To be angered by uber middle class people who complain they are short of money...

[Reallytired]

I know someone who has just bought themselves a 600K house. Both parents work and the family have three children and enjoy nice hobbies like sailing, and learning to play the cello and rock climbing. The parents are forever moaning how short of money they are.

However my son has a little friend who is in a family with three children. This family lives in a two bed flat which is cold and mouldy. They rent their flat as they cannot afford to buy even though one parent works full time and the other part time. Yet they never moan about lack of money, but have a positive outlook on life.

I just think that some uber middle class families need to be a bit more thankful for what they have.

Actually Bella people do control the market, if people weren't so quick to borrow without thought to what happens if somebody loses their jobs, interest rates rising, that more than 3 x the joint income isn't affordable then prices wouldn't have risen.
What happens if prices rise and everybody refuses to pay them is that the come down. That's what's happening at the moment, the banks won't lend, the prices dropped, it's now imposed common sense, shame it couldn't have come from the general public.
But people are greedy and find themselves in a mess as a result.

Just for the record Custy - we're putting plastic sheets over the windows because we ain't got money in the bank. Nothing spare anyway after we've bought food for the month. I dunno if it works Expat. But those windows are icy cold and the plastic sheets aren't so at least we don't have an open freezer in the room. Even 1 degree warmer would help.

I don's think it's helpful to blame individuals for finding themselves in the market they find themselves in.

When I bought my first flat, it was £45000. I didn't want to pay htat, I would much rather have paid £20000 (or even better, £10000!). But if I wanted to provide myself with a permanent affordable home (renting was much more expensive than buying then) I had to. The person who bought it from me, paid £115000 for it. Again, he would have preferred to pay £75K, or £50K, or £30K - but those prices are not on offer. Of course, I could have sold it to him for that, but then I would have been homeless, as there was nothing left for that price anymore in that area.

It's a bit like saying it's all our fault the trains are overcrowed and too expensive, if we stopped using them, they'd have to fix them. It ain't gonna happen, people will carry on struggling in to work on a substandard underground and buy overpriced houses in an overpriced market, because that is the way the world in which they find themselves works. Occasionally there are minor corrections, but we have had a market for at least 20 years now, where affordable housing to buy, has been pretty much a distant pipe dream in most of the country. You could say, yes give up, rent all your life, but up until v. recently in the area I was in, that was dearer than a mortgage.

And tbh I still don't think houseprices are "common sense". They are still insane. The average house costs something like 10 times the average income. That is simply not enough of a correction to make housing affordable, but that doesn't mean that everyone who has ever bought a house is greedy and grasping. People just want somewhere to live.

Bella, a lot of people lied to get mortgages, we were told to by the mortgage advisor at the estate agents local to us.
A lot of people took on 100% or even 125% mortgages, that was always going to end in tears. Many more kept one property to rent out and bought another bigger one using the paper profits, again not a sensible thing to do.
Of course there will be victims of circumstance but really if you are sensible and educate yourself before making huge financial decisions then it's less likely happen.

Oh I agree, people made insane financial decisions.

But in a context where there is a kind of collective insanity going on, that's what happens. There will always be bubbles and they'll always burst.

My brother was talking about this earlier this evening, about how all his friends thought he was an idiot for not lying about his income. A few of them are now in dire straits.

makkapakka - if you reread my post I admitted that a holiday cottage isn't an essential. I know perfectly well what is and is not an essential. But it's one of the things that make life pleasanter. And it's not exactly a fortnight in the Bahamas

In fact I think a week's holiday in the UK is now seen as a benchmark. If you can't afford even that you are seen as being in poverty... or some such.

Well Bella, you'll understand then those people who pushed the prices up by lying or being just plain stupid are the ones who I will feel no sympathy for when the bailiffs drive off in their X5 or take the house keys. Ordinary people cannot live those lifestyles and it was just plain stupidity on behalf of those who fell for the media hype. I feel sorry for their children though who will have the rug pulled from under them, but it will do them no harm.

OrmIrain, are you sure not being able to afford a holiday in the UK is the benchmark for poverty?

That's hysterical!

It was some survey of childhood poverty this year IIRC. And one of the benchmarks was that families should be able to at least afford a weeks holiday in the UK. I will try and find a link.

I think it was the Rowntree Foundation.

Seems fair enough to me, actually. Poverty isn't just about not being able to eat properly or not being adequately housed. It's also about whether or not you can fully participate in society. And if you are a little kid and everybody in your class is going on holiday, then you are pretty damn excluded if you are not going on any kind of holiday at all.

KatieDD, I'm kind of with you. At least I can see that some people are still presuming that the next house will cost them a fortune, so they have to sell their own house for as much as possible, and certainly as much as it would have fetched 18 months ago.
And in a way, their concerns are valid, because the next seller in the chain probably is thinking the same way (so they will only sell at an over-inflated value, too).

Search for 'holiday'

"Ordinary people cannot live those lifestyles"

Um they lied to get 2 bed houses in not particularly good areas.

Those lifestlyes are just normal houses in normal streets. Not luxury lifestyles.

They lied because the price of an average family home was something like 10 times their annual income. It used to be 2.5 - 3 times people's annual income. They didn't push the prices up, prices were already up and they needed a home.

Talking about 600k house prices is irrelevant.

The tabloids do this all the time - refer to people's house values as if somehow they are rich because their house happened to go up in value.

My gran lives from hand to mouth and has to think carefully before heating her house. But you could refer to her as 'lady in house worth a third of a million moans about heating bills' etc.

You don't know how much disposable income anybody has unless you're privy to their bank statements.

I find it tiring too, really tired
hth

Im sorry but not going on holiday doesnt make you poor. It makes you sensible if you dont have the money to pay for a holiday

People are putting too much emphasis on material things

Lots of people live in houses which if they had to buy today, even with the house price collapse, they would not be able to afford. I certainly would not be able to afford mine, not now that they have gone back to only lending 3 times your income.

Don't get me wrong, I think it is a Very Good Thing that they will only lend 3 times your income at the moment, but they should have been doing this all along. They should never have allowed 5x, 7x, 10x etc. At one stage, they didn't even calculate on the basis of income, but on some fantasy figure of "affordability" which is basically whatever you want it to be. Hence so many people borrowing beyond their means, because they simply are too young/ uninformed to understand that bubbbles burst.

"My gran lives from hand to mouth and has to think carefully before heating her house. But you could refer to her as 'lady in house worth a third of a million moans about heating bills' etc."

The reality is that your Gran has options that many people of her age do not have. She could sell her house for a third of a million and use the money to live in comfort and luxury for the rest of her days. That she chooses not to is because she puts a high value on staying in that house, no matter that it is expensive to heat and maintain. There is nothing wrong with her choosing to do that but she is still lucky to have the choice.

There are families crammed in to tiny flats in unsuitable locations that also have to worry about heating bills.

YABU

but only because I could be the person in your OP

actually I dont really moan about money

but I begrudge not being able to buy loads of new clothes every season [pipe dream]

No holiday = poverty!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I can't open the doc but am keen to find out if they have costed up camping?

I think it just says something along the lines of a week away from home. So it could be camping too. For adults the definition says that it also has to be not staying with relatives. For children it doesn't state that.

oh fgs

I dont live in poverty but we havent had a holiday in years and I am not particually bothered. I dont GET the whole holiday thing. I enjoy camping but its just too difficult to do with our disabled daughter and fuck me, we stay with relatives for a break for our eldest son. He thinks its a holiday