Are others really living a comfortable lifestyle or is it all smoke and mirrors?

[peanuts18]

Most people I know with children live in nice houses, have foreign holidays or new extensions, kitchens or new cars, eat out, days out to London or weekends away etc. How do they all afford it even a car on HP is several hundred a month?

I work part time (ds is only 7), oh works full time but is self employed so work can be a little up and down and no sick or holiday pay, have a fairly small mortgage (£600pm) but we really struggle. No savings, always in overdraft, no eating out, 1 cheap week to Spain in the last 15 years which set us back for months and months. I don’t smoke or drink and buy supermarket/primark clothes. No loans or car payments only a CC with about £1,000 on.

Am I missing something here as how do others do it or is it all smoke and mirrors and they are living on loans and credit cards, I really don’t get it??

I don't think managing your income correctly is scoffing , we are very proud of how hard we've worked and if some one else has not that's their problem

People earn more, people have been given things and people have debt, any in isolation or combination would lead to big differences.

Also peoples priorities. If you have spare cash one person might ho on holiday, anothef might be putting in their savings.

The other thing is when people got on the property ladder has a big impact.

I think the ds being 7 may be a typo?
7 months?

We won’t buy anything on credit. If we don’t have the money/can’t save then we don’t have it.

A bit of both. Some people just earn more money and can afford more luxuries. With others, it's smoke and mirrors.

I am one of the higher earners where I work but I own the oldest car in the car park. In fact, most of my colleagues who own the shiny new cars are putting them on credit.

Don't be fooled. You can't compare your situation to someone else's without knowing the full extent of it.

Dh and I are comfortably off, to the extent that we're going abroad on holiday at the end of the month (but is is our only one this year), aren't worrying about our energy bills and have recently moved into a large 3 bedroom house although it is a "project"!

But..... dh is self employed as a roofer. He's earning a lot of money now, but works 6 days a week and even in his small amount of leisure is quoting and planning jobs. His phone goes literally 24/7. I also work full time but am employed. My job is long and stressful and that combined with elderly and needy parents and our 2 x dc's (16 and 10) has left me exhausted and stressed to the extent that I'm coming to the end of 5 weeks of sick leave (although I'm currently in work, and have worked at least half of every one of those 5 weeks).

So whilst outwardly we are living a good life and we're making good decisions with our money, it's hard earned and not without costs to ourselves. We are in our late 40's / early 50's so have worked long and hard to get to here. We both have children from previous relationships and we have both had times of extreme poverty and hardship.

@FourTeaFallOut

We've probably saved a small fortune, just because dh is one of those practical people who can turn his hand to just about any job, anything from laying flooring, installing bathrooms, building our extension and maintaining and fixing our cars over the years. That's an almost invisible advantage on paper but it makes a big difference to our savings.

Same here. Having DH able to do similar means we are able to make significant upgrades to our home (new kitchen, bathrooms, extension) for material cost only.

We ask this question.
Sil is in a rented house through work but has a three bed BTL bringing in a substantial sum every month.
Another family, big splash once a year on holiday, full Instagram, never ever go anywhere else for weekends or just a day trip, no eat in restaurants ever but often take aways randomly during the week. The kids never do school residentials. Each purchase - a Zara haul, birthday gifts, sports equipment is always multiple Instagram pictures. They draw a lot of attention to the spends and hide down to one car in rural area and the kids wearing the same clothes as 'favourites' rather than lack of choice.

It is hard and we will all be looking at our own and others expenses.

I think we are twins. Same story here, although grammar school which I just scrapped into rather than private, but from the wrong side of town.

I’m always told what I “should” have overcome in life, or what I “should” have done to work harder. How they know someone who had it worse and is now the CEO of a huge company and if I changed my attitude or had worked harder, I could do that too. It’s not the norm to break out though.

The bones of it is I never stood a chance against the people I went to school with who came from better circumstances and supportive or well off families. My dad was aghast that I would do anything other than get a little job in Asda when I Ieft school at 16 until I found myself a husband -
I grew up with not a jot of confidence or ambition. Study and careers were for other people, not me.

But yes OP, they probably earn more, have come into family money or take out credit. You’ll never know, you just have to suck it up and live your own life.

Currently on my 5th foreign holiday of the year. But we both earn £60k+ and are over 50. I was skint when I was younger.

There is no point in making comparisons. People here who have talked about what people prioritise are so right.

There is also a lot of gifting of money if you have the well off and generous parents for it. I know friends who get regular paid for holidays, school shoes, meals out, a paid for extension and looks like she is living very, very well. It all adds up. I also know that the same person cannot afford to service their car, avoids driving cause they can't afford the petrol and makes tiny pension contributions each month and has no savings as well as some credit card debt.

I have felt the green eyes monster appear when she tells me she is off to Las Vegas I admit it! But there is often more to it - or just that people are earning good money.

You have to focus on your own situation and try not to let it get to you.

We live the "comfortable lifestyle" We have absolutely no debt. We still have a lot of secondhand and upcycled stuff ; part of our life journey. Credit card paid in full every month. No HP.

When we married we were very poor. We never had HP. We didn't have children until we were earning enough to support them. When they were small we lived incredibly economically and still (apart from mortgage) had no debt whatever. All our furniture cots prams nappies etc were secondhand We bought anything we had to have, including cars, old, second hand for cash. Or were given it. Or went without until we'd scraped enough money together.

It takes years to build wealth, assets and security. Just keep going.

Do you live in an affluent area? Where we live, the average wage is 100k+ . Our family earns a lot less but we are in the minority .

Doesn't matter how much money you have or have got it's the true deep belly laughing moments you remember.

I spent my 31st birthday doing my first day at Uni My hometown friends/Dad (very, very sporadic contact and only for the sake of my Grandmother) and veered between thinking I was bonkers and why wouldn’t I just carry on working at the local factor and did I know Amazon were building there soon? And being really fucking nasty about it.

School friends? Endlessly supportive. One of them is a Prof in the subject I did, and tutored me on a few things because my Maths isn’t good, told me how to access SpLD diagnosis and support when it became clear that I definitely had some form of issue (turns out, I have many!), one is very hands off with her company these days after burning out so she was happily my emergency childcare/contact/bummed around campus with me drinking coffee and people watching when I was feeling very lonely as the only mature student/from a working class background at my RG Uni, the ones who had moved away and stayed away cheered me on from afar. One of them has no kids, no husband and whilst she has a job I wouldn’t want, she’s never in the same country for long and her video calls from the various places give me life!

I’m not sure I’d have got through it without them, to be honest. It would have been very easy for me to have trashed our 25+ year friendships with bitterness as the gaps between us got wider and wider, but to me, they’re still the same 12 year olds who told me to sit with them at lunch on my first day, when I didn’t know a soul, and they’d been friends since Nursery.

In my experience
2 full time incomes makes a difference
Money from parents or inheritances (often sadly)
Good health, plus healthy kids
Willing to take bigger risks/stretch more
And
Someone will always have more.

Our life is very comfortable. But we both work full-time and decided not to have children.

This is bollocks. DH and I worked our arses off, waited for kids, no inheritances and earn well. He's a teacher on 60 I'm the 'breadwinner'. There's nothing wrong with aiming for higher and not relocating the same situation.

It hasn't been a walk in the park, I had an abortion at 17, a kid then would have changed everything and I don't regret it for a second.

@Mombie2016 that brought a tear to my eye. Like you I am blessed to have home town friends, supporting each other in different life challenges. And yes we still see each other as 12 in school uniform walking to school talking nonsense.

This. Some people earn well. Not everyone bought their houses via an inheritance or gift from their parents 🤷🏻‍♀️

Other people have higher - and more consistent - incomes.

I'm a single mum and have worked full time since DS was two. No family support. We live a comfortable life because I know what money will be in the bank account and when, which means I can budget, spend accordingly, save up for things like a car or holiday. No loans except the mortgage

Can you go back to work full time, to add to the household income?

That is great to hear. I’m so glad that you had that support.

Unfortunately, I was bullied terribly throughout school which ultimately meant that school wasn’t about friends or education for me, it was just about getting through the day. My parent wouldn’t believe me, school brushed me aside and wouldn’t hear of it, so there was no help.

Support as a child makes all the difference in life.

They earn more.

Nobody has given me a penny however through good financial planning and a bit of luck (when I was born) I have 2 more mortgage payments.

I had my kids young so it wasn't easy then but you expect to have no money in your 20's

Some people are high earners. And you have to be a higher earner than you'd think to afford the kind of things you're talking about outright. Either that or have a massive inheritance.

On the other hand, I know (or MIL knows) an extremely high earner who is absolutely crap at money management and who lives on credit and finance. Always on their last penny month to month. So to look at their lifestyle you would think they were worth tens of millions but in their case they don't actually own any of it. House mortgaged to the absolute hilt and equity pulled out with every remortgage, two fancy cars but neither owned outright. All spare money on fancy wine and showing off. No savings. No investments. Decent pension but certainly not enough to support current lifestyle. Crying to MIL several times a year when something needs paying and they've pissed that month's cash up the wall.

It's best to just not compare yourself to others. You will never know what their situation is and it wouldn't improve yours even if you did.

Can you increase hours? Retrain now that DC is at school? Would DH be better finding a more secure way to earn money if being self employed is unreliable?

Well, you pretty much answered your own question.
You work part time and your DP is self-employed doing something that isn't consistent.

I'm from a working class family. Father drove a lorry. Mum stay at home.
No inheritance, no help with deposits, education or anything like that.

I made dumb lifestyle choices in my youth that set me back somewhat but, I got a good education in something that pays very well and worked smart and x years later, I'm on easy street.