"We can't justify a £52 lunch" - AIBU to think you didn't need to?

[PropitiousJump]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckg3g11z6d8o

I found this article irritating. Middle earning families complaining they can't afford a day out, in part because of the expense of eating lunch and dinner out. A family of four in both cases.

I completely agree it's got expensive to eat out, but have they never heard of taking your own sandwiches?

And if you look at what they've eaten, they've ordered a lot of extras that have bumped up the bill.

Costa family - £52 lunch for four. If they could have done without an overpriced bag of crisps on top of their mains, and not had puddings (this was lunch, not dinner) they could have got the bill down to a more reasonable £40ish - a tenner each.

Pizza Express family - £174 dinner for four. If they cut out the starter and side orders and the adults had soft drinks instead of alcohol, they could have got the bill down to approx £109 for soft drinks, mains and a dessert each.

This isn't saying they are eating too much - it's not a diet-bashing thread - but common sense says that if you are eating in a chain place on a day out and trying to keep costs down, you don't order loads of extras and alcohol. Have a drink and a snack at home if you're still hungry. Save all the extras for an 'occasion' where eating out is the focus of the event and you're going somewhere special, not fuelling up in a chain restaurant.

AIBU?

whats wrong with a 2 bed semi in london? jesus I hope Tarquin and Merryweather enjoy their private school

The issue still stands? That for a period of time they have the same if not less disposable income than the lower earning family?

Our quality of life is going the wrong way completely, we are going down a consumerist hellhole. Why does having a good quality of life mean it has to involve buying things? Why is a picnic "utterly miserable" according to many? We are measuring quality of life on how much we can spend, which is such a sad state of affairs.

Nothing, I’m saying that it costs about £2k a month in mortgage. The replier was acting like for £2k you get a big detached house on 2 acres of land

so that is a reason for everyone worse off than you, struggling much harder than you, to pay for your little darlings?

anyway, i will step away from this thread, I'm sorry you've got it so hard, life is jolly unfair on you, those poor people just need to work harder, Nige will sort it out no doubt.

I'm a housewife, our daughter is 16. My husband works a senior specialist role (clinical, NHS) doing lots of unpaid hours as well as a regular on call rota (he also covers on call shifts for vacant roles). He works his backside off, basically.
Cost cutting in the NHS is having an affect on our finances, as well as the ever increasing cost of living. I've never had to consider budget grocery shopping, or had to think twice about eating out. It's a consideration now though.

I just wonder how much longer this trajectory can continue in the UK. Fortunately we aren't scrimping (yet!), however lots of families are. Families who are earning a relatively decent wage, that should give them a decent standard of living, are scraping by. On the current trajectory there will come a point whereupon even scraping by is no longer manageable for these families.

My husband is one of many in the NHS putting in extra hours every day on goodwill. I never thought I'd hear him say he resented it, but he's saying it routinely now. Vacant roles not being filled to save money, in the hope that goodwill will pick up the slack. Staffing is a huge issue, relying increasingly on goodwill is not a sustainable approach.

Why should I pay for yours if you couldn’t afford to have them without the taxpayers help?

If you like I can quit my job, go on benefits, have the same amount of disposable income for the next 4 years and that’ll be one less taxpayer in the mix to pay for your children 👍

A picnic isn't miserable. Carrying lunch around in your rucksack all day would be fairly miserable though. I'm not a mad fan of food that's been sat sweating in my bag all day. I'm a big fan of spontaneity though, and like just finding a nice pub or similar to stop in for lunch.

Choosing to do things in a more budget friendly way isn't really the same thing as only being able to afford to carry sandwiches around in your rucksack all day. Especially when you previously had choice.

Yes, and if I decided to buy a bigger house, out my kids in private school or any number of things that benefitted their longer term prospects I’d have a lower disposable income than other people on my income or less.

you're not paying for mine, I take a greater sense of responsibility for mine than you do clearly.

Benefits are about creating a safety net for those who need, not those who grift. You are clearly grifting.

Ok but we are talking about standard childcare and a standard mortgage. I don’t really know what you are trying to get at

Op i think the point of the article is that if reasonably well earning middle class families are having to tighten their belts and make the changes you are suggesting, then lower earning working class families aren't getting a foot in the restaurant to begin with.

You could, however you’d lose your home because no one’s paying a £2k mortgage on benefits, your pension would take a hit and your career prospects dwindle. Immediate disposable income isn’t the reason to stay in employment in the childcare years, the drop is very temporary against a life time of inflated income.

I mean the majority of working parents earning under £100,000 each with small children in childcare claim some form of assistance with childcare. Whether that's the 30 funded hours in England or the subsidy programme or uc in NI. All of whom are paying tax. We all benefit to some extent from the tax other people pay, whether it's driving on a decent road paid for by people who don't drive, or getting hospital treatment paid for by healthy people. This idea that we all exist completely independently of each other is such nonsense really. We all reap the benefits of a better, more cohesive and safer society when people are supported to stay out of poverty where possible. Literally every single one of us.

Love your username, btw.

In the early 2000s, our household income was £24K gross, so £18,000 take home. Our mortgage was low at around £300pcm, and we didn't/don't smoke, and rarely drank.

2 young DC and 2 (old) cheap cars, which we needed due to where we lived at the time, as housing in the countryside was much cheaper than local towns at the time, but public transport and amenities such as shops, etc, were few and far between.
We lived pretty frugally, with 2 basic £10 mobiles, the basic sky package (when on offer) and essential bills such as food, mortgage, home insurance, petrol and a £50pcm rainy day saving (when possible) taking pretty much all of our income, leaving very little to nothing left for fun money.

Our family activities revolved around local English Heritage visits (bought for us as a Christmas gift by our parents), to which we took a picnic and drinks, 1 or 2 yearly tickets for wildlife/outdoor places, cost at the time for a family ticket for the year was £30-40. Again, we'd take a pack up lunch/ snacks and drinks.

Other activities included weekend £1 cinema offer, so £4 total as we took our own snacks/ drinks (or £1.50/dc, but parent goes free, but that was a bit further away).

Going to the beach, park/ lake for a day out, and doing activities with them such as building sandcastles, looking for crabs etc, counting bugs, birds, etc. Or home based ones such as baking, treasure hunts, etc.

Soft play for 2 was about £4-5, and a tea was 80p with free water and squash for dc. You had a card and your 6th visit was free.

We couldn't afford holidays, except for The Sun £9.50 caravan ones.
Takeaways were a once a year thing (cost around £25), and meals out maybe once every few months, usually paid for with our (not dc's) birthday money (from parents).

As we hit the 2010s, wages were ~£34K gross, so we were able to go to places like Pizza Hut, Harvesters, Frankie and Benny's, etc as a treat maybe once a month, but that was with a total spend of around £35, & would include 2 child meals with 2 courses and a drink, tap water for the table, a refill come for my dh, and 2 adult mains with 1 starter and 1 pudding.

Even once the dc went onto adult meals, it was still doable (dc could choose between a starter or a pudding, but not both, and 1 drink each, plus water for the table. Cost was around £45, so still doable as a treat.

Recently we went back to Harvester with both dc, and the cost was over £100 for 4 Sunday lunch deals of 2 courses, plus 1 x soft drinks for 3 and an orange juice. The quality wasn't as nice, and the service was terrible, but it was packed with young families.
I'm not sure how they afford nowadays, tbh, but I don't envy them.

Food prices have been artificially low for years, I think, and we're used to that. Wages are low and stagnating, and life is hard for many. Money doesn't go as far as it used to.

Our household income is now just into 6 figures, and 15 years ago if you said we'd earn that, I'd have felt rich, and would assume we could do everything we want to whenever we want to on that kind of money, but the reality is far different as so many costs have risen, and whilst I'd say we're comfortable, I definitely don't feel rich and still budget for things.

I agree though, that if people can't afford to go out it will lead to the collapse of many places and all the jobs that are connected to it, which helps no one.

I'm not sure what the answer is, though.

this is crazy, I chose the wrong career 😂

surely the fact they are currently open means people do want them!

If nobody WANTED 'luxuries' like costa, nail bars, restaurants, trips to an aquarium or whatever then it wouldn't be an issue that they couldn't afford them!
If there was no market they would never have opened in the first place. The whole article, and thus this thread is based on the premise that people do actually want these treats just can't afford them.

We mainly go out for social occasions now, birthdays etc as it is so much more expensive than it used to be esp as DC are now all young adults.
I still look for groupon deals, buffet places , me and DH have water, use firsttable website for discounts and any other type of offers! cinema is always meerkat days or online groupon tickets and buy snack to eat during the film.

Went out with friends recently and one of them asked for the service charge to be taken off the bill as that was 12.5% of an expensive group meal so better to leave our own tips in cash for the staff.

Even if we have a take away, that’s crazily priced and doesn’t feel like a treat anymore any £10-20 a head.

When kids were younger KidsPass and Tesco club cards were brilliant for our meals and family days.

Let's hope their energies can be harnessed for something that adds genuine new growth to the economy. Something that creates new wealth rather than just recycling it.

Agree with this … that frankly stupid food order undermines the message

Cars are much harder to fix yourself now, they have electronics in them, they aren't the clapped out Cortinas of the 80s. I do remember everyone fixing rusty cars, it's not possible now.

Not everyone has all the things that you are listing. Everything has gone up in price. I don't do it often but it shouldn't be out of reach to go for lunch and an activity occasionally. Plus we have a service economy now, we had a manufacturing economy back in the 70s/80s. This isn't good news.

Like what? There will always be people that need jobs that are relatively simple and unskilled, whether thats due to youth and inexperience or lack of capacity for more complex work. There's nothing wrong with that. We have to stop acting like everyone can be an entrepreneur or self starter or work their way up. If those kinds of job go in their thousands due to automation, AI, a decimation of the service industry, what do they do?

You could get a job and he could go part time?

No, we need to stop pretending that wealth and a buoyant economy can be achieved by buying everything from abroad and selling each other lattes.

"Learning to cook is expensive - often specialist ingredients, wastage and of course the cost of fuel."

This is just wild!
Learning to cook is not expensive if you don't buy expensive ingredients. It saves you a great deal of money and provides a higher standard of nutrition.

Let's try and keep our feet on the ground!