AIBU to think lifestyle expectations and spending habits have risen enormously?

[Hiredgun]

For context, I’m a late 30s millennial. Grew up in Scotland.

Back then, almost nobody had a brand new car. People went abroad once a year if they were lucky. Eating out was very rare, maybe a handfull of times per. Getting a new kitchen was rare as was buying most household items. Kids often got cast off clothes from their siblings. Coffee & wine were basic.

Fast forward to today and it’s unbelievable what I see now.

Almost everybody drives a brand new car

Some of my friends go on multiple holidays per year. One is just back from her 7th trip abroad.

People buy properties and spend six figures immediately renovating them.

People are very fussy with wine. One of my friends only drinks champagne if doing fizz. Another will only drink certain types of Italian red wine.

I have a friend who spent 3K on a coffee machine and he recently asked if the coffee I served him at mine was single source.

Another friend wants me to go on a golfing holiday for a stag do abroad. Basic cost is £3K as it involves a private chef on a boat.

And cheese…. one of my friends only buys cheese from a deli. It’s beautiful but they’re spending a hundred quid plus a month just on cheese.

Some of my friends eat out 2/3 times per week. That was an average in a year for lots of people when I was a kid.

AIBU to question this? I know some of it may be debt but perhaps people’s expectations have risen enormously? Anybody else seeing this type of behaviour.

Some are but I have many friends across the spectrum. Almost all live a life way above what most people from my childhood experienced.

My main point is that, expectations and lifestyle seemed to be vastly different to what I observed growing up. Even some of my childhood friends had wealthy parents but they didn’t do some of the things I see now.

Yes I can imagine and nobody can tell you how you articulate and feel about it. That’s your lived experience.

Some of the stories I heard about poverty back just after WW2 and in the subsequent years are shocking.

YANBU.

It’s absolutely nuts.
I am from the north west, I remember my mum letting slip that my dad earnt 32k a year as the only earner for a family of 4 when we were in high school . That was late 90s.
We lived happily enough, we had enough food, we had toys , but we went on walking holidays, had home cooked meals and played in the garden or did cheap things like go to the park.
My mum didn’t drive so going to the cinema, or to macdonald’s on the bus was a twice a year treat.
We appreciated it so much. I’m 41 and can still remember the excitement as it was rare!

I don’t recognise things now. My daughter is obsessed with jellycats, roblox and loads of youtube stuff. It’s my own fault for allowing it, but she’s far from unusual. I didn’t have a quarter of what she had and I always tell her. Kids don’t appreciate it the same.
I went to London with friends recently and it just felt like we were pouring money away on everything extragravant. Afternoon tea, drinks , clothes, make up then my friends spent hundreds on kids toys (I didn’t do the last one). It was a bit galling really and not something i want to repeat.

I do think a cheaper and simpler life is out there for those who seek it though i’m not sure what it looks like.

Not hyperbole at all and those were just examples off the top of my head. I could go on about how some have become accustomed to luxury that very few experienced in the 90s.

In order of age, oldest first - overland camper (converted 4x4 army truck), impractical Italian GT car, practical small SUV, impractical Italian convertible (with removable hard top so claimed to be practical alternative to the GT) - guess which were bought by who…

We holiday regularly using the truck camper, and also do European road trips in the GT car which might be a future ‘classic’. The SUV does all the miles and trips to the shops / tip etc.

All apart from the truck are on the same family fleet insurance policy, and two of the three are on limited mileage - so don’t cost too much.

I’m a man if it matters and absolutely zero jealousy. I only celebrate my friend’s successes.

I’m simply pointing out how times have changed drastically.

Is this a very wealthy part of Scotland as you'd have to be on a hefty income to have all that where I live?

It depends who you hang out with, I tend to avoid people who have lots of disposable cash and do expensive house renovations and go on fancy holidays abroad.

I don't think it's that it comes as a 'shock' to people, it's more that there's a bit of a dichotomy with the way if you look on media (traditional or social) we're told every single day that the cost of living is abhorrent, that people are struggling to merely survive, that every day is just a relentless miserable grind, that nobody can afford even basic food, that it's ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE for anyone under 35 to afford to buy a house, and that's why people are staying at home longer and putting off having kids etc....which will have a huge impact on literally every part of our lives further down the line.

Yet for many many people that's not what they're seeing in their actual lives, with the real life people they interact with.

Of course the obvious answer is that you don't see the people who aren't spending money - just because some people are going on holiday doesn't mean everyone is. But the prevalent narrative is that everybody, or at least everybody but the top 1%, are struggling to even afford basic essentials, let alone luxuries. Which really doesn't seem to actually be the case.

People complain about both parents having to work and not being able to afford to live on one income as a family could 20-30 years ago, or not being able to buy a house aged 25 as their parents did, and therefore say life isn't fair and has generally gone downhill - but they aren't comparing like for like. The average working or even middle class person/family 30 years ago generally did spend a lot less on discretionary luxuries than the average person does now.

And yes, you are completely right, some of that is because there are more things to spend money on, not to mention more constant bombardment encouraging us to do so. People decades ago didn't not buy an iphone because they had better willpower or financial management, it was because iphones didn't exist!

But, overall, the choice to spend money on extraneous stuff (and then moan you don't have as much money to save for big stuff), is still a choice.

£32,k in the late 90s? That was a huge amount then! My dad was still getting his wages in cash in a brown envelope each week. I worked in a factory for a couple of summers and earned a little less than him- but ended up with more because I wasn't paying tax.

Why do you avoid them? Having disposable cash doesn’t make them bad people.

I am old enough to remember the changes when Maggie Thatcher relaxed lending via the banks. Growing up I can remember people being careful with money, things like it being instilled that for a mortgage, it was the rule of thirds. Supposed to borrow a 3rd of your wage, so left a third for living and a third for saving and if anyone wanted anything, you saved up.

Under Thatcher, borrowing became much easier for many in the UK and the buy now, pay later way of living was born. Borrowing was starting to be actively advertised everywhere, credit card offers in the post, store cards offered when buying something at the till, tempting many into what we now see as the norm.
Interest rates though when I did my borrowing as a youngster were really really low, not the 24-30% they are now. I don't know why so many people still borrow at those rates.

I don’t know people who are doing all these things, everyone I know picks and chooses. They spend on renovating their house because they can’t afford to move to a bigger one. Some prioritize travel and rarely go out to eat. We like to spend on restaurants and nice wine but we make coffee and home
and take lunch to work. I like nice clothes but DIY nails and beauty treatments.
we make good money from working but that means we can’t take 8 holidays a year because of work commitments so we take one. There are some things I did as a kid that we rarely do because of cost now, mainly concerts and theatre, the prices for these seem out of control and my 16 year old still hasn’t been to a concert because all of them are so expensive

Unfortunately a side-effect of people streaming illegally, concerts are the way bands make money now. It used to be the other way around, gigs were just for promoting, sometimes even losing money, but records sold.

I agree though, they are outrageously expensive.

As a child of ‘70’s, I’ve been saying exactly this. The amount of unnecessary ‘stuff’ we’re told we need is phenomenal. And the habit of acquisition for the sake of- where do people find the money to constantly update home furnishings for example? Why do we need 70 billion types of biscuit in the supermarket? Home, food, clothing and the rest. There’s so much of everything and so much waste. How did we get here?

I agree. When I was growing up a takeaway was a treat; now people act like they are slumming it if they stay in with a take away rather than go out for a meal. That is now a ‘cheap’ alternative!

Mostly because I just find talking about house renovations and expensive holidays really boring!

It was dull, Grandad lived in the same tiny house his whole life, my Granny lived in the house from getting married so spent the first few years living with her in-laws. Note, this meant my grandparents never had to pay a mortgage and therefore had more disposable income than most as they also both worked which for 1940's Granny was probably quite unusual. Granny couldn't have more children and having only 1 probably made working possible in times when people quite often had big families and needed Mum at home. Grandad worked in a highly skilled job.

No holidays, never ever went abroad, days out were very local with a cheese sandwich and flask of coffee but generally no where that involved paying an entry fee e.g sitting on the local park bench at the beach. Lived in North East but never ventured further south than Yorkshire. I have no memory of them venturing beyond 30 miles from home in my lifetime despite them being of working age when i was born.

No going for a look round the shops just for something to do. Every purchase was considered, even their prescription glasses were a huge event.

And, when they died, they had a ridiculous amount of cash in the bank. They could easily have afforded holidays, seen the world, not had a huge portion of unseasoned potatoes with every meal, poured more than a thimblefull of fresh orange for breakfast. That to me is dull.

(These were people perfectly fit and able in the 1980's and 90's.)

I guess it's all relative, I lived out in my 20s in the 80s/early 90s, and regular visits to cafe, restaurants and yearly abroad holidays etc was never a thing (and when we went abroad it was only short haul) yet I loved my 20s. We lived near a ski field for many years, and our annual ski season pass was probably our biggest expense/luxury.

I think people have lost the concept of waiting or doing without.

But also there is an attitude of "why should I do without."

There is a balance to be struck. Yes, housing was cheaper then, although interest rates were up to 17% in the 80s, and it was far harder to get a mortgage.
But it's very easy to just spend on this and just spend on that, and "half a pound of tuppenny rice, half a pound of treacle, that's the way the money goes - Pop goes the weasel."
And just hoping that it will all fall together without deliberately putting the money aside doesn't work as if it's there; it's spent.

Some of the things are on the face of things little eg. we had one school uniform (except shirt/blouse or summer dresses) right the way through school, and most was second hand and would be passed to another family if you didn't have siblings. I remember one year my dresses came from a friend who'd had three girls wear them, and they hadn't been new to them.
It's often asked how much uniform and many people say they get a full change daily.

The oft quoted "give up take-away coffees" as a way to riches, isn't really about coffee. It's the whole lifestyle. If someone pays £3.50 per day for coffee for 47 weeks a year, then that's about £800.
That doesn't seem that worth saving maybe, but the thing is if someone buys a coffee every day, they'll probably also buy other things with similar quick and easy, small price then it adds up.

Then you have the disposable aspect. Our clothes were passed down, mended - my dm used to put leather patches in dbro's trousers before he wore them to stop him going through the knees. If my parents couldn't mend it between them then that was it. We didn't even ask for a new one because we knew it wouldn't come.

When my uncle dropped the entire stack of new plates my mum had just bought, there was no thought of going out and getting more. Df glued together a couple that weren't totally smashed, and she was given some oddments from other people. They used odd plates for the next 15 years until she saw a set in a charity shop and bought them. That was in about 1995; she's still using them, although she has got another set (also from a charity shop) due to needing more for the dishwasher.

Holidays, even for the very rich family (talking CEO of international company level rich) were once a year at most and often not abroad.

And that's without any amount we spend on tech. I remember around 10 years ago someone telling me there was no point in getting a mobile phone without a £30 contract at least, and in the same breath telling me how much they were worried about finances. With 2 teens plus parents in the household, they were paying £120+ a month. When I said that we all (including 2 teens) were on pay as you go with handsets that cost less than £100 each, and we topped up £20 once a year for the children and they coped with that, they were practically reporting me to SS for neglect.

When I think of what dm used to do, I have a far cushier life than Mum did. Something breaks - I get another. I have a dishwasher (dm didn't have a washing machine even until after I was born) and I don't spend as long on housework.

Re updating home furnishings, sadly they don't make furniture like they used to. I remember the time when IKEA was reliable and affordable way to furnish your house with good quality solid pine pieces. It's all overpriced laminated MDF now which you will struggle to take apart to move. I recently bought a house and I am trying to buy as much vintage brown furniture as I can. It costs ridiculous amount of money but at least I know it will last. I re-webbed my old sofa and am going to reupholster it and I am very lucky I have the skills to do it. Paying someone else to do it is more expensive than buying new. So, I'm afraid, a lot of re-furnishing is unavoidable.
I am much more baffled by people who buy houses to sell "in a few years" rather than...you know...live in them.