Anyone following Austerity Mum blog story?

[Jane7]

It's really quite hilarious. Rich lady writes blog about how to cut back eg take fewer helicopter rides. Now it's revealed that she's the wife of boss at Price Waterhouse Cooper. Has anyone been following her blog? Sounds hilarious, in sort of tasteless 'how the other lives' kind of way

I agree that you become accustomed to the wage you are earning. The holidays are bigger and better, the house is in a smarter area and has a pool...

And the keeping up with friends and neighbours is harder.

Living in Geneva has been interesting. In UK, we would be thought of as being quite well off, but here we are somewhere near the bottom of the ladder.

One of DD's friends was talking recently and mentioned in passing, "that was when Daddy still had the Ferrari". Our DC are in local schools, but friends have their DC in International Schools - she came back from a school party recently wide eyed and astonished at the show of wealth. She hates parking in the school car park as she has to maneuver around Porsche and Bentleys with her beat up old car.

They say the route to happiness is ensure you are the best off amongst your friends and those with whom you mix. I was talking to somenoe at a work thing last week who isn't particularly well off and he mentioned his very old friend who is very careful not to mention money much but that friend just got a bonus over £1m and what he was going to do with it - which was very sensible things, mortgage paid off, school fees for all the children set aside for all future years, univesrity costs for them all etc; then a nice holiday but still lots left over. I got the impression he lives in an area with a lot of well off people or perhaps it's just if people show it off.

Workmen have come here and offered to take the cars off our hands (they find it hard to understand the concept of £800 cars outside a house like this which is quite amusing)

Ha. There is some truth in that Xenia.

MmeLindt I can identify with much of what you say. My parents lived abroad for a while. Face counted for a lot. People would live in poky, dingy flats but carry Hermes Birkins, have a driver that would idle very obviously by the kerb in a blacked out Range Rover or Maserati waiting for Mum whilst she drank her latte in the coffee shop in view of the other Mums that sort of thing. These were people who would be earning in the 200k bracket in today's money I think.

I see this car thing now. People are usually happy to spend money on something that is a badge of status, even if it's depreciating asset and they can't really afford it.

Funnily enough, the car thing is not as bad here as in Germany.

Anyone in our position in Germany would have a BMW/Mercedes/Audi - it is almost expected. Here people are less bothered - they may have a flash second car but their first cars are likely to be a Renault or Citroen and much more modest.

In Germany, there is much more emphasis to have the right car.

Much in the way that in UK, if you are not a homeowner, you perceived to have done something wrong in your financial planning.

I suppose the insecure and nouveaux riche like the comfort blanket of their badges of success and if they want to why not - it's their money and I don't rule out buying myself a nice car at some point if I choose to. it's all a bit of fun game, not to be taken too seriously. But if you're a keeping up with the jones's type of person it can be wise to place yourself somewhere where you are already better than they are otherwise yo'll never be satisfied.

Conversely being content with what you have and living within your means does seem to make more people happy.

Nothing wrong with people becoming partners at PWC - just a pitt it's Mr Unwin and not Mrs U. We get too many women going into low paid stuff like writing or PR or whatever Mrs U did. Why didn't she become a management consultant?

13% - not good but very typical of positions of power.

Jan 2011 - re PWC
"Powell, who is also senior partner of the UK, said he wants to set an "aspirational goal" of between 40% to 50% of partners either coming form an ethnic background and/or being female over the next decade. Currently women make up about 13% of partners at PwC

Having read the extracts it seems fairly clear to me that it is all tongue in cheek. The Sunday Times have had columns like this for years: remember Tara PT column anyone? Then there was the make believe column of the rich wife who was lusting after someone called 'Rafi', then another made up column on similar lines. It was quite silly of her to write it in such a way that she could be so easily identified, but maybe she was trying to find a creative outlet.

Saying that, I have some close and some looser connections to people who live at a similar level of wealth and, well, they are just people like the rest of us. Some are very down to earth and not at all arrogant, whereas some do lose touch with reality. It is galling when so many people are living on tight budgets, however they are not living like this just to offend others - it is just the situation they are in.

Xenia - management consulting firms were setting themselves those sort of targets for female partners fifteen years ago. Nothing new in their stated intentions!

BranchingOut very true and very well put.

Xenia - you really seem to have something against women like me who have normal jobs and are not managment consultants earning £200,000. You don't seem to understand that many high powered jobs may be well paid but they are not for everyone. I worked hard and went to a good university. But most of the city type jobs went to a certain type of aggressive ambitious person. I did not have a husband or children at the time, but still did not want to work all day, night and weekend in this type of job. I was also not clever enough to retrain in later years to become a heart surgeon. I am very happy in my current job and if I did decide to leave my DH and needed to earn more money I guess I would need to find a different job then, but I can't base my whole current lifestyle around that.

I think the car thing is easy to do in UK though- the school car park is filled with mercs/lexuses (lexi?) But if you look at the plates closely, they are all company fleet cars or leased. Those with their own tend to have RR/LR or 'quirky' minis and sporty type things.

I went to an international school and after my dad wrote off his car (in the days when you still drank and drove), he replaced it with a very elderly Ford.

I made him drop me down the road from school as I was so embarrassed by the car

It took me until I left home to realise how very well off my family was compared to most people because at school we were definitely poor relations.

Yes but at some schools the car has to be just right, not nouveau or showy offy- so eg a Volvo Estate not a Bentley and it obviously depends on the school and your own group of friends there and hopefully most people couldn't care less.

I remember trying to explain to our neighbour's boy from a different culture that having a very big television might be an indicator of poverty rather than vice versa.

Proper 'old' money is all about crap tellies and chairs that make a snapping sound if you rock them onto their back legs

Work for same firm, but much......much lower in the food chain. Haven't had pay rise for 3 years. Don't get a bonus as don't work in sexy area. Had our team halved and the workload stayed the same.

I am grateful I have the job I have, and I know it's all relative, but I could just do without some eejit rubbing it in.

No holiday in Maldives and slumming it in France? Swap you for North Wales? No?

But the questi8on is lackey why aren't you higher up the food chain> Is it because you are female and didn't get the right degree or wrong class or colour or not so inclined to work as hard or move around as he did etc. They are very interesting issues as to why people achieve X and others Y.

Did anyone see the TV shows being shown on the BBC at the moment, it's a series and the latest one was called 'Who Gets the top jobs" or something similar - I watched it this afternoon and all the while I was thinking of Lisa and Ashley Unwin's position compared to lackey's.

It might be on the BBC I Player, if it is i suggest you take a peek - i'll have a look around myself later when i have more time and give a link if i spot the show i'm trying to explain about (rather poorly i'll admit!)

frgr yes I saw it last night, or part of it anyway. Fascinating stuff I thought.

Ah here is is! I found it:

www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00yb5kv/Who_Gets_the_Best_Jobs/

Who Gets The Best Jobs is what it was called. there was another one in the same series on last week, which was just as good.

It's interesting particularyl for someone with 3 children at the stage mine are - just finished university etc as to who gets what and how they do.

That's right Jajas, but I think Xenia's point is why is it so often women who end up at the bottom?