To not understand how people fund their lives and feel a bit jealous?

[Travelenthusiast]

Just that really. Mid-30s and we have what I have always seen as a healthy income of £180k per annum (obviously been lower when we were younger and increased over time), and had some family help - about £50k to buy our first house several years ago.

And i’m not complaining about our quality of life- I know we are lucky and can afford a good holiday every year, and a more expensive/ luxury holiday occasionally. DS does a few extra-curricular activities, we don’t have to worry about the food shop total (we aren't extravagant at all) and can afford to eat out a few times a month etc. And I know we are lucky as I grew up in a poor family and understand the stress and implications.

But we have a very modest 3-bed house (with a big mortgage), our car is ten years old and there’s no way we could replace it, we can rarely afford to replace clothes and shoes for us (of course do for DS), days out are thought through to reduce cost, would make pack lunches to take into work and don’t buy shop coffees, we could not afford private school, and often we cut out the eating out to add to savings instead- basically £ is not abundant. And we are relatively careful financially and not big spenders generally. None of this is me saying our life is bad- I know we are really luckily, but just trying to give an idea of limitations / life.

We do live in SE commuter belt (not london) where everything is very expensive.

But we are surrounded by families who have so much more, so apparently effortlessly. We are genuinely one of the only local families without a 4x4 (i know cry me a river 🤣). How do others have it all and have the big house, the new car, endless holidays, SAHM often, the new clothes, meals out, lots of savings? Is it simply that they earn much more? I know we are lucky but I just don’t understand how so many can be so wealthy? Could most of our network really have a household income over £200k?!

I'm convinced that posts like these are showing off look at how well off we are posts.

Is a large percentage of your income going into savings or pensions? Sometimes people do that and almost forget that they are living on only part of their salary and feel it's not going far.

All the people jumping on this thread to whine that they earn a 10th of that are totally missing the point. Not all of us are satisfied at scraping by. UK has become a low wage society and now, even if you are a very high earner it is impossible to have the trappings of wealth unless you either bought your home 20 years ago (like me) or have significant money from non earned sources. It’s a downward spiral and terrible. What is the point in being ambitious.

You spend a lot and they spend even more.
They earn more than you.
They inherited more than you.
They have debt.
They don't save.
Who knows? Who cares?

Yes, lots of people in the south east are richer than you. We live in London and it is a fact of life that you are surrounded by very, very wealthy people. You sound like one of my children before I have to remind them of how lucky they are. My tennis lucky enough to go to a private school and thinks he's poor as we don't live a flash lifestyle. It is difficult when surround by such wealth(humans naturally compare themselves with those around them), but try not to lose sight of your privilege and be content with what you have.

The Tesla one I can help explain - my husband’s company car scheme is any car as long as it’s electric and a very fancy looking Tesla was the cheapest car big enough to hold the kids and the pram 🤷‍♀️ I bet a lot
of Tesla’s are being driven by people lucky enough to access similar benefit schemes (as there’s no way we’d have chosen one without it being through the company benefits)

That should say 'teen is' not tennis

Salary Calculator- Google- 2x 90k salaries equates to £10,460 per month.

And you can't afford anything? Do you have a bank account you look at?

Turns out the DH is a massive gambler with a penchant for the prostitutes on a Tuesday.

Have you considered taking in ironing?

But seriously, there seems to be so many of these threads lately. I think its a combination of 1) cost of living has gone up considerably, which means that your ££s don't go as far, 2) determination to compare yourself with others - without knowing where other people might be scrimping or putting themselves in debt in order to prioritise holidays/cars whatever, 3) a weird expectation that by mid-30s you should be so comfortably financially to be able to have a massive house/holiday wherever and whenever you like (probably linked to point 2). The reality is that the vast majority of the population spend most of their working life spending most of their money on their mortgage/rent, bills and children, and only find themselves 'comfortable' (if ever) when they're older and get some sort of a windfall (inheritance/redundancy payout/private pension).

I think the problem is you'd expect that when earning £180k a year - you'd be able to afford to buy anything you want but you can't - it's not enough, no amount ever will be - people just expect more and more. I think it might help to try and focus on being more grateful and I don't mean to be snarky when I say this.
And sometimes people don't have as much money as you think they do - our in-laws asked us for a large sum of money to help deal with financial difficulty there were in- we didn't have it - we'd spent all our money on a house renovation- they didn't believe us and it really affected our relationships with them. From my pov - because they saw us as a cash cow - they think we lied.

We live an hour from London and the cost can be £900 a month in train fares. I now only accept wfh contracts and that goes down like a lead balloon. I'm retiring at the end of the year and selling my shares in a company I helped found. Without that I wouldn't have much of a retirement fund due to financial loss (criminal business partners) and having to stop work due to caring responsibilities and serious ill health. I have earnt more than your income but contracts can get cancelled and it's a struggle to get paid. Contractors also have frequent voids.
Stop spending like water and put some funds away. I used all my personal savings over a year of being ill. You never know what's around the corner.

Holy fudge! You are definitely taking the piss.
Most of us get by relatively comfortably on much, much less than that.

I hate this phrase, but check your privilige!

I never usually respond to such posts
I don't care that there are people who earn 4 or 5 times what I do. I'm happy and content with my life.

But what really baffles me is that people in jobs which command these sorts of salaries seem incapable of working out why or how other people appear to have 'more' than them. Or maybe if they cut their holiday budget by a few thousand, they might have more money for other things.

These kind of threads make me really angry. I too live in SE, close to London but make do on £31,000 a year. Just me and the cat though. The only light on the horizon is that when my parent’s property is sold, I’ll be in receipt of the main portion of my inheritance.

Yes, OP is definitely taking the piss!!!

I don't know the split of the 180k but Salary calculator has 2x90k salaries as take home 10,460 k per month.

£10k a month...

Ditto, SE here too - prime commuter belt.
Modest 3 bed semi, two dc who had ample hobbies and activities whilst growing up, modest holidays mostly within this country and some in Europe.
It is perfectly doable! In fact, I am rather content with my life, friends, family, hobbies.
Comparison is the thief of joy. And people showing off they earn nearly 4 times what we do under the guise of "I don't know how we will manage on so little money" do piss me off a little...

That's insane.

Op simply put everyone thinks everyone else has more. Chances are they’re saying similar about you or else they’re saying you’re lucky you don’t have to fork out for what they do so you must be loaded!!!!

This. We earn similar to you and have a similar lifestyle, albeit in Cheshire.

We are comfortable but not flashy although we are higher earning at the school gates.

Our friends who live in London suburbs in similar fields to what we do up here all have one of the couple who earn £1m+ a year with the other having taken a PT role to facilitate the other partner. So yes, I think you are just surrounded by people who earn more than you.

I'm more utterly perplexed how a couple who is presumably competent and intelligent enough to earn a combined income of £180,000 does not understand a simple standard distribution curve. I've just looked it up. A combined income of £180k puts you in the top 1% of households in the UK. Not top 10%, not top 5% but top 1%. There are only 280,000 households in the country who bring in that salary or higher.

Your problem is that you are comparing yourself to the top 0.5% of the population and feeling hard done relatively instead of comparing yourself to the other 99% of the population who bring in less than you. The top 0.1% of households have a joint income of £500,000. If you are comparing yourselves to these people, you will feel poor RELATIVELY. If the people in the top 0.1% of households start comparing themselves to the top 0.01% of households, they will feel poor relatively. If the top 0.01% of households compare themselves to the top 0.001%, they will fill poor relatively, and so on and so on.

If you are struggling on £180k, you must have absurd outgoings or spend way beyond your means. If you were to post your outgoings and how much you have left over each month, it would be immediately obvious where the problem is. 99% of the country bring in less money than that and many households who bring in less than you will be able to afford luxuries, holidays, new clothes, cars etc. Many posters on this thread have said their household income is a fraction of what yours is and they have no issues affording things you claim you cannot. The problem is not your salary, it's your lifestyle creep and expectations.

Also, you said your children aren't in private school. Why are you only comparing your lifestyle to all your extravagant university and career friends? Why not look at the parents of the children who attend your child's state school. A lot of them will be making less than you. Do they all have 4 x 4's??!

As other posters I've said, I have sympathy for people on higher than average salaries who are struggling, especially if they have things like childcare to account for or other sensible outgoings but £180k is such a ludicrous amount, it's astonishing that anyone would struggling to afford anything they dream of on that, even if they spend liberally.

This- oh boohoo

I'm guessing it's your mortgage, you say you bought 'several' years ago - so fairly recently.
I'm in the commuter belt and there's not many 3 bed's available for under 500k.
I'm guessing a lot of your peers are are either older so got on the ladder earlier when it was much cheaper, and/or had inheritances/family help.

Also 'modest' is subjective. My mum always annoys me by described her three bed detached that has a separate dining room, study, conservatory and large garden as a small house😁

Which is materially different to the £15k a month I called disingenuous.

Maybe OP can go barefoot there if she can't afford shoes.