Modern life doesn’t work

[DeluluTaylor]

I say this reading thread after thread of people trying to work around nigh impossible situations.
I am sitting here with chronic IBS from stress, trying to get the kids out of the door, to a school which can’t meet their need, to go to a job where I’m firefighting as nothing is fit for purpose anymore. Finding care homes for younger and younger people. People who want to work but can’t as they have learning disabilities. Yet in the 20th century an estimated 40-70% of people with LD were employed.
I have 38p in my bank account and all my money goes on paying for a big house that we’re in from 6.30pm 7 the next morning, with a huge garden which none of us have time to do anything in. That I sit in on my own when the kids go to see their father in a bedsit at weekends. Yet there are families down the road with three kids and two parents in one room.

The whole thing is crazy. If you were going to arrive here from another planet and looked at late stage capitalism you would say why do you live like this? Getting in debt to spend two weeks abroad rather than making changes to make the other 50 weeks off the year more bearable.

I think lots of people make their lives too difficult trying "to keep up with the Jones".

The only thing that really matters is being happy with your family. I spend the minimum amount of time at work that I can to get the money I need from the Government and spend the rest of the time with my children. We have a fairly simple life but we are happy. I wouldn't change it.

@Fearfulsaints people don’t talk about how much work has changed. My school used to have a bar for staff.

I resent the “gypsy” lifestyle. You can live like that because the rest of us play by the rules. I take it you avail yourself of the nhs?

I agree with you .

When the 'Right To Buy' council house stock and 'Buy To Let' mortgages became commonplace things slowly began to change. Not for the better IMO.
I see young people struggling & families blown apart with stress and feel bitter at the few who made life so hard for so many at the stroke of a pen on some legislation. Housing, with decent affordable housing so much else, finances, mental health and solid family life will prosper for the good of the individual and society.

This leapt out at me. In the past, pensions paid out from aged 60 and average life expectancy was around 65 or so. Pensions were generous but not paid for long. With life expectancy increasing, I think we have to accept working for longer

@Dancingsquirrels life expectancy isn’t 65 for people who got their state pension at 60. Where did you get that from?
Healthy life expectancy hasn’t increased at all so people can’t necessarily work longer and we have an ageing population which is putting a huge strain on public services.

Totally agree OP. It’s why minimalism exists as an alternative life style I guess

Ive always been amazed at the way we’ve all bought the term ‘disposable income’ Given disposable is to throw away

At what point did it become the aim to get rid of excess funds and the norm to expect that doing so would improve the overall quality of life?

Aren’t we lucky that’s the case for most people in the uk these days. For how many women in the past and even the present in some places that is not the case.

But every machine doing the work of 5 people an hour means five people who have to find another job. As more machines do work, there are less jobs for humans. A capitalist economy requires people to earn some surplus money to buy goods and services. It requires people to choose with their earnings, and that money should then go into the company improving or inventing new products and services, and thats how progress happens in a capitalist society. Sure there's investors, but they require the company to be profit making on a timescale. But if we have people who can only afford rent and mortgage, bills, food, cheap clothes, and running a car to get to work, then those are the only industries earning and other industries will die or become stagnant and theres no progress.

I do feel that every generation has its issues. I had my children in the 90’s life wasn’t easier then it was just different and because we had been raised by parents born in the 40/50’s our upbringing was different so our expectations were different.

We got engaged and received presents like toasters and pans saved to put a deposit on a house - during this time we lived with parents, going for a pint was a treat the pictures or meal out was so special we can discuss each one to this day. We got married, we were lucky my parents paid for our wedding but most weddings were a drink in the pub the night before / church service / village hall Buffett reception/ friends doing disco then maybe a few nights away. We lived in a tiny house we loved and worked hard to move up the ladder to afford a house big enough to have a family. I went to work 8 months after baby one, we set up our own business and I worked from home when he was 14 months, baby 2 and 3 were born I worked full time from the day before the birth and again 4 days later. I would sit and breast feed at the desk typing with one hand. We had no help, no money, and worked bloody hard. We had holidays in this country if we were lucky, I couldn’t tell you how often mummy and daddy didn’t want an ice cream just so the kids could have one, days on the beach because we couldn’t afford todo anything else, but the kids were happy. We lost DH when my youngest was 3 I remarried 3 years later and took in his 2 children, and continued to run the business with his help, I got a mobile phone in 2012 my DH in 2020, we didn’t need one before so why buy one. We had one tv in the house we did have a dish washer though which I loved.

The younger generation think we were lucky and the fact that we own a 5 bedroom house and have spare money which we use to help out our children and the families. We are officially retired but we have our 3 grandchildren 3 days a week to keep costs down, we feed them and their parents on those 3 days and often again at the weekend, we send money to our other children because they can’t make ends meet.

every generation has it’s difficulties and their good bits, though I do feel this generation of parents have to many materialistic needs, phones, games, coffee out nails done holidays and fancy clothes we had done of those, that’s not to say we didn’t like them we would have loved them but we saved instead. I just don’t understand the need to spend a fortune on nails - I painted my own still do, gym membership- run down the road or buy a bike, foreign holiday when so many haven’t seen the country they were born in. My grandchildren have been to some very nice places yes have built sandcastles in Spain and eaten Italian pasta in Italy but have never eaten a cream tea in Cornwall or seen the wilds of Scotland, never seen the Houses of Parliament or Buckingham palace or the history museum.

Yes birth control a great invention

Women in the UK can almost entirely prevent pregnancies they don’t want.

You mean you're jealous. What on earth are you talking about? What rules don't we follow?

When are we comparing to? Before women had equal employment rights, easy access to contraception, abortion & divorce? A hundred years ago most women worked in low paid jobs outside the home, had more children, had no legal protection from violence from their husband and little access to divorce and minimal state welfare. Modern life is objectively much better than previous eras.

I'm not looking at it in a vacuum. You can look up the lives of people living in low income countries like Kenya to see that they often work more hours than us for lower wages and access to housing that most people in the UK simply wouldn't accept. On top of that 50% of your wage would go on food. Now tell me OP's life sounds so bad?

I'm not saying we should necessarily be comparing ourselves to low income countries but our economy is stagnating and our standard of living is therefore slipping. We are not unique in this situation. Comparable countries like France and Germany have experienced the same. Why do we think we are immune? Why do we think that our standard of living should automatically stay the same or improve when our productivity is awful and less and less of us are going out to work and actually meaningfully contributing to economic growth? We need to get real!

I agree, I’d love to live more cheaply in a little tiny house on wheels - other countries like NZ and Canada seem to allow them. But where I live I wouldn’t be able to find somewhere to legally park, which seems crazy to me.

I know a guy who lives in his converted van, and works part time in a remote job online. The rest of his time is spent surfing, going to the gym, hanging out with friends, doing what he likes.

He’s really happy with his lifestyle, but the amount of people who look down on him, and seem to think that he has failed in life, because he’s opted out of the housing madness, is ridiculous.

I think too as children we were insulated from how hard life was for our parents. As a child I thought my dad loved his job and earned a decent amount. I now know he worked in an environment that massively undermined his physical and mental health, but he kept going because he had bills to pay and children to feed. Money was so tight he put cardboard in his shoes when they wore through because he couldn’t afford for them to be repaired or replaced. It was only as an adult I understood the hardships he and my mum had, and understood how much they protected us from it as much as possible.

I knew we were poor - lots of make do and mend, very simple food, no holidays or days out - but actually we were in poverty by any measure. My parents just hid the extent and I suspect many parents did.

When the state pension was created the typical person was only expected to be funded for 5 years. There has been much larger increases in expected life expectancy versus the retirement age.

@DeluluTaylor I’m so sorry for your situation but I do agree that the past is often looked at through rose tinted glasses. I would add that this moment will pass, I say that kindly not flippantly.

I’m retired and heading towards my mid 60s. Yes, before I am piled on I was fortunate to retire early having worked full time since the age of 16. Retirement was a choice because I had become so disillusioned with the industry I worked in - education. I have had to drastically change my approach to life from a spending and consumerism perspective and honestly I feel so much lighter. What I did not bargain for was my elderly parents literally falling apart pretty much as I retired. The stress they cause has made me ill. They are both difficult people and as things stand having made good life choices myself I am utterly exhausted emotionally and physically by the situation.

I guess what I am saying is life is difficult. You could downsize, I appreciate that is not an option just now, but other issues will still happen.

I really do hope things improve. I have a sibling who works in what he describes as a ‘full on job’. He is permanently stressed permanently complaining but is out most weekends at concerts, trips you name it because he is desperate to look relevant and affluent. He lives in a place where what you ‘have’ and what you look like trumps quality of life.

In summary I’d say if you can simplify any bits of life do. It is liberating.

A very common reason for stress is having children. People choose to have multiple children, this has a devastating impact on their quality of life and finances. If you took children out of the equation, a lot of people would have had much better lives.

The OP didn't need to live in a big house, her children didn't have to see their father in a bedsit. The big house is needed for the children. The father lives in a bedsit because he's paying for them.

I think people should think very carefully before having children, unplanned, no budget, no thought, seems to be the norm.

This is also super relevant. In the past OP would be living with her ex partner whether she liked it or not largely due to financial necessity. It's a modern phenomenon to assume that we should all have enough money as individuals to easily be able to meet the needs of ourselves and our dependents. It was always intrinsically understood before that some pooling of assets and resources would be required. You still see this in many immigrant families where divorce is frowned upon and intergenerational living is the norm. Often this is because they don't come from countries that have our welfare state safety net and thus have to do whatever is required to survive.

Does democracy really have to be lumped in there?

@Bargepole45 but why would you benchmark the UK against Kenya? Why the race to the the bottom?

Why do we think that our standard of living should automatically stay the same or improve when our productivity is awful and less and less of us are going out to work and actually meaningfully contributing to economic growth? We need to get real

Because people are paying more for less and that’s why so many are feeling it. Our productivity is shit but that has impacted younger generations more than older ones. I agree we need to face the reality but the growth of Reform tells me many don’t want acknowledge this reality.

It's nonsense to believe that families who lost their breadwinner would have been supported happily by other relatives. They would have more likely ended up street homeless or in a workhouse. When your relatives are also on the breadline there isn't much scope for them to help you.

Pre-modern era children would have been out to work at a very young age, often in dangerous places for long hours. Poor farmers didn't have cosy family time - they were outside working in all weathers. Or down a mine or in a mill. Or sent away to be a servant to a better off family. The concept of childhood as a golden period of development, schooling & time with family is a recent development in society.

@Thirdchildjoy that was not my question though. When did most people die at 65 in the UK?

Sorry, I accidentally tapped YABU when scrolling, and didn’t mean to. Should have been YANBU.