Imagine if Betty lived near you

[Aserena]

Inspired by another thread.

Meet Betty:

• Betty earns £50k (pre tax) per year, with a stable career.
• She is mid-life and single with no children.
• She has no wealthy relatives.

What living conditions and lifestyle would you expect Betty to have, in the area where you live?

Tell us where she’s living and how she spends her dosh. Feel free to be imaginative!

Betty is quiet but efficient at work. Friendly but reserved. She’s a bit of an eclectic dresser who is constantly attempting and failing to restrain her wild hair.

She has a 2 bed flat in zone 5 and a fairly dull office job at a tech firm.
She’s been in several long term relationships but nothing that panned out. She gets restless when things get too serious.

She has a long term fwb who wants more out of the relationship but knows she won’t commit. She often wonders if she’d rather be with a woman but doesn’t pursue that thought any further.
She’s not conventionally attractive but is very charismatic when she puts in the effort.
She is surprisingly mechanically inclined and suspects she may have been happier as an engine mechanic.
She recently got into contact with an old college boyfriend who has asked her to ditch everything and sail around the world with him on his somewhat shabby 45ft sail boat.

She is seriously considering this.

I'm assuming Betty is mid 40s if mid life. If she's earning £50k now, hopefully she bought a home about 15 years ago when she was on £35k and before house prices went bonkers.

She lives in a nice terraced house not far from the tram in Altrincham and works in central Manchester for HMRC so has a good pension building up.

She has a season ticket to the Royal Exchange Theatre. She meets friends for cocktails and a meal after work in town every couple of weeks and meets for weekend lunches in Altrincham Market.

She has a 4 year old Mazda2 (which spends a lot of time parked outside her house due to lack of street parking) and a Border Terrier that she adores. She pays for a daily dog walker and meets doggy friends for a walk on a Sunday morning. They like walking round Dunham or Tatton Park (National Trust) and often have a coffee afterwards.

She has a European city break long weekend with her best friend every year and still meets up with university friends for a break every other year.

If she's completely single (no boyfriend) then she goes on a singles walking holiday every year. She went to an interesting part of Turkey last year. She's still in touch with a couple of people she met there and they're planning which trip to go on this year. Her parents who are mid 60s look after the dog because she would hate to put him in kennels.

I love my DH and DC but I could easily have been this Betty. It would be rather nice.

Where I live now Betty would be quite rich. Where I moved from Betty would be surviving.

Er…I AM Betty so this won’t be hard 😂

Lives in a one bedroom flat in a capital city. Eye wateringly high rent. Not even that nice but very good location.

Spends money on aforementioned rent but also clothes and shoes.

Betty had a good life pre-covid. A busy, responsible job as a Ward Sister, family nearby who she was (and still is) very close to, and a 2 bedroom terrace house that had 5 years left on the mortgage. She'd done most of the work on it herself out of choice. She was planning to take a sabbatical and go on a 6 week tour of South America. Then lockdown happened, the trip was cancelled and Betty worked. She still doesn't talk much about those first few months. It's going to take a long time to process, if at all.

She then left the job she loved and has set up an online health care consultancy with her IT-wizard of an old friend, advising businesses on Health & Safety. She still struggles with the after effects of long covid. She misses her mum everyday after they lost her to Covid. She's moved to a quieter area in the Peak District as she needs time to herself and walking helps. No mortgage. She's rethinking her life. The trip to South America is back on. It will give her time to think what she wants from life.

Betty will have had her mortgage for years, she’s probably close to paying it off.

Not this Betty. Couldn’t afford to buy ten years ago when on a much lower wage and no deposit. OP specified no wealthy relatives and that was the case for me. My parents probably would have given me the money for a deposit if they had it but they didn’t.

Not at mod life - before my last promotion I was Betty.

I bough my starter apartment at 23 when I earnt £26k. Lived there for two year - it doubled in value. Then I bought a small new build semi. I got a big promotion three years ago and moved house to a bigger detached home.

but went I earned what Betty earns I was around 40 - I was 17 years into a mortgage that I had been over paying. I lived alone, owned a car, ate out regularly, bought mid range clothes and went to new yours on holiday every other year.

I was not a poor church mouse in a house share

Yes - £50k in middle age without kids to support means that she probably bought a few years after her coupled up friends (although for all we know she might have bought with a partner in her twenties and then separated) but also had significantly more disposable income at the point where the couples had children.

Most of the women I know in Betty's position in my area bought a small flat or two up two down house in a cheap area in the noughties, then bought a slightly bigger house in a better location later on and shared with a lodger who was a good friend for several years, allowing them to pay off their mortgage faster.

@PieFaceAndLovingIt Betty earns 50k so she works a decent amount and yet still apparently she must be scamming benefits 🙄

Most of the women I know in Betty's position in my area bought a small flat or two up two down house in a cheap area in the noughties, then bought a slightly bigger house in a better location later on

Yes. I'm not Betty, but am about that age and was single when I bought my first and second houses.

First house: 90% mortgage, 2 up 2 down Victorian terrace with yard and no parking, that needed significant cosmetic work but nothing structural, in an area of London that was pretty bad but on the brink of being up and coming. Sold it 5 years later for double what I'd paid and moved out of London. Which meant...

Second house: 35% mortgage, 1920s semi with big garden, loft conversion that brought it up to 4 beds and a garage, in a nice area. Again, needed cosmetic work but nothing I couldn't do myself.

Betty has a three-bed barn conversion she bought 20 years ago and is very much looking forward to finally paying it off in the next 5 years. There’s a proper (non-inflatable) hot tub in the garden, which she does not use for sex and is far enough away from neighbours not to disturb anyone. She goes wild swimming in the local river three times a week, winter and summer. Once a year, she goes on holiday with friends somewhere hot, and once a year somewhere in the UK on her own. She budgets carefully, because her pension provision isn’t as great as she would like, so she puts aside plenty each month, as well as making sure she has the recommended six months salary in an accessible savings account. Over the years, she has sometimes felt frustrated that life costs so much more as a single person, but also relieved not to have had the costs of raising children. Her hobbies (wild swimming, walking, sewing) are not expensive, and she mostly shops in discount supermarkets, charity shops and Vinted, from choice rather than because she feels she has to. She tries to be as eco-conscious as she can, making sure she reuses and recycles, and throws away as little as possible. She’s still using the crockery and cutlery she bought cheaply in her twenties, as well as the same bedlinen. She repaints when the house starts to look a bit shabby, only getting someone in to do the stairwell so that she doesn’t have to climb super-high ladders. The house is well-maintained to make sure it maintains its value.

She is content in her job, but would like to be able to drop to a 4 day week in her sixties, if possible.

Betty is a welder at a steel mill in Pittsburgh, who lives with her dog, Grunt, in a converted warehouse. She aspires to become a professional dancer, but has no formal dance training and works as a nightly cabaret performer at Mawby's, a neighborhood bar and grill.

Lacking family, Betty bonds with her coworkers at Mawby's, some of whom also aspire to greater artistic achievements. Jeanie, a waitress, is training to be a figure skater, while her boyfriend, short-order cook Richie, hopes to become a stand-up comic.

One night, Betty catches the eye of customer Nick Hurley, the owner of the steel mill where she works. After learning that Betty is one of his employees, Nick pursues her on the job, though Betty turns down his advances. Betty is also approached by Johnny C., who wants her to dance at his nearby strip club, Zanzibar.

Sorry it's taken a while.

8oz SR flour
4oz butter or marg
4oz demerara sugar
4oz dried fruit
1 tsp mixed spice
1 beaten egg

Rub in butter and flour, Add sugar, spice and mixed fruit. Stir in egg (plus a splash of milk if needed) until it sticks together. Form into 8-12 balls. Put on a baking tray lined with greaseproof paper. Decorate with cherries (and almonds if not going nut-free).

Bake for 15-20 mins at 180C or Gas 4 until golden brown. Sprinkle with demerara sugar while still hot.

I love you. Thank you so much @chickbean.

This should be in chat surely?