how do they expect you to live when everything goes up!!

[mommmmyof2]

I am sooo sick of everything rising apart from mine or my husbands wages!! We struggle at the best of times to get through every week and i just had a promotion and what for....so they can take benefits off us and to be taxed more on it!
I sometimes feel the harder you work the harder it is, i not sure how they expect you to survive these days, and when your children are asking for things and all you ever say is no then you feel like a bad mom

And why do you care, Litchick, what others do? That's their lookout if they overextend and go bankrupt.

Alibaba - it's the increase in numbers that has shocked me. If anyhting I thought there would be a decrease.

I hope it's because the recession is not as bad as everyone says, and in fct we've turned a corner...but...I just don't believe it.
I think expectations have risen so high that independent education which is, I don't think anyone can deny, frighteningly and absurdly expensive, is something that more and more people feel entitled to have.

'I think expectations have risen so high that independent education which is, I don't think anyone can deny, frighteningly and absurdly expensive, is something that more and more people feel entitled to have.' Like you I mean you send your dc there why should they have it when others don't are your dc better? do they deserve more? You don't know other peoples circumstances so how can you judge and you certainly can't accuse them of feeling their dc are entitled to go there when you obviously believe your dc are.

expat - I care because I worry that this delusional way we have existed for some years is having such a negative impact on us as a society.

I know guys in the city earning hundreds of thousands who whine that they are underpaid.

I know retired people enjoying golf and cruises who barely reflect on what a wonderful time they're having.

I know families in their own homes with healhty kids who endlessly complain about how this other person has got this or that.

Mnet is full of it. Every single day. Whine fucking whine.

The parents getting into debt because they want something they think they 'should' get, seems to me so indicative of a general malaise. I just hope it's not like that for all our kids. Wanty wanty, whine whine.

There is serious disadvantage in the UK. 70,000 kids are looked after (supposdely) by the state. Now they really do have cause to maon.

I totally agree with Expat and Slushy.

I'm 23, and incredibly lucky that with my income and my partner's, we can just about afford a mortgage on a small house or a flat once I start my first teaching job in September.

Oh, actually, we would be able to, if he hadn't been made redundant. And I STILL see us as lucky, because I'll have a decent, regular income.

But I've had to get into 20,000 debt to do it (four years of university).

My parents both went to uni (for free), both dropped out, never stuck at anything and were frequently unemployed during my childhood. Yet they still manage to own a four-bedroom house. They've marvelled that my starting salary will be more than either of them earn. Except I won't be able to live in a large house for £200 a month. My student rent for a single room was almost twice that much.

And while my Mum talks martyrishly about working past sixty, I'll probably be working til I'm 70.

I'm not trying to whinge. I'm truly not. As I said, I consider myself very lucky to have found a profession that pays decently and reliably, which I (mostly) enjoy. I also happen to live somewhere relatively cheap.

I'm just not sure some of the older generations realise how relatively easy certain aspects of their lives have been.

slushy - I dont believe any child in the world deserves more than another.

Mine know that they are absurdly lucky.

And it's not that I don't want other kids to have what they do- of course I do- I just think it's plain daft to get into debt to get it.

If you're living a nice comfortable life wiht happy healthy kids, why take on debt and risk to get soemthing just because you feel you ought to? it's not like we're talking food on the table here. We're talking about a luxury.

Why cant we fuckin whinge? it's the only thing that they cant tax!

slack - perhaps the difference is that you're looking back on the advantaged baby boomers - going to uni etc.
Whereas I'm thinking about my Mum and Dad and their peers. My Nan and her peers too. These were WC folk who had horrible jobs for shit money. They had really hard lives with almost no ability to improve it.

I suppose I don't know many rich baby boomers tbh.

In my comparison we've got it easy. Perhaps in yours, we haven't.

Out of interest Litchick can you afford to pay 50% deposit on a similar house to yours for each of your dc so they can have the same kind of life you did? So they don't have to climb twice as high to enjoy the same life they are accustomed to.

Because if not then you are wasting money on private school which could enable your dc to live a life without being forced to get into loads of debt to get a mortgage. Can you afford their university fees considering for a average course most students rack up about 20,000 worth of debt in 3years.

yes - and as I say, I know it is absurdly lucky.

It is amazingly hard to compare though. Not everyone had the easy ride of it back then with regards property. My father was/is a pilot, and bought his first property in his early 20-ies. The house price to salary ratio was still about the same, salary of around £4k p/a and house price of around £13k. I know that since then house prices rocketed as did 'money', that £4k quickly became £100K. But for however many years they still struggled to pay the mortgage etc. Oddly enough the biggest profit they have ever made on a property will be the one they're in now....bought for £250K in 2000 and now on the market for £725K. Those are crazy prices! They acknowledge they are lucky but that that work didn't come without sacrifice, much like many today. There will be some in a position to take advantage of the current sitation r.e.: house prices and buy now/sell in years to come but we still won't be seeing the same figures.

I think this is a good thing, the was the world/country has been run for the last decade has been ridiculous. Many in the country have been living the life of those on a £200K salary when earning £20K...material possessions have become the norm. This needs to stop.

Well, both of my parents were from working class backgrounds, but went to grammar school. I'm not sure when your parents/grandparents were young, so I'm not sure of the educational opportunities at the time.

MrsC - that's kind what I was trying to say.
But I have a mahoosive hangover, so maybe I was being more aggressive than stricyly necessary.

I don't think house prices will ever drop ( I also don't think it would be good if they did because so many are mortgaged up to the hilt) I think the only way past the current economic state is for wages to rise because IMO the reason everyone is in so much debt is because housing growth has increased much faster than income growth. So IMO freezing pay is a bad move.

I am pleased litchick that you can afford to give your dc that. It is hard for me to make cutbacks because I spend a entire day every week going through finances and planning what needs to be bought this week to stay out of debt. Me having to reduce my spending means me losing what most class as necessities. My dc will not sacrifice I will make sure of that but me and dp will have to.

slack - my Dad passed to grammar school but his Mum was a widow and they were seriously poor and he had a barrel full of younger sisters. So he left at 14 to go down the pit. He never once complained. Though he drank heavily and I suspect was unhappy underneath.

My mum is dyslexic. So am I, but she's a bloody corker. So she was pronounced thick and went to secondary modern where she learned to skip. She left school at 15 to work in a shop.

They both had hard lives and my Dad died young. I'm glad my Mum is comfortble now - and she loves it

Yet, they weren't unusual.

Oh to have a hangover. I'm just tired cause I have to get up to pee a million times a nigth! (Heavily pregnant.) See, I can do competitive woe as well!

20k 200k lifestyle?...does not compute..

'And it's not that I don't want other kids to have what they do- of course I do- I just think it's plain daft to get into debt to get it.'

You have no idea how the other parents are paying for it and quite frankly, it's none of your business.

You don't care, you just want to rant at how everyone else isn't as savvy as you are.

Honestly, you rant on and on about moaning.

I find the preaching and sermonising that goes on here just as annoying, tbh.

It is patronising and tedious.

Oh, yes, he went down the pit, blah blah blah.

That was hte case for millions of people, still is.

So what? How does that make one better equipped to preach to someone else how much better their way of life is?

How presumptuous and condescending!

And on top of that, it does nothing but make people tune out at the least and seriously piss them off at the worst.

You are comparing your situation now with your situation in the recent past, and thus comparing a period of decline with a period of artificial economic boom inflated by cheap credit and unsustainable house price increases.

It's healthier to think of 2003-08 as the anomaly and this as a return to economic normalcy.

slushy - I am glad I can do that too. I really don't take it for granted. And I don't allow my children to either.

As for making economies - well I know full well that it is shit being poor, and it is so anxious making when there is already little give in a families finances.

I think that is why I get so pissed off at people who are comfortable not counting their blessings. I want to shake them and tell them to look arond them.

But then I can be a bit of a Pollyanna

I meant:

• Foreign holidays every year
• Multiple newish cars
• Wide screen TVs
• Games consoles
• Huge wardrobes
• Etc etc.

These are all non-essentials that really are just fripperies but are now seen as essentials by many. (The above are silly examples but you get what I mean.)

I mean, gah, let's start comparing sob stories!

FIL had a drunkard gambler for a dad who left the family when FIL was 13. They half-starved for a year until FIL was 14 and went to work on the docks in Leith, unloading cargo from ships into warehouses that were freezing cold in winter.

He's got dyspraxia, insulin-dependent diabetes and rhematoid arthritis but at the age of 63 is still working away.

His undiagnosed dyslexia means he's functionally illiterate, too.

But he doesn't waste time going out about others being 'whingers'. He couldn't care less!

He doesn't think his hard life was anything other than that. He didn't find it character building, he thought it sucked.

He doesn't begrudge anyone anything and thinks young people today are shafted.

He says if he hadn't met MIL he'd have been on a boat to Australia like thousands of others young Scottish men at the time, and says he doesn't blame any young people nowadays who do the same.

Want the sad tale of my former landlord and mate, the 6th of 8 children of Irish immigrants, who thought Castlemilk, a scary estate in Glasgow, was paradise when they moved in because the flats had running water?

He's now quite wealthy.

oh expat - you do make me laugh.

And this morning my head just hurts too much.

Note to self - when the empty bottles add to mmore in number than guests...time to stop drinking.

Oh, yes! All you middle class people are just up to your eyes in debt for your gadgets!

You feckless, spoilt adolescents in adult bodies need a swift kick in the jacksie to go with your pay cuts and higher VAT!

You don't know you were born until you've eaten chilli beans and drunk water for dinner at least three times a week!

Ah, see, Lit, you should have just played board games, prayed and drunk water and given the money you'd have spent on wine to the Treasury to do you part.

We're all in this together.