a tiny mortgage, we don't have expensive tastes on a day-to-day basis and neither of us has any debt.

We're also both quite selfish people and one of the reasons we didn't have children was so that we didn't have to sacrifice our lifestyles 😂

You've already said this is different families, not all the same people. So they probably prioritise their spending differently to you. If you are a high earner you could afford some of these things.

I've had comments from friends about how we afford to go on so many holidays. Holidays are one of the things we prioritise (as well as education). We are going abroad three times this year (pre Christmas break to New York included) as well as a couple of UK breaks. We don't spend a fortune on these trips though, we generally rent apartments rather than staying in expensive hotels and we take cheap flights. We spend very little day to day. We have no debt other than our mortgage.

We don’t have as much material stuff: I don’t buy designer things really unless treating myself very occasionally to a capsule wardrobe piece that’ll last years; we would rather a really nice holiday every year or two (mainly the latter) than lots of weekends away etc. Spa treatments like massages are a holiday-only thing. We don’t drink much or smoke - although we do love nice food, whether dining out or buying groceries. Basically, we do very little of the Instagrammable stuff people seem to do all the time, unless it’s a very special occasion.

But we do save a lot. We “pay ourselves first” as they say when we get paid - and I think I sometimes forget this when I wonder why I don’t have loads of disposable income towards the end of the month despite having a decent salary. Lots of people don’t value having savings though and have the mentality that “you can’t take it with you when you die.” And good on them if they are fine with not having savings and want to spend their hard-earned cash as they please. (I personally think some balance between the two is for me but that’s me. I don’t understand stinginess when one can afford to not be but their money, their life.)

Maybe this is the case for some of the people you are talking about.

New cars likely to be leased, either company cars or personal leases.

There is no hard and fast rule to why some people have or appear to have more than others. There are many different reasons and different attitudes to money.
You say you have a “fairly good/decent income” yet you have no savings? For many people this wouldn’t make sense as typically a good income leaves you with enough to save some, but yet for you, you see your income as enough although it doesn’t allow for saving or the other luxuries you’ve mentioned people have. It’s all relative and based on perception.

Do you want the things that you listed? I couldn't give a monkeys about hampers and expensive booze. I really don't.

You say your household income is a lot but what is it? There will be plenty who have a higher household income with lower mortgages etc

These things mystify me to. OP, but we've always worked in the public services so I'm pretty naive about what people in the private sector earn!

We live in a pretty ordinary semi which we bought in our 40s for £160 K. We have lovely neighbours on either side but I'm intrigued by them (pure nosiness - you don't need to tell me I'm bad...). They both bought semis on either side of us in the 2010s (so much-increased in value) when in their late 20s and proceeded to do super-duper loft conversions and kitchen extensions. They also have multiple very posh cars and send their children to private school. No judgment - just a puzzle to me! But I think I'm just very innocent about how much some jobs pay. (Should say we're in a a London metroland commuter town.)

The thing is you just don’t know people’s circumstances. On paper I think people assume we have a really low income - and we do, dh works full time just slightly above minimum wage, I am on the highest rates of PIP long term / ongoing, and Ds is on high rate dla. We also have an adult dd at university. What people don’t realise is that we own our home outright due to me having a very high paying job previously- we relocated and downsized into a modest 3 bed semi from London, and so we have no mortgage or rent costs. We also had a large inheritance from my Mum. So actually we have quite a lot of disposable income, which we spend on luxury holidays, days out, eating out etc etc. I know people must judge us and think we’re spending tons on credit etc but it’s really not that at all. In some ways we’re very unlucky - disabilities and absolutely zero family support, none, dh is no contact with his family and my Mum was my only relative- but on the other hand we’re financially comfortable.

2.8m people in the UK are millionaires, that's a lot of people who can probably afford some nice stuff. One in 5 pensioners have a household wealth of £1m or more- although thats often tied up in a house

Yes they are!
Don't you ever catch those bailiff/debt collection programs?
And it's not just poor /working class people

The people you are talking about are clearly very high earners, so not beyond the realms of belief. The ones I can't work out are people with normal jobs with average salaries who are always eating out, going on pricey all-inclusives to 5* resorts once a year plus a city break as well, do expensive activities with kids at least twice per week during the holidays, good cars, kids in various clubs, frequent home improvements, spend quite a bit on self care etc. Now they are the people who must be in an obscene amount of debt or have some pretty lucrative side-hustle going on!!

I’ve scrimped and worked hard all my life and often wondered just like you do how some of our friends could afford all of their luxuries. Some friends earned more or inherited money however, others unbeknown to me were drowning in debt. My kids are grown, DH has retired on a reasonable pension and I still work and we are comfortable. However, the friends drowning in debt are approaching retirement age still in debt having cashed out their pensions and remortgaged several times, it looks like they will have to work until they drop.

A long time ago, in the days of student grants, I was bemused by students who were on full grant, but whose twentyfirst birthday gift list from their parents was a selection of white goods. My father, a chartered accountant, who was scrupulous with his tax returns, explained that the ones who owned businesses were arranging to only withdraw enough to live on, and not counting the business as their income. I don't know who he knew who did that, because he wouldn't have done their accounts.

Are they all the same people? Because I do some of those things.

We only have 2 kids though, having 3 kids is a huge luxury in my opinion, not one we could afford with the lifestyle we want.

It's all about personal choices isn't it ultimately?

Of course he would as that's standard business income planning. They also put full pension costs against the business and PAID corporation tax.

We have more money than we look like we should have. We haven’t changed our day to day lifestyle because we know the money could go away at any time and we are generally pretty frugal people, but DH’s salary and bonuses have risen exponentially in the last few years. So we do have the fancy car and the nice trips while still living in our modest home and saving for our future. It’s not like we can explicitly talk to people IRL about our low monthly mortgage cost and high salaries.

I would say the biggest factor of being able to treat yourself if you are lucky enough to be in this position is not moving to a fancier house just because you can. That will eat up all your money very quickly.