Modern life is rubbish?

[MeanMrMustardSeed]

I’m not been immune to this myself, so not pointing fingers. I just keep seeing the same things on here again and again, and I’m coming to the conclusion that Blur were on to something.

We saw the dream of 2 incomes, and bigger houses and newer cars, eating out and foreign holidays. Then because we were all doing it, houses got more expensive. Then we needed two cars as we had two jobs and lots of activities for the kids, but we couldn’t save up for them, or afford them, so we took out leases on them. In the good old days of low interest rates we bought bigger houses, and took out loans for extensions and spent the rest on a family holiday.

Now we have expensive lifestyles but less disposable income. We’re tied into paying off loans that seemed manageable 5 years ago, paying £100s for cars that just don’t seem to do it for us anymore as almost every other person has one anyway. But mostly we’re knackered from trying to manage it all.

Lots of us seem to dream of getting rid of 50% of our things, eating the same simple meals every week, saving slowly for house improvements and living with ‘okay’, and getting off the treadmill, or at least slowing it down. If modern life made us all happy, I could maybe accept it’s all fine, but that’s not the vibe I’m getting.

So is modern life rubbish, or have I messed up somewhere?

I’ve not heard of this book. Would you recommend it? I’m not really interested in fashion, but if the principles apply to a range of things, I could get reallly into it.

I think we have alot of progress in modern life to be proud and thankful for: technology, medical care, opportunities, education, convenience, women's rights, empathy towards children, younger generation healthier attitudes.

But also lots of regression that we should not accept or ignore: failing and strained public infrastructure, unmodernised education, social and public services, loss of simpler childhoods/youth, lack of multigenerational communities, less nature, much higher wealth inequality (or so I feel)

If I'm in my 20s today i would not choose to have kids.

I've never felt the need to have flash cars, designer clothes or all inclusive holidays. I've always cooked from scratch and have never been in debt. My savings have helped me ride through redundancies and I've always paid into a pension.

But I do appreciate that we are all bombarded with adverts to buy, buy, buy! My mantra is 'do I want to buy that or do I want to retire a month earlier?'

I've been watching Sort your life out on the TV and it is truly staggering the amount of stuff people have in their homes.

Living within your means and not bothering about keeping up with the Joneses has got to be the way forward. Too many will find out the hard way that nothing in life is free.

I agree.
I grew up in an era when police turned a blind eye to "domestic" violence, women were unable to take out loans or have a credit card without permission from their husband, I married in a time where rape was legal within marriage, women were paid less than men in the same job.

Many things have improved since then.

We always saved before we bought, prioritised paying off the mortgage, did DIY- learnt the hard way about mixing cement, plumbing and fancier stuff like making stained glass windows.
I don't think I have ever bought a car new- my current one is 10years old and beautiful mini in perfect condition so no need to change.
We went through a phase of wanting stuff but after clearing out parents houses after they died buying stuff has lost its appeal.

Take a breath and look at what you have - do you need it? Have a clear out, sell some stuff and put it towards a debt or a holiday. It can be satisfying.
Try a "one in one out" habit where you sell something for everything you buy. Encourage your children to do the same.

Yes there are temptations in modern life but if you did not need the new cars or bigger houses and you just wanted them- then reflect on that and try to change this behaviour.

Take back the control

Ha! Mumsnet is now showing me ads for Range Rover Evoques!!

Lots of interesting points on this thread.
My general feeling would be that its a choice to buy into capitalism and the need to keep up with others.
We made the choice not to do that because we wanted more financial security.
My husband and I both grew up in very poor circumstances though so that was a priority for us. We've also watched both sets of parents make poor financial decisions so although they're now both much more well off than when we were children, they are not looking at healthy retirements.
We drive old second hand cars, we did take out bank loans for them at the time, when rates were lower but we've since paid those off and have kept the cars, still better value than leases.
We didn't eat out for 4 years to buy our house and then subsequently cope with the costs of moving in.
We're now able to have a holiday every year and eat out occasionally but we buy all our clothes second hand, our house needs lots of updating and decorating to be presentable but its functional and we prioritise what we enjoy, not what looks good to others.
My advice would be to prioritise what makes you happy, you don't need everything.

@Gogogo12345 sure. I'm just jealous of people who managed to buy any property! It's not real jealousy though. But my mum's generation could buy property in their 20s if one of the couple worked. Now if both are professionals they'd still have to wait about 10 years to buy anything.

Yes, the book is excellent and is generally educational, made me rethink some of my habits but also see where I was blind to being manipulated. I got mine on loan in local library, maybe yours has it too.

MN doesn't show me ads for anything. Ad blockers are your friends.

Try How To Be Free by Tom Hodgkinson as well. It's a pretty light and entertaining read, but very thought-provoking. It was written almost 20 years ago so before social media became the monster it is now, but he did seem to see the way the wind was blowing.

I agree with everything you’ve said. I am on maternity leave and would love to stay at home with my baby for a year but maternity pay is shocking - especially with rising bills - so I’ll probably have to go back sooner.

@OhMargaret

Women are still trapped in marriages, now they can’t afford to leave even with both partners working full time. No one is winning in this society, the expectations placed on women have become ridiculous. In reality, the only aspects of feminism that have ‘won’ are the ones that directly benefit shareholders and business owners.

Of course some women are still trapped in marriages. But proportionately, far fewer than before. Women are at least now protected by the divorce courts in that they don't have to give up a lifetime raising children and running a household only to find that they have nothing to show at the end of it.

I'm not going to disagree with your premise that life is hard on a lot of people and keeping balls in the air is draining. That's a given. But your argument that this would suddenly disappear if fewer women were working is a false premise.

People talk about the pre-feminism days were an era of calm and choice and that's just not the case. Most people have always worked really hard. Whether in back-breaking blue collar jobs or in corporate politics or women in the days before labour saving devices existed spending all their time cleaning and organising things at home or desperately keeping up appearances to hold onto a man who was there only source of income. It's never been this Elysian scenario in which women were completely protected and free to focus on their children.

There's no scenario in which women get both economic autonomy and the chance to step off the hamster-wheel. The best case scenarios are a) you marry someone wealthy who is also decent, enabling you to work less and you are protected by marriage but you are locked in OR b) that you generate your own money and are exhausted but at least its your money and there isn't a huge financial penalty for leaving.

It's Hobson's Choice maybe but it is at least a choice. For the vast vast majority of women until about 50-60 years ago that choice didn't exist.

You mention cars not doing it for you anymore because everyone else has the same. I’m paraphrasing but not sure what you mean?
Yes I agree that societal pressure is for stuff and more more more.

Cost of living crisis is making things difficult for us but not impossible. We aren’t on the treadmill I don’t think. We sold up and moved for land and a reno project house. I gave up work and my dh works full time at home running a business. We have land and animals and have really made daily life, the holiday we always went on. By that I mean, we always holidayed in the countryside with views and quiet.
Stuff isn’t it for me, but location is. Lifestyle is.
We drive old cars and our reno project we are doing ourselves, we hand make and reuse whatever we can.

I see more and more people craving the simple life.

I think your comment about everyone having those cars is really telling in terms of how you’ve spent money to impress , I spend money on things I love or need and couldn’t care less what others think and I am very comfortable financially as a result

As I've mentioned before, when I was growing up my dad replaced his car religiously every two or three years, with an expensive premium brand, losing a fortune in the process as he had to stomach the depreciation. I could see my mum despair over what it did to our family finances - it absolutely ruined any chance we had of an affordable life.

I understand why he did it - he was born in the Depression and grew up in absolutely horrific poverty, and his biggest wish in life was to be successful. But he constantly took on more than he could comfortably afford, and later on, as his health failed, it really caught up with him and threatened us with homelessness on more than one occasion. It meant we had to move house a lot, something I found deeply disruptive and unsettling.

I was absolutely determined not to repeat those mistakes. I didn't learn to drive until my late thirties anyway - driving is more hassle than it's worth in London, and most public transport was free for me as a perk of my job with Transport for London. I only learned to drive when I moved to Scotland, and was struggling to find work because poor public transport made commuting difficult.

I have only ever bought one car. It's a Dacia Sandero Stepway, known for being very simple and very cheap. I bought it new eleven years ago, trading in my mum's Kia Picanto when she died, and paying the remainder on my debit card from money I inherited. It's a car mocked and sneered at by petrol heads, but all these years later, it's still impeccably reliable and meets my needs perfectly. Annoyingly I've just had to fork out £400 to fix the horn (a surprisingly complex job), but some people pay more than that in leasing costs every single month. I'll keep it going until it either falls apart or develops a very expensive fault, but it's such a rugged and reliable thing, those days seem quite a long way off.

I'm actually quite glad my dad made stupid financial decisions, it taught me how hollow and stupid it all is, and I've never once been in the terrible mess he got into, just because he wanted a BMW to impress his fellow golfers. My income is way below average, and I'd like it to be higher, but I manage, and it isn't actually that hard.

Thank you - and good suggestion re library. I had automatically checked Amazon, but library is the way to go!

Sorry, I was saying ‘we’ on a population level, rather than personally. More a comment on society. I’m thinking of friends who now drive RRs, which 10/15 years ago might have impressed, but these days every other person seems to have one.

i drive an 8 year old Alhambra - a car most MN wouldn’t be seen dead in!!!!

I drive a 19 year old mini cooper convertible. I've looked at changing but modern cars are so boring and I like putting the roof down when the sun shines. DH had a Dacia Duster, amazing work horse. Son has it now. So he's bought himself a second hand VW with numerous gadgets we still haven't worked them all out 😁
It's an automatic.

Haven’t read all the posts, but I would highly recommend the book Affluenza.
I agree with what you’ve said OP.

People always have the option of working and saving for a few years to augment maternity pay. It's not society's responsibility to make life cushy or to fulfill everyone's preferences.

Very out of touch but thanks for the input

Why are you blaming others for your own failings. Living beyond your means, keeping up with the Jones's, is just stupidity. Why didn't you reign it in at any time. We never lived beyond our means.

When I bought my little 2-bedroom cottage, there was a lock on the second bedroom door, which is just a few feet across the hall from the other bedroom, and a tiny bathroom in between. The only other two rooms are a kitchen and lounge. The bedrooms are about 10x10 feet each.

I asked an elderly neighbour what the lock was for and she said the older couple who built the house took in lodgers. The man of the house worked at a factory and there were always young single men who needed a place to live.

So instead of a flat or house, a man in his 20s (this was in the 1950s, 60s and 70s) would rent a room and share the bathroom with the homeowners. The lady of the house was willing to share a teeny bathroom with two men, one a virtual stranger, to make ends meet. I presume the lodger either sat in his room at night, walked around the village or sat & listened to radio or watched tele with the homeowners.

That elderly neighbour who gave me the information -- her house was even smaller than mine! She was a music teacher and her husband some sort of draughtsman; I never met him. They didn't even have a shower. They raised two sons who shared a room with two single beds until both were out of uni. She raised food in her garden and they never did eat much meat. She was widowed at age 60 and lived into her 90s in that house, very very frugally. She was still wearing pants that clearly were from the 1960s when she died. When they cleared out her house, everything was old except a TV her older son had provided for her. Yet she lived a rich full live as a teacher, member of the community orchestra, wrote books about music for children, etc.

This is how people really used to live. My dad, born 1928, grew up in a house with his parents, grandmother and a succession of extended family or lodging friends. When he returned home after military service, he resumed living there but had to rent space from a neighbour for his car. He worked in a factory by day and then drove a taxi from 6pm to 1am to generate extra income that eventually became the deposit for a small house. A 2BR tiny place he purchased in his 30s, and where ultimately I spent my baby years. When they moved it was "upgrading" to a 1000 square foot cottage. And that was when my dad was nearly 40, with a secure job in an automotive factory.

My other worked from age 14 and helped support her mother's household; her father was an unreliable wastral. Shared a small room with her two sisters until she married at 25, in the early 1960s.

People expect SO much more when they are in their 20s/30s/40s than they used to; that is part of the problem. When people talk about "the good old days" they conveniently forget all of that. Expectations ned to become more realistic. There are twice as many people on the planet (if not more) than there were then, but the same amount of space in desirable areas, and even fewer natural resources/need for human labour. Get used to diminishing lifestyles.

My point isn't that things were worse pre-feminism, it's that what passes for feminism today is largely about reducing wages and increasing a cheap workforce. There are some protections within marriage in the courts now (not many) but these are now slowly rolled back, unfortunately. The average woman in a middle-income household now works far harder now than she would have been expected to in the previous generation.