Dd thinks i'm tight. I think I'm sensible.

[malificent7]

Dp ( soon to be dh)and I earn £65,000 pa between us.We are lucky enough to have a mortgage and we went abroad last year.
Due to the rising cost of living we are scaling back. This year we are holidaying in a caravan holiday park in Cornwall for 5 nights. I shop at Lidl ( always have) and a bit of Tescos. I'm always looking for the cheapest product in supermarkets etc. Dd would live to shop Waitrose ( not happening and I love Lidl anyway.)

We have ditched our big white wedding for a simple registry office and restaurant with a 3 night stay in Devon air b and b for honeymoon.

Dd (15) is a bit sneery about this and says I'm tight. For context, some of her school friends are much better off and are going on a string of exotic holidays, festivals, shopping sprees etc. Some of them she describes as " old money."

Recently I went for a slightly better paid job but decided it wasn't for me as the commute was horrendous. I didn't get it anyway...Dd was incredulous that I didn't want a 2 hour hour commute each way for £5,000 extra a year.

She does work as a waitress so she knows how hard it is to earn ££. She wants to be super rich...fair play to her but Dp and I are starting to feel inadequate.

Aibu to think that I am being sensible...not tight and dd needs a reality check.

I do feel bad anyway that I didn't chase ££ younger but that was explained on another thread.

You are a parent.
She is a child.
Live your life how you feel any . It sounds like you are teaching her money isn't everything

As an ex teacher I can confirm that a lot of kids are on another planet when it comes to money and wages. A lot believe they will be footballers, YouTubers etc! No grasp on reality yet! So just ignore her. One day she will wake up and realise that earning big money isn't easy

We are not having a registry office wedding to put on a bizarre show of "poverty!" How odd! 😅
We had savings so were going to do a big do but several expensive car breakages and repairs later and we decided it was insane to spend £8000 on 1 day and it was making us miserable. No point starting married life in debt when many marriages fail due to money issues. A big spendy wedding did not fill us with joy.

Mine’s 17 and honestly I’ve found teen parenting intense. Getting them launched as isn’t easy. We have some of our best conversations in the car.
They are in a world where they are seeing what their friends have and social media but don’t have the life experience to see the bigger picture or realise what else may be going on.
DD’s teen friend was given an Audi with a big bow on for her birthday.
But it wasn’t new, dad has his own business and was leased through it and she’s driving herself and siblings to school (they are rural) saving expensive bus passes plus mum can work more hours as she’s not ferrying the kids about to hobbies after school.
Adults can see that, all teens see is omg ‘Katie’ got an Audi she’s so lucky.

No...i said...a mortgage. A small one. For context..i rented for years. So yes...i consider myself lucky.

She's 15. She's differentiating herself from you. It's an important part of becoming her own person. Whatever you do will be wrong atm. So if your spending ethos was different she would probably judge you for being wasteful!

Maintain boundaries around respectful speech in the home (making sure you hold yourself to the same standards you expect of her) and then agree to differ.

Well, it's all relative, round here that would be enough that a 3 bed rental would cost half the take home. If you lived near where my boss lives, commuter belt surrey, I doubt it would go as far as that.

Add to this running cars, eating, heating, and kids, it gets very UNcomfortable PDQ

@malificent7 You are doing the right thing, living how you feel comfortable. cutting your cost for a big white wedding for something you think is more appropriate and affordable is the right thing to do. Your DD doesn't know much about the world at all. Show her the numbers and also talk to her about unforeseen expenses and the need to be careful with money, especially at the moment.

65k isn’t a lot of money these days. Sounds like you’re sensibly living within your means.

A 65k combined income is definitely very comfortable.

This!

Why does she know how much you earn? It’s absolutely none of her business.

🤔 Never felt that way towards my own parents. At any point.

I think it depends on whether you can afford it or not? Money is so subjective - depends on your mortgage, location, debts. It isn't just about what you earn.

If you could comfortably afford to shop at M&S or go to Florida etc but chose not to, then I do think you could be seen (esp to a teenager) as tight. If on the other hand you can't afford it - you are not tight, you just can't afford it.

As someone who grew up very very poor - I know what is is like to see others with things so I think there is a distinction.

This! Definitely needs doing.

If DD had to buy a single item from Waitrose herself she'd soon realise why you don't do the shop there.

This. Absolutely. It’s a brilliant opportunity to educate kids on home finance and economic realities

make sure she does the Martin Lewis money course that’s free- there’s a kids course and text book now if she’s not done it at school

I’d pitch it, “so, we can sit down and I’ll show you how money works and explain why we haven’t had holiday/didn’t want to take other job, or you can just stop with the rude comments and keep your naive and hopelessly ignorant opinions to yourself until you’ve grown up and have some financial experience. At which point we can have an adult debate of pro and cons of my choices over my financial affairs.”

She’s 15. Just roll your eyes.

You have a very modest income and lifestyle, she’s at the age where you’ll always be wrong, and she’s at the age where she’s heavily exposed to wealth and materialism via social media and tv.

If it prompts her to work hard and make sure she’s financially extremely comfortable, great.

This might be a good learning opportunity for her. Be transparent sit her down and explain your monthly income vs expenditure. Her attitude makes me think as she increases her earning she may not make sensible decision. She’s old enough to understand and take a better approach to money and how far it goes

“old money” is a big thing on SM weirdly.

Agree with being careful etc live within your means but don’t go too far the other way. Through my work I see extremely wealthy elderly people penny pinching with hundreds of thousands in the bank yet they seem unable to spend or enjoy their money because they are so set in their miserly ways.

DD wants to be super rich eh? Is she working her arse off at school to get the grades for finance? Is she techy and expanding her IT knowledge? Is she stunningly beautiful so that supermodel career is viable? Is she very business minded and already coming up with business ideas?

If none of the above just nod and smile.

ds(19) is similarly "tight", I would call it being financially aware, but it is a good thing.

There were a couple of things that taught him this. The first was giving him what appeared to be lots of money each month (from age 11), but with responsibilities to go with it - he had to budget his school lunches for the month, phone data, barbers, spotify, netflix, etc. If he over spent at school lunches he wouldn't be able to afford something else he really wanted to do and bore the consequences.

The second one was going over with him 6 months worth of bank statements and school lunch parent pay and showing him where his money was going and he got a shock how much (for example) lots of little PS5 purchases, or regular bottles of juice at school added up to and how he could have had that cash in his bank still to spend on something significant instead.

If your dd has never had to develop a saving or budgeting habit, or had consequences when she ran out of money I can understand why she won't just get it. The way it luckily worked out for us ds learnt this before he got his first PT job so it is now a habit with him, I think once they have a job and a load of disposable income they don't learn this lesson.

Christ I wouldn’t have dared to be so sneery about my parents. Reality check needed. She sounds like a spoiled brat

YABU discussing it with her. Is it really any of her business how much you earn and how much you turned a job down for. Sh needs to crack in and make her own money and not get you to bank roll her if she want to ‘be rich’.

I agree about getting her to set a budget

With our dc, form age of 12 we gradually gave the, more autonomy over what was spent on them . We gave them a monthly allowance and told them what it covered, how we’d determined those costs, and that they were expected to account for their spends bs budget if they ever wanted a raise.

at 12 it was mostly about entertainment stuff, by 15/16 it included non school clothes, makeup, plus entertainment and odd meal out with friends (McDonald’s or whatever) , after 16 it included All clothes, shoes, undies, phone, transport (bus train), entertainment, going out, and money needed to buy gifts for close relatives/friends. We didn’t make them work , encouraged it with an every £10 you earn, well top up by £1 and also encouraged it to get experience on their applications. Both did get small jobs, but mainly focused in holidays rather than evening .

this carried into university when we paid them their maintenance money - we’d review budget together at that age once per year but again, we expect to see evidence of why it wasn’t enough if they said it wasn’t enough.

These days were still passing on experience to them now they’re in late 20s, loans, investments, using tax allowances, pensions, house buying….they’ll call us to ask how stuff works when needed.

we never, after age of 12, passed money to them without having a clear budget. They knew if they ran out they’d have to provide evidence of how and why-it only happened twice when eldest was being fleeced by landlord for big deposit and 8 weeks advanced rent 😱, and when youngest managed to drive over his phone in the car 🤷🏼‍♀️🤣

Ehhh, I don't think you can assume OP can easily afford expensive weddings and holidays based on the info given. 65k household income doesn't mean that. They'll likely be fine with bills etc and some treats, but it doesn't strike me as a martyrish level of money management not to have a big wedding or an expensive honeymoon on that money.

65k is a good or tight budget depending on where you live and number of kids. It’s all subjective

if you’re in London with average family house price at £800k, that’s a hell of a different outgoing than Wigan where a 4 bed house is possible at £350k or even less.

it also depends on commuting - as Op has pointed out

I do wish people wouldn’t go on about what is comfortable in terms of income

im retired now, pension less than half of what I earnt. But I’m way better off in terms of lifestyle than when I was earning. Obviously.