To think middle-class people pretend they’re “struggling” just to feel relatable?

[SnarkyMintWren]

They’ve got houses, cars, holidays, yet they moan about the cost of living like they’re on the breadline. AIBU to think it’s performative “struggle” for sympathy?

The class obsession on MN causes endless issues in discussing money. Who even are the middle class? People get accused of being middle class pretending to be working class, middle class trying to be whatever sits above it (are we going down lower/middle/upper middle class path), or just old fashioned bourgeois. It’s not a useful short cut description at all.

I’m one of many who present as middle class, didn’t grow up knowing exactly where I sat, have a university education, a mortgage and a professional job. But no inherited wealth, quite a bit of debt, limited financial cushion. My kids would never have gone to private school (ideology but also never came close to the income required even ten years ago), we shop in Aldi and have for years, we don’t go on long haul holidays and never have, we have very few expensive possessions and wear second hand clothes. And CoL has eaten away at the takeaways, the short haul holidays, the small treats, and generally at what we can afford to do day to day. My pay in real terms has basically stagnated for a decade.

Life is less enjoyable for all that. But I’m not in danger of homelessness and my kids have plenty to eat. I worry a lot about the members of society who have more existential concerns and do what I can to help but I’m also living my own life and facing the fact that my income, which should frankly make me extremely comfortable, is not really allowing me to have a lot of fun.

Teachers?? Are you taking this p*? They are paid poorly. What a silly post.

This.

Every person has had bills rise.

When you have something and then it’s taken away it can be very difficult. I have never joined in to try and be relatable about money because it would be totally incorrect. What is hard is having family that are hard up and your lifestyles are poles apart. I used to help my sisters financially, not loans. I would buy them stuff like fridge freezers, take them on holiday and if we all met for lunch foot the entire hill, there are 5 of us so it was a fair amount. We are not struggling at all but I’m not doing that so much anymore since I retired and my income went down.

What you really needed to write was not middle class but people in better income brackets or maybe higher rate taxpayers.

What amount do you mean? Average salary is 36k in the UK.

I’m sure that’s often true, but how far do you want to go down?

UK minimum wage is comfortably in global top 20% of income even after accounting for costs of living.

True but my point was more about perception within the UK. People on good salaries acting like they’re struggling, while those genuinely on the edge rarely have the same platform or voice.

What "platform" do you imagine ordinary middle class people have?

By platform I meant the way middle-class concerns often dominate the narrative - media stories, politics, even social circles. Their struggles get amplified, while working-class struggles get less airtime.

I don’t think that’s necessarily true. The media regularly report on the working class and their struggles. MN alone gives it a platform. I’m not sure I quite agree with this sentiment.

A personal anecdote - DP and I grew up in a struggling class, however just by luck we managed to get good jobs with no degrees. We fell in to the help to buy incentive and got a few promotions along the way and you’d now consider us in the other ‘goady’ bracket on paper. It’s coming up to a time where we now have to pay back that loan, we obviously don’t have 90k to just cover it so we will have no choice but to remortgage. That will add several hundreds of £ to our monthly outgoings. It’ll massively impact us and current dynamic. Can I not be upset about that? Is it just because somebody has it worse, I should not have a platform to vent about it?

Do they? I'm not sure I agree. Of course middle class struggles get some airtime, because the media is obviously going to report on the things that interest people. And remember there's a lot of overlap - middle class is not a synonym for wealthy, middle class struggles are not all unique to the middle class and vice versa.
And as for social circles, that's obviously going to depend who you socialize with.

This is just nasty. I present as middle class, but I also know what it’s like to go next door to get jugs of water because ours was cut off, and to sit in the dark with candles for the same reason, and to be hungry, because there was no money for food. And now I am better off, but I am struggling compared to 10 years ago. My monthly costs have increased by about £800 compared to pre-covid and my income has not gone up. I am not as poor as I was, or as poor as some, and I am lucky to have assets, but the idea that I might pretend to be struggling to be relatable is just vicious.

I think there's also scope for reporting on people's general quality of life, isn't there? More of the population is affected by changes to that than outright poverty so it's natural it gets covered.

On the surface i probably look like I'm doing well. I live in a nice flat, in a nice area, nice professional job. Nice middle class life.

But I've seen my mortgage go up, food shopping double. Things like cat food are twice the price they were, a 24 pack of coke is now double what it was 5 years ago. Petrol thankfully seems to have stabilised. But my salary hasn't gone up at the same rate.

I was looking at strawberries earlier and thinking not long ago they were under £2 now they're £2.50.

I'm like a Swan, on the surface I look serene and calm whilst I'm paddling furiously underneath to keep myself afloat through no fault of my own (I have nothing on finance, my car was purchased outright).

The so called trickle down economy and the relative privilege of the salaried graduate middle class is coming to an end with the middle class (albeit owing more wealth in terms of property and pensions that they can’t realise) are finding that they have similar immediate disposable income with a minority of the working class.

Where will their political allegiance be - get rid of social housing, no more benefits to support children or low wages? Cut disability benefits?

Trickle down is discredited bullshit economics and it's caused huge damage.

The reality of our current demographics is that working age people have more and more of the financial burden of supporting an ageing retired population. Benefits for working age people are a drop in the ocean of where our taxes go. This is just going to get worse. You see the enormous resentment on here towards retired people with what seem to be large disposable incomes and that's born very much from the experience of those of us who can't afford a summer holiday despite working full time but get cheery photos from our parents who are on their fourth overseas trip of the year.

The facts that there are pensioners in poverty, and that the real baddies are the people at the top hoarding all the wealth and allowing tax credits (funded by us) to subsidise the wages they pay while they keep all the profits are easy to lose.

@Digdongdoo

”Middle class isn't a synonym for wealthy.”

So true.

Yanbu

It's not my experience.

But what I will say is that the middle class are increasingly getting fucked off that they work difficult jobs to earn enough for e.g. kids swimming lessons, only to be told they should be shouldering more of societies burden because they are "privileged".

I'm not privileged, i worked bloody hard to make sure i could give my only child the things i didnt have. Noone in my family went to uni or earned more than minimum wage. I left school at 16 with less than 5x C grades.

I don't begrudge the poor anything.

But I'm sick of middle class people moaning that it's not fair that they can't even afford a holiday when they can access free childcare or work a shift job and instead choose not to because their husband works and "nursery takes all their money". It's doesn't pay a tax share though, does it? It that can choose to better their income but choose not to and instead moan about it that pisses me off.

Childcare expenses as a reason not to work is hardly exclusive to the middle class though is it? Could say the exact same as anyone who only works the 16 hours to get the childcare and UC.
See, more alike that different.

AIBU to think it’s performative “struggle” for sympathy?

No, I imagine it’s a struggle struggle for realz (all things being relative) and they don’t particularly give a fuck about being “relatable” to working class types.

In much the same way working class people are not particularly thinking about the street homeless when they bang on about the effects of the cost-of-living on them.

Well, our mortgage doubled under Liz Truss and everything else has become more expensive since but our income hasn't gone up so I can say yes, we are significantly worse off.

I think there's a difference between saying you are struggling and just complaining in general that the cost of living has gone up.

It also depends on who you are complaining to. My closest friends and I will have the occasional moan amongst ourselves but I wouldn't necessarily do it in front of a work colleague/random school mum...as they may actually be struggling.

Someone only working 16 hours is still working though.

Sure, but your concern was income tax. They won't be paying much, if any of that.

But I'm sick of middle class people moaning that it's not fair that they can't even afford a holiday when they can access free childcare “free” childcare stops when one parent earns over 100k and for a SAHM the ‘husband who makes all the money’ he would have to earn well above that. This statement in itself just shows that there are a lot of misunderstandings in this middle class bashing