To think that after COL change expectations have to change

[EuclidianGeometryFan]

If you are a couple in "professional" or middle-to-highish income jobs, say between £70k to £100k joint family income, is it now unreasonable to expect to raise two children in a middle-class lifestyle in the south?

Example of a couple with a 3 bed house, run one car, two children in primary, so still need after-school and holiday childcare, have a dog.
Would you expect to afford a few coffees each week, a couple of meals out or takeaways each month, a couple of TV subscriptions, a nice holiday abroad, or perhaps a better car instead of the holiday - and not to have to count the pennies when shopping or turn the heating off to save money?

Or is this too much to expect?

Would it be more reasonable nowadays to not afford the coffees and meals, not afford the dog, only cheap camping holidays in UK, old car, no TV subscriptions?
Even when the children are in secondary and no longer need childcare, you then have to worry about helping them afford uni or house deposit or driving lessons.

(On the plus side, at least you own your own house into retirement.)

I think our idea of what a "professional middle-class" lifestyle should be like has to permanently change. With the cost of childcare and housing, we just can't live at the standard we used to.

My parents 100% provided a better lifestyle than I can access now, despite only having one wage. We lived in a big house (bought for £70,000, sold for £850k), had foreign holidays, pets, ran two cars, food shop at M&S. Both my parents had alcohol problems and bought copious amounts of that to boot.

They both retired at 55 and go on 4-5 holidays per year. My dad did 32 years of work total and my mum did 10.

I’m single and so have to cover the expenses of 2 people (which is society’s assumption now) by myself. I can’t afford to go on holiday, have a tiny house and a huge mortgage, can’t afford children even if I could have them which I can’t, shop at Aldi/Lidl and prettty much never get takeaways or go on nights out because every utility company is putting their prices up every ten minutes these days.

I started work at 16 and expect that SP age will be 75 by which point I’ll have worked 54 years.

But I have an iphone and a bigger TV so in their eyes I’m absolutely loaded and they’re impoverished.

Expectations are a lot hight now. People need to lower their standards.

This was a very high salary back in the early 1990s. Dh and I had a combined income of £40k - one professional role, one managerial.
edit- meant the post which referenced salaries of 80k to 90k in early 90s

We have an ex council house - it's lovely but 30 years ago DH job we'd have the really old posher nearer work/town center house.

My parents house - perfectly normal 70s 3 bed terrace- none of us kids could afford to buy - it will have be to sold when my remaning parent passes as they intend to split three ways and none of is can afford the 2/3 we'd have to find for siblings.

DH and I did Uni - post graduate qualifications - to access higher paying jobs. We've got compareable to our childhood lifestyles but for our ages we are still behind - they started on kids and buying houses ealier than we could so by our ages were mortage and mostly childfree. So we have less to save and less good pensions.

We've cut back and back - no car and at best UK hoildays one a year- and increased income where we can- and still feel like we are at best standing still. We are still better of than many younger people - though kids may boomerag back which would make it harder to downsize going forward.

The OP is talking about middle class life in the South East.

Thats the kind of house a middle class family in the South East might expect to live in - it will look very different to a £500k house elsewhere in the country!

Hemel is in the South East ... It is 30 minutes to London on a train

But I have an iphone and a bigger TV so in their eyes I’m absolutely loaded and they’re impoverished.

I saw someone on youtube shorts trying to explain this. Apparently in past decades consumerable like TV were very expenisve compare to incomes and housing cheaper - and that's now flipped.

People haven't updated their world view - so if you do without coffee or eating out by end of year who do save several hundred - but that goes nowhere with housing costs where in past it made a huge difference.

It took a decade for us to save house deposit - lots of doing without - but I think now it would take even longer if it was possible - as rents are so high.

There are plenty of houses far less than 500k in hemel and the surrounding areas. Stevenage, Hatfield etc. All with fast trains into London. All in the South East

I agree with some of this.

Some of it does just sound snobby and entitled.

As a pp correctly pointed out, a university degree no longer equals a high paying job.

All these posters hand wringing about how they'll afford their 3 or 4 bed house (but not ex-council and god forbid anything that looks like the semi a poster posted), their two cars, dog, annual holiday, takeaways and coffee, whilst paying for their kids to go uni....

Just stop.

You're putting the pressure on yourself and you're missing the obvious: you went to uni, and you're not well paid.

University is not what it was. Too many people are going to uni. There are too many Mickey Mouse degrees out there, and it's not doing anybody any favours to insist that young people go.

Use the money instead to help them buy a property (as that's the other thing people seem to be in a panic about) and perhaps explore trades where they can make a good living and not start off their working life in a load of debt.

Ultimately, as a pp also said, life is for living. Stop trying to keep up with the Joneses. Just live within your means and don't be so hung up on class.

But in my generation (I started working 30 years ago) you worked hard in my line of work and got enough money to buy a nice place and have fun at the weekend. I live in a nice area. There are artisan bread shops. There are gastropubs. I can walk home from the train station and not worry about being mugged. The new grads at our work - doing the jobs we started out in - have it immeasurably tougher. No safe walk home from the train station for them. It’s like the ‘outnumbered’ family. The dad was a teacher. The mum didn’t seem to do anything high flying, but my goodness they had a nice life. How?

I was in my 20s before I went abroad
We didn't have many uk holidays either
My parents, who both had to work, did manage to buy - but they didn't buy a house that can be sold for three quarters of a million now. As a single parent I had a small home and camping holidays and shopping at Aldi. I am better off now because of the financial choices I made over the decades - saving as opposed to hotel based holidays and frequent meals out

There has been a ridiculous rise in house prices , but people also do expect way more than average people used to have by way of goods and holidays , and it's patently clear to me that some people do expect to have everything their parents had , and everything their parents have now ,and a whole lot more on a very average family income whilst in the most expensive years of having a very young family

70k household = 2 average incomes
At an average income at the start of your life , no you can't expect have it all. But you should be able to live comfortably, with some money for fun things provided you are careful - and people on median salaries always did need to be a bit careful

I said 'the equivalent'.

I think they meant the equivalent to todays £90k wage but back in the 1990s, so being on something far less than £90k in the 1990s.

What needs to change is the housing market, particularly in the south. With sensible mortgage/rent, everything would still work ok. It’s why pensioners appear to be ‘living it up’ - they have paid off their mortgage. Their pension hasn’t kept pace with CoL any more than wages have.

Yeah, that makes sense.

I had to save from 14 to 32 to have a house deposit, and I could only manage that because rents were ‘just’ insane rather than the absolutely batshit bonkers they are now. I certainly had to cut back on a lot more than just coffees and avocado toast!

Younger generations than me are absolutely screwed without parental help.

And trust me - a family in London with one teacher as a parent and the mother not working as in outnumbered - would not be having the lifestyle of outnumbered at any time since the Second World War without family money

( mother was a teacher and we lived in a cheap area but dad needed to work as well and things were incredibly difficult for the first 10 years if my life - not holidays , cars, tvs but more thinking about every penny )

Boomer here. We had what you’d think is a good income ( 2 professionals working) 3 DC, no dog, just about to finish paying off London suburb house now at age 65. We were never able to afford cars less than 15 years old, only did 3 foreign holidays when the DC were kids, and then for a week only.
Most years we managed a week in Uk somewhere squashed and self catering but some years no holiday .
We didn’t really have takeaways, and couldn’t afford school dinners for all 3.
I did consider us middle class because I was a lawyer but we were really strapped financially, and with hindsight would have had a better standard of living outside london. But all my family were here so I didn’t want to move away from our support.
I know CoL is an issue now, but we just didn’t have personal spending money in the same way that people expect to now.
I think housing is a bigger issue- it’s not just the cost, but the lack of availability in a lot of places, not only London. Tightening belts isn’t going to solve that. Every week in MN I’m reading about people, families, not being able to find somewhere to live, being evicted with nowhere to go, local councils not having the housing available to fulfil their statutory duty. Single people with no hope of being rehoused. It’s scary and I don’t know what the way forward is, certainly in the short term.

You say that as though it's their fault.

Aren't you happy that your parents have been able to retire on great pensions?

I cannot understand the resentment. I find it bizarre that because you don't have something, you begrudge someone else having it.

There are houses of course, but the OP is talking about a middle class life.

The housing choices are fairly underwhelming vs what somewhat might expect with a ‘top 15%’ income in the house.

Equally, this means we have to expect that there will be consequences of such, and we might not like them.

Op is talking about a naice middle class life on a median sort of income

Then they need to adjust their expectations. A middle class lifestyle is subjective. It doesn't have to mean a half a million pound house on a leafy street. Of course it can absolutely mean that, but then it can't also mean Caribbean holidays and takeaways (on OP's budget). Them's the breaks

Example of a couple with a 3 bed house, run one car, two children in primary, so still need after-school and holiday childcare, have a dog.
Would you expect to afford a few coffees each week, a couple of meals out or takeaways each month, a couple of TV subscriptions, a nice holiday abroad, or perhaps a better car instead of the holiday - and not to have to count the pennies when shopping or turn the heating off to save money?

Our parents generation didn't expect to have a few coffees each week, a couple of meals out or takeaways each month, a couple of TV subscriptions, a nice holiday abroad, or perhaps a better car (many would have neither) - and not to have to count the pennies when shopping or turn the heating off to save money when they were our age either.

On the very odd (perhaps once a year) times my parents had a drink out they would get one cup between them and share it. We'd have one can of coke between the three of us.
Never ate out, very occasionally, perhaps twice a year had fish and chips. We only had a b/w TV until late 80s to save on the licence fee, never holidayed abroad and not a holiday every year either, and the car they brought (second hand) in 1982 was used until they got rid of it about 5 years ago. When shopping, dm would stop before she got to the checkout and work out if she had enough money in her purse to pay, and then she'd work out what went back. And we were only allowed the heating between November and February. Most of my friends were similar.

It's brutal just now. I think the only reasons we're not struggling is we have no children to pay for, and our mortgage is almost paid off. Can't imagine how tough it is for people who are in the double whammy situation of new mortgage and childcare costs.

The upside of all this is that living a more frugal life is much better for the planet. Not flying abroad, having a smaller home to heat, not buying excess stuff you don't really need etc.