AIBU to feel middle-class luxuries have become increasingly out of reach?

[cocobow]

I had to go to the local shopping centre the other day to pick up a click and collect for my husband, new work shirts so nothing fancy! I thought why not make an afternoon of it as I rarely go shopping and I could maybe get a coffee and cake and even treat myself to a little something as my birthday is coming up.

I loved some of the clothes in places like monsoon and seasalt but it was all way too expensive dresses were £80 to £100 or more same with skirts which seemed to start at £65 and I know that isn't even considered expensive today but for me it is! I went for a look in the sephora as I love skincare but again it was all really expensive. The queue for the till was full of school girls buying things I wouldn't be able to buy for myself!

To be fair they were probably there spending birthday money and probably aren't spending money like that all the time. I suppose it just feels like the goal posts on these admittedly luxury items have been moved since I was in my teens and early 20's when I imagined that by my 40's I'd be able to at least buy some of these things or buy nice clothes now and then. My husband and I both degree and post graduate educated and work in professional jobs but we have to prioritise bills, the kids and food over luxuries. To be fair we have no debt at all and we will save for an buy large purchases cash mostly but I admit to feeling a bit personally deprived at times! When my mum was my age she worked in a call centre part time in the evenings and would go round the shops most weekend and buy herself a new top or other item of clothes and exclusively used clarins skincare, I use the ordinary, cerave or boots and superdrug own brand mostly and my clothes come from charity shops. My parents were working class made good but their disposable income seemed to go a lot further than mine does. We don't even have a large mortgage.

DH and I recently looked at taking a short trip to London as a joint birthday present to each other but the cost was so expensive we seem to have quietly shelved the idea.

In the end I had a look in waterstones but even that was expensive, since when are paperbacks routinely £14.99! I never even had a coffee or bit of cake as the selection of cakes looked dry and unappetizing but would still have cost £10 in total.

Am I being unreasonable to think the cost of a middle class lifestyle with a few luxuries has had the goalposts moved by quite some amount?

They can order those books in for you at the library as long as you don't mind waiting. In fact they can order any books in from anywhere in the county, have a word with the librarian.

Thirding this. Definitely a contributor. My mum was 26 and considered an "older mum" when she had me. I was off to uni when she was 44. I'm 42 with an 8 year old.so the nursery years are very fresh in the mind of my bank account!

We went on holiday to santorin and was genuinely surprised at how cheap everything was eating out etc was reasonably priced - shops were reasonable we in uk are being ripped off it’s a disgrace if I was young I would emigrate

Yeah her family were rich they were middle class by birth maybe

also the papers used it as a slur against her and her family

i know it’s probably been said loads of times but I have gone away from this thread and thought about it, maybe you are not middle class, you are actually working class now.

The people who you considered working class are now actually ‘poor’ and the people who used to be poor are actually homeless people now.
Middle class people are rich and wealthy people are very rich.

Im in Ireland so we don’t have any of that class thing here so I could be way off with that assessment of it all.

Bollocks is there no middle class. 😆

You're just using semantics to try and define it out of existence. Going from a graduate job at a FTSE company to working with builders all day the difference couldn't be starker to me. It's as much a cultural thing as an economic thing and most people understand the common differences between the average bricklayer and the average hedge fund manager.

The average person understands this even if you won't admit it.

You can’t move an inch tbh. I space out haircuts

I don’t know. DF was a farmer and we seemed to be perceived as “middle class” because of that but there wasn’t much luxury. Not necessarily deliberately, it just wasn’t really relevant.

Farming = very rural living so we weren’t in town much which meant less visible shopping (pre-internet days) but we rarely ate out, never had take-aways and DM loved a jumble sale (which doesnt seem to be a “thing” nowadays) so I didn’t have a single item of clothes that cost more than 50p until I was about 15. DM
cut my hair until I moved on to my friend’s mum
who was the village hairdresser from her bathroom. No posh toiletries, didn’t even have conditioner until had money to start buying things myself - DM had short hair (which she cut herself with one of those razor things and somehow made a good job of it, I have no idea how she managed that) and just didn’t buy it. We changed the channels on one of the (slightly fucked) TVs we had by flipping out the channel buttons and twiddling the tuning dials behind them.

Looks a bit “when I were a lad we all had to eat coal, etc” reading it back but it was rural Scotland in the 1970s and 80s and didn’t seem much different from the way everyone else lived. We had quite a big house but DM did bed & breakfast for holiday makers in the summer and that involved me getting turfed out of my bedroom so it could be used for that while I kipped on a camp bed in my parent’s room (listening to the World Service as DF couldn’t sleep without the radio on).

I’ve never cut my DCs hair, they’ve always gone to the same fancy one I go to. They get loads of things from Vinted. DC2 has 2 part time jobs so even though doesnt get much pocket money always has enough for Starbucks it would seem 🙄

I was listening to a podcast while I made the dinner tonight where it spoke about how from the 1950's to the early 80's the proceeds of growth and productivity were far more equally distributed amongst the general population. Due to policy changes and deregulation on financial markets in the late 70's the proceeds of the continued expansion of productivity and the subsequent growth started to flow upwards to a much smaller group of people at the top, inequality grew and poverty which had been falling started to increase again. At the same time the rate of pay for CEO's increased hugely to 100 or even 130 times what an average worker earns. Apparently there were similar levels of inequality in the 20th century prior to the first world war and there were active policy choices and social reforms made to reduce inequality and then in the late 70's choices were made to swing the pendulum back to benefit the few. No doubt in the aftermath of the 1st World War the threat of communist revolution was a significant motivator to improving things for ordinary people but now that threat is gone.

I am not suggesting my lack of disposable income is on par with poverty or real deprivation but the majority of us are somewhere down stream of changes which benefit those at the very top and disadvantage everyone else.

I was in Seville recently and it was much cheaper than where I live in the UK. I then looked up the average wage and it was half the average wage of where I live.

The author will see about £2p of that, assuming they've sold beyond their advance.

During a weekend break to Portsmouth we went to the retail outlet. I'm not normally a shopper but I was delighted with the Crew Clothing. I got 2 t shirts, a hoodie and a jacket, all for half price, the only clothes I've bought this year. As regards books, I've had lots of free books recently with my Waterstones card. If I'm buying Xmas or birthday presents for children I always get them in Waterstones, books or toys - they have a good range of really good toys. If I'm having a drink and cake I have it in Waterstones cafe. Points accumulate really quickly. I assume you look at your library catalogue, rather than just what's on the shelves? Probably a silly question. But yes, I can't deny that everything is ridiculously expensive now.

But none of this is considering our comparative wealth vs developing countries which is a key factor when talking about a country's global ranking in terms of wealth.

Only on Mumsnet

What I am saying is that even the middle classes are poorer these days. My parents who were fairly high achieving working class people from fairly deprived backgrounds had more disposable income than we do. Amongst friends of mine who really were middle class who's parents were doctors and lawyers, who went to private school and had Holidays to France and Italy most years, had horse riding, music, dance lessons or did sports like Tennis or Golf none of them send their kids to private school, instead they try to buy in the catchment area of the best state schools they can.

I think in the UK, at least to me class is a combination of your family background, what your parents and grandparents did, your education, your social capital, cultural capital, what you do, where you live and finally you're wealth. So while I might have a more middle class profession and middle class cultural capital my background and lack of intergenerational wealth means I'm probably not quite seen as middle class.

Yes I agree with you but however the old class system worked, things have changed and you have all gone down a notch.

That doesn't seem right at all. Assuming, average salary is £39k, means average family monthly net income is £5.4k. Surely, average family most families will save £2k from that figure?

Thats just average, most graduates in 40s will earn significantly more than that, and top 10% earners are on £80k plus, so why is £80 top an issue??

I'm not saying it is I was just talking about the podcast and I've read about the deregulation of financial markets under Thatcher before and how damaging it's been. I am not an expert on economics by any means.

GDP per capita is pretty stagnant

Even if it's £1k, there still shouldn't be an issue buying £80 dresses.

That’s hilarious!! You think people earning 40k can save 2,000 a month? What about their expenses and outgoings and how much it costs to keep the lights on.

Either you or I are very bad at maths.

(I think it’s me)

39k each is 5.2k before any pension or student loan deductions so that could easily be 4.9k, housing will swallow a lot of that, travel, utilities & then childcare.

Why on earth do you think most families saves 2k a month?

That’s gas. I can’t stop laughing at that.

What about mortgages and childcare?

Obviously not all people. But top quartile (families with gross household income of £93k+) almost certainly will.

Why on earth do you think it’s 1k, why are you making up random numbers?!