To have expected more in life from working to reach this salary?

[grethrow]

I’m early forties and earn 75k. I know this isn’t huge money but it’s well above average salaries in the uk. I worked hard to get to this point (I’m not saying people who earn less don’t work hard).

I guess along the way I always thought I would be able to have a really comfortable life on this salary. I have one ds who is 11 but his costs don’t really factor in much as his dad pays for most stuff (ds lives with me so dad pays a decent amount).

I assumed going on holiday would be easy but renting a cottage in Devon in a nice area for a week is around 1,500, then there’s travel costs and food etc when you’re there! Going abroad long haul is extortionate. I guess these things are just about doable for me but it’s not easy.

I am having a privileged whinge. I know that. But I do feel sometimes like maybe at 18 I shouldn’t have bothered. My parents had a similar income (taking into account inflation) and me and my brother both went to independent schools, grew up in a large home and parents had very nice cars. It wouldn’t be possible for me to go and buy a nice car outright. I know people have it much worse but I still feel cheated and like it is a slog for very little, fair of me to feel this? Do others feel this?

You have a good salary but I'm not sure why you thought it would afford an extravagant lifestyle where you could just spend freely without thinking about it

The issue is no one is ever satisfied with their salary as they get more extravagant the wealthier they get and this becomes the new norm.

Didn't Mel B from the Spice Girls end up bankrupt? I rest my case.

in other words, day to day you spend as much as you can, on whatever you like, whenever you like without budgeting in the slightest, or actually having a clue about how much you are spending and on what, and are then wondering where all your £1000s of disposable income has gone every month.. gotcha.

Your money hasn't "gone anywhere", it's gone EVERYWHERE.

The fact that you haven't taken you child on holiday in 5 years is disgusting, do you tell him it's because you can't afford it too?

I hope his dad takes him on holidays.

OP, you are either lying or incredibly thick

My money is on splashing on designer clothes.

Nailed it!

Up until last year we had a similar income to you, but between DH and I. We have been to Cornwall every year as a family, and last year a week in New York for two of us, and still enough left over to pay for a vintage car and a substantial garden refurb. You are frittering money and complaining you don’t have a good lifestyle, but your expectations of what a good lifestyle is, is skewed - what you want is a millionaire lifestyle.

You seriously spend £60 every month on a hair cut?
And how can you be spending £300 a week on a child above and beyond his food and housing costs???

OP, EVERYONE has to budget - even the late Queen HAD to budget. You have X coming in - Y going out, you need to make sure you have enough for Z at the end of each month and the only way you get Z is to cut back on Y or increase X

We ( me and dh) have less then half your income between us. OK so we no longer have a mortgage but we have huge fuel bills - we rely on oil and coal and there is no public transport so we need to keep two cars on the road and thats not cheap as we have long distances to drive for anything. We are comfortable. We have a roof, we can afford our bills, we have nice cars ( owned ) we help the kids out, we take two short haul holidays a year. We also eat well - yes its frozen berries and bananas and apples and veg thats in season, but we dont go hungry, we eat well, like a drink and socialise - and still are managing to save for a cruise next year

You are not budgeting. Even on the scant figures you have bandied about here, nothing is adding up

@grethrow

If fresh berries are so important grow your own. We are also very partial to soft fruit here. We grow our own strawberries, raspberries and blueberries. I rarely buy soft fruit and from June onwards have a ready supply, you can get autumn fruiting raspberries.
Usually enough to make some jam and also freeze loads to have over Christmas and new year.
Or you could just teach your child to eat seasonally.

You may not want budgeting help…but you definitely need it!

You are absolutely rolling in it and you can’t easily get by

The math ain’t mathing.

£1000pm just in 'costs' for one child? what are these costs? Does he fly abroad to ski every week 👀 £40 on fruit for one child?
How the other half live 😂

@sandyhappypeople that’s horrible, why are you telling her she is disgusting. Fuck me who needs enemies when you have those kind of comments on here.

It’s excessive or it’s not. That’s not an example of a nice lifestyle. It’s just food for the week at home. I don’t think she is complaining about that, or saying she can’t afford decent groceries. I think she is saying that she can’t afford the lifestyle she expected on her salary. Going out, nice clothes maybe or a nice car.

I mean I budget to the penny and can't afford a holiday but that's because I'm on min wage
However I do manage to pay a mortgage, all the bills, have a haircut etc on min wage

Even 40k would make a massive difference for me

I think it's probably money.. not sure what the word is.. slippage?
So you earn £100 more a month say and you start buying slightly different stuff and maybe put the heating on a bit more etc, and so on and so on then you think where is all my money going, I should have more

Or you start shopping at Tesco instead of Aldi, get another pay rise and maybe think fuck it I can afford Waitrose and all of a sudden you're spending £500pm more than you used to

Go back to basics, get a bank statement and go through it, cancel any unnecessary subscriptions, look where the money is going and where you can cut it back and what's important

My luxury is a £39 peloton membership but I would rather eat toast all month than be without that

I'm not telling her she's disgusting, I'm telling her it's disgusting she is prioritising £60 haircuts every month and £40 fresh berries every week, and blowing at least £1500 disposable income every month while complaining that she 'hasn't been able to afford' to take her child on holiday for the last 5 years..

I stand by it.

£300 a week on after school activities, £220 on a car, £60 haircuts and £40 a week on just berries IS a nice lifestyle!

Lifestyle creep. That's the words I was thinking of!
£40 is 2/3 of my food shop a week that you're spending on berries. That's lifestyle creep - you can't have £40 on berries and a lovely lifestyle and holidays and everything that someone on 150k might have so work out what's important

You could have a punnet of raspberries a day from Aldi for £12 a week

@grethrow lots of would-be economists on this thread who are able to make you a budget, suggest you get money management classes and stop buying designer clothes. They are doing it right and you are doing it wrong, might as well just accept it 😀

Unsurprisingly not one person earning the same salary you are has came along and disagreed with you, which in my opinion proves your point exactly. To quote your OP

I guess along the way I always thought I would be able to have a really comfortable life on this salary

two dozen posters have come along and speculated on your outgoings and what you should have, and should be able to do with it, which means that they do expect that you would be able to have a better lifestyle and they actually agree with you without realising it themselves!

Maybe I’m too spendy. What would you include in an average grocery shop and where do you go? In all for being educated. I shop at Waitrose (home delivery), but there is Tesco, Sainsbury’s and a Lidl near enough. I am willing to change some habits to save a bit of money, so advice is welcome.

I spend more on all of those things, apart from after school activities, which a paid by term unless we use wrap around care which is max £20 per day for after school care.

I never thought I had an excessive lifestyle, but reading all these posts, maybe I do.

@VickyPollard25 for me I use Aldi but Tesco price match on quite a few things and Lidl has decent stuff especially cheese, yoghurts, deli meat, cleaning products

I watch the price per kg on stuff carefully so it's wonky or lowest brand stuff for fruit and veg and more basic stuff
Bananas, apples, carrots, onions rather than berries or fancy broccoli!
I buy the fattier beef mince and drain the fat as needed
Batch cook and freeze
Add lentils into soups to stretch them further
Buy big bags of spices and herbs that I use regularly and then decant into smaller pots

If there is bits of left over veg and meat and cheese then I turn it into a pasta bake with a tomato sauce (courgette, onion, bacon, scraps of cheddar, whatever is there!)

I don't do more than one supermarket trip a week, the salad stuff gets eaten first, the end of the week is the longer lasting stuff
I also add up as I go round the shop so I know how much I'm spending

Sainsbury’s are still decent quality but will be significantly cheaper than Waitrose. Probably about 30% cheaper honestly. I like Lidl for some things but not others, so don’t want to commit to a full weekly shop from there.

It will also depend on what you are buying - we’re vegetarian, cook a lot from scratch, and don’t drink a lot of alcohol so obviously spend less than somebody who buys a lot of meat, ready meals and wine. And no £40 berries (honestly even a large M&S fruit salad bowl is only £4.50, so I really don’t understand how OP is blowing £40 a week on raspberries. DS loves berries in his porridge every morning, so we buy big bags of frozen for £1.50).

£300 per WEEK on after school activities?! After school activities for pony club while you buy a piece of gold jewellery to show off as you ride?! What activities cost £300 per week?!