To wonder what people actually expect and why they can’t just be happy to live simply?

[Terrazzomazzo]

So many posts on here of people saying that they are running out of money and “I have no fun money” et. Why can’t people just be happy that they have enough to pay their mortgage pay their bills and feed their family and clothe their children? When did holidays , excess “stuff” and weekends of fun days out and take away etc become a given right and expectation?

It is sad.

Perhaps because life is for living, not just working yourself into an early grave...

Ok then…. the dog? You’re being a bit pedantic.

I think it’s personalities as well. Some people are wired for adventure and exploring. Some people are creative, practical or content with just day to day life.
Everyone is going to have different priorities and that’s a good thing.

You are the one talking shite.

The pp agreed that people did things for leisure in the past, however it was an occasional treat, not something which happened regularly - and they are correct. Now people go out so often that they are always looking for something new and exciting.

You are quite right, some posters seem to be living on another planet. I am an only child so we did go on occasional holidays - never overseas. For the whole of the school holidays I either entertained myself at home, sometimes went out walking or visiting other people with my mother, and spent the majority of the time playing with my friends, which rarely required spending money as we played at each other's houses.

We don’t exist just to be units of labour in an end-stage capitalist society.
The human search for meaning and fulfilment is a vital component for living, not just existing.
The structure of our society, and what it requires of people to just keep a roof over their heads, is punitive.

There was also less to buy and when I was growing up the shops were only open Monday to Friday and no online shopping so we as children didn't enter a shop very often except supermarkets and convenience stores. TV was limited so that limited our exposure to advertising. It was just a different way of living. We also lived in a more innocent time though so as children we had a lot of freedom to play with the local children.

Except a lot of us did do those things regularly, with that being very much the norm in our social circles too. That it wasn’t your experience, or that of the PP, doesn’t mean it wasn’t very much reality for others existing on the very same planet.

Huh?

25 years ago was 2000. The height of consumerism, cheap travel, going out drinking and credit card debt. It was not a basic life of simply paying the bills and feeding the kids for the vast majority of people. Perhaps you’re thinking of 1970 or 1980?

Why do people on MN always seem to mix their decades up? 🙃

1. bread and roses
2. why should everyone else barely subsist in order for the wealth hoarders to have lives of unimaginable wealth?

I live simply but I live somewhere green and beautiful. I can go for a run in the woods or around the lanes any time I want. I cook from scratch which means we eat healthy fresh varied food. Our house is big enough and comfy if a bit tatty. So just being at home is great. Only one set of neighbours, 30 metres away. No noise. Me & ds get on well, no fights. Our village has owls & deer and darkness.

BUT if I lived in a highrise in a noisy, crime infested city, where it wasn't safe to go for a run and the air tasted bad, if I shared with a partner I disliked and I could hear the neighbours screaming at each other through the walls, I'd need holidays and distractions too.

Tonight I'm staying in a high rise hotel in B'ham. It's insufferably hot, I can't open a window, the food was flabby, stale and over-sweet. It's 3 in the morning, I can hear sirens & traffic and I can't sleep. Right now, being anywhere else would be good. 🙁

Neither extreme is typical. We live in a suburb. It's fairly quiet, fairly safe (someone shot up the road a couple of years ago, a friend's son mugged for his phone last year. Neither are regular occurrences, DD once racially abused on the bus, once sexually harassed on the Tube. Very nasty and stressful, but not regular and good support from the police).

We have nice local parks for runners ( and walkers, and playgrounds for children) all free. We also have owls, although no deer.

I don't have a partner i dislike, also free.

A few times a year I hear my neighbours arguing, and am grateful to be single rather than rushing off to book something expensive as a distraction.

My house is furnished with mismatched furniture because I preferred to accept things being given away than buying expensive matching items. Over time I have been able to be more selective, but still have no.interest in making things match.

Cooking from scratch and prioritising vegetables is normal as well as cheap and healthy.

I wouldn't choose staying in a high rise hotel.over camping or a hostel.

DD, when little, loved 'camping' in the living room as a treat at the weekend. We had a tent we could put up, but no reason why you couldn't make one out of a sheet draped over chairs. As a toddler had fun putting a line of masking tape on the floor, trying to walk.along it, jump from side to side over it etc

There are lots of ways to have fun without spending money.

Personally speaking. If my entire life consisting solely of going to work, just to be able to sleep at night and go back to work the next day, eat just enough to stay alive, and clothe myself - and then spend the odd free day at home watching TV and just waiting to go to work again- I would be utterly miserable.
I'm quite frugal anyway and never eat out etc. I already buy most of my things from charity shops or Vinted.
But as said, if all I had was work and my four walls, life wouldn't be very enjoyable to say the least.

Trips/holidays/camping weekends etc are the only things I have to look forward to and keep me sane.

Gadgets and tech are pretty much mandatory now. You pretty much need a laptop and a smartphone to do anything these days. I can't make a doctor's appointment by phoning them on my old Nokia anymore. I need to have internet to get online at 8am to even have a chance.

That poster is probably talking about spending a grand on an iPhone etc . But some things that started out as 'luxuries' such as computers and home internet aren't even optional anymore. You NEED to have them just to get anything done.

If I hadn't seen such riches I could live with being poor.

Let's take it one step further. Having a child is also a luxury. According to some on here, anything other than just enough calories to keep you alive, water and a couple of sets of clothes and shoes, is a luxury.
I also note many talking about the free and simple pleasures of board games, gardening and nice local walks.
Alright if you have a garden and live in a place where walking is enjoyable. Not if you live alone in a block of flats on a crappy estate.

Now waiting for the 'well, get a better job then and move somewhere nice' comments

When I was growing up in the 80s my mum could stay at home and look after us whilst Dad went out to work. My parents took us on one holiday a year, always in Britain. Then Mum went to the OU to get some qualifications and started to work as well. Still only one holiday, but it was abroad. However, they also had lots of hobbies and could afford to send us kids to hobbies too. It was a good childhood.

When I was bringing up my child, funding hobbies and holidays was tricky. ExH wanted two or more holidays a year. I think in the 2000s/2010s expectations had changed, partly because from London we had a huge choice of low-cost airline options and the Eurostar on our doorstep but also because social media was telling us to go travelling. DD grew up going to places by plane. I grew up going to places in the back of my dad's car, and only the first time abroad on the ferry to Normandy when I was 11.

I don't subscribe to having "just enough" though. Even if you are on a low wage you deserve some joy. I don't understand the media saying, oh, this person is on benefits, we are funding their family going to Ibiza for a week. Everyone deserves a break, don't they?

Good point about buses - I refuse to pay it unless I absolutely have to and walk everywhere when I'm alone. Bit trickier with DD7. All we have to do within reasonable walking range is the park or the woods.

I was just thinking back to when I was a teenager in the mid 2000s.we weren't poor but I didn't have tons and tons of spending money either. But I went out with my friends regularly and we could do so much for so little. £1 for an all day pass and we'd go to random locations and explore. 30p for a sausage roll and one of those 10p drinks. . I even feel like a meal deal is a treat these days and feel guilty for buying them. Stopped going to Greggs too because the food just gets smaller as the prices rise.

I know I'm lucky to have a roof over my head but I feel totally despondent about life in the UK atm.
.

Oh and also multiple people have brought up needing two wages to run a household, meaning it's generally the women who end up overworked and miserable because most of the chores fall on us. That contributes to the general misery as well as the fact that working actually incurs a lot of costs - lunches, clothes, makeup, transport etc. I realised how much it all adds up.

I've worked since I was 18 bar a few months last year and while I wasn't working I barely spent any money. Unfortunately we couldn't manage on one wage long term. I am very very lucky I have my Mum to help with DD or we'd be permanently destitute.

If you think like that then the oligarch overlords have won.

Yep. I remember Sir Tony of the Blair Rich Project saying in 1997 "I want every household to have the internet", when having the internet at home was still a novelty. He had foresight. He wasn't being altruistic. Now we're dependent on it, how fortunate for the authorities that almost all households had the internet in 2020. And now there are whisperings of digital ID needed to be able to work, which we'll probably have to pay for...

@CoreyFlood Yep. Things that used to be quite cheap are all so expensive now; simple things like going swimming at the council pool. And even though they're trying to nudge us away from using cars (and have been for decades), those filthy rich who make the pricing decisions keep forgetting that once who you have paid the expenses for a car, it is expensive not to use it, and public transport is a slow pricey luxury. Family of four wants to visit grandparents, sixty miles away. Car journey, about £10. Train journey, £60 if you're lucky. Tough decision, innit?

It does feel like exist/work/die for many people. And in 2020, it was reduced to exist/die for many families, many of whom took a 20% pay cut, some of whom took a 100% pay cut, while MPs took a 0% pay cut (and probably rises as well).

I don’t find packed lunches at work any more expensive than what I make at home. Having a work uniform you put together yourself can work out cheaper and it doesn’t need to be expensive. Even supermarkets sell good working clothes. Spending a lot on make up is your choice.

Laughing at your Mum getting her Nintendo confiscated 😂 Tetris IS very addictive tbf.

This nails it.
I don't think anyone has said that no one ever went on holiday, had takeaways, ate out or had days out in the past.
What some of us are saying is that it was not normalised, it was an occasional treat.
Yes a pp's grandparents may have gone to the cinema every week and had fish and chips. But I am guessing they would consider it a treat, not something they were entitled to do because they lived in the sixth richest country etc etc
It's the expectation that a relatively high standard of living is a right, usually dressed up around the children's 'needs' (lol at the pp who said it was lazy parenting not to take your kids on holiday - i mean, how can anyone seriously think that?)
So it's pointless coming back and saying computers existed in thec80s, holidays existed in the 60s, attractions in the 50s etc. Because we know they did. It's the normalising of these things that have changed.
My dad was a sales director. We had one holiday a year in the UK in the caravan and possibly another couple of weekends but always in the UK in the caravan.
My mum did not drive, my dad had a company car. We went to state schools. We went to Brownies once a week and my dad took us swimming every Sunday The heating came on twice a day.
During school holidays, we went nowhere apart from on holiday as above. We were never taken anywhere other than when we were on holiday.
Takeaways might have been fish and chips every couple of weeks.
I would say I had a fairly standard 70s/80s childhood, certainly the same as all my friends had with i guess similar family incomes.
So yes, houses were within reach of one salary but the-day-to-day spending was far less than now.