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?

Ireland has much higher wages & an economy favourable to business (low tax).

Also child benefit isn’t means tested in Ireland & it’s €140 per dc.

Poland has a growing economy with a skilled & educated workforce (Ireland has great education too) Interestingly they also don’t mean test their equivalent of child benefit.

The UK has not invested in much since the crash & particularly not in children & young people.

Wages have kept up

house prices haven’t - house prices have exploded

I agree. That is what I was insinuating.

This country has plenty of unproductive people. "Dead wood" so to speak.

Apparently neither has the other poster, however there were multiple threads on here not so long ago with similar concerns. Many librarians commented that is is often why they need male security, which as libraries are increasingly in shared spaces rather than their own buildings, can take a long time to arrive.

Many people clearly don't live in a town like ours, with homelessness and youths with nothing to do. Lucky to be able to use your libraries and parks with small kids and not worry there might be a needle or glass in the grass.

The issue is with the small things costing so much more - OP said treats - so things like books, ice cream, coffee etc, things that used to be treats for a few quid, not a whole new dress! I also think Alan Sugar and Apprentice showed so many how easy it is to sell rubbish cheap stuff to Londoners by jazzing up packaging on bath bombs or how little meat is needed in a sausage roll for a tenner, people have really taken that on board and prices for cheaper things have become "luxury".

Both Poland and Ireland are now member states of the EU which has helped them hugely , transforming both nations into major economic success stories.

Here's another website my DD uses and recommends: www.mandmdirect.com/gb/en/shop/womens/dresses-and-skirts

My parents have wifi, it’s a bit of inconvenience to not have it nowadays. I don’t have a landline though like I did growing up.

I agree that the main problem is housing , followed by greedy companies who want more for less and making it that you can’t easily live without a car or the internet or any other ‘ adds ons’ they dream up to make it harder if you don’t have them ( like insurance for white goods or whatever)
Someone is getting rich and it’s the normal people as it never is !

You are right that prices have risen much faster than salaries. The rise in house prices is what has had one of the biggest impacts as that determines what percentage of your household income goes on mortgage.
But when I was growing up my parents would not have had a lot of monthly charges we now regard as normal, mobile phone contracts, broadband, streaming services. Families did not have as many possessions and did not replace them so often.
There have been periods like this before, I can remember my parents struggling in the seventies with increased mortgages and oil fired central heating.

My parents didn’t have mobiles or computers or even a car. They wouid be horrified at how we have to live now because you really can’t function without so many things these days. It all eats into the finances.

@Gibgertea The UK isn’t just in this economic mess because of Brexit though.

All My grandparents had techwise were a TV and a radiogram, plus my Dad got them a transistor radio to put in the outdoor toilet to mask the toilet noises.

Wages are shocking!

We have had nearly 2 decades of stagnation

It depends on the area and size of house. It’s hard to judge as we don’t have info.

I think on the one hand I agree - things are ridiculously expensive nowadays comparative to what people are earning. But then on the other hand I do think that people have a lot more free time than we used to and expectations around what we should be able to afford are higher - plus having a family is so much more expensive to when you are young and childfree. When I had my first graduate job in London I felt loaded - but I was shopping in Dorothy Perkins and Top Shop and I didn't even know what a designer label was. I would never have shopped anywhere like Space NK for makeup. In terms of going out, I was in the office every day from 8am until 8pm, sometimes later, 5 days a week and then sometimes at the weekend. I don't really remember eating in the evenings and there was a lot of free food on offer in the office at the staff canteen and coffee was free out of the machine. At the weekends my social life consisted of drinks after work on a Friday in local bar and we never really went out for meals - in fact the only time I went to restaurants was for work social events when a client or the boss was picking up the tab!

Employers are weighed down with employment legislation, they can't afford to pay any more.

Employers are weighed down with employment legislation, they can't afford to pay any more.

Hard to judge what?

Sorry are you saying housing costs haven’t increased & food prices haven’t been impacted by the war?! 🤦🏻‍♀️

I would consider myself to be firmly in the middle class camp and I feel your pain. I ran our household income through the Institute of Fiscal Studies calculator and got this conclusion:

With a household after tax, after housing cost income of £5197 per week, you have a higher after housing cost income than around 99% of the population - equivalent to about 67.6 million individuals.

Well, I don't feel that wealthy when I walk around John Lewis! I balk at the idea of spending £100 on a shirt!

Yes broadband, sky etc didn’t exist, meals out were few and far between, families often had one car, houses were not being renovated repeatedly, new clothes was not a weekend hobby, take away coffeee was unheard of.

I do think social media has a lot to do with it. Not the op, but people post a lot of aspirational lifestyle stuff and others look and can’t understand why they can’t do that,

The large ones can, but shareholders would grumble.....

I can’t imagine posting that, why on earth would you, for a woman struggling.

@dustabsorberSo you agree with me, wages haven’t kept up! Because the post I replied to said they had…

It's set to get worse with El Niño affecting food prices. Energy bills going up. Tax rises in the Autumn budget to fund more benefit increases.