Financial dysmorphia

[Flumoxed]

In the last couple of days I have seen a post on here from someone asking how can anyone live on £20+/hr, another from someone with £80k equity in a house with £240k mortgage worrying because inheritance from their parents £900k house would be wiped out after paying inheritance tax and splitting it with a sibling, and another from a SAHM who owned 4 properties with their partner, lived with her parents and was "struggling to get by".

I hadn't heard this term (financial dysmorphia) before about a week or so ago, but now seeing examples of it all the time. Is financial dysmorphia sweeping the nation or are people who literally have thousands of pounds in assets genuinely living in poverty? I appreciate the cost of living has meant that people are having to tighten their belts, but has the definition of poverty spread to engulf everyone or are some peoples views on money completely out of synch with reality?

Link to a post about money dysphoria:
https://www.thegoodtrade.com/features/money-dysmorphia/ and definition: "Money dysmorphia is the distance between a person’s perceived financial status and their actual financial reality. It can manifest both ways: It can be the person who has lots of money saved but doesn’t believe it’s enough and can’t use it meaningfully, or it can be the person who overspends but doesn’t believe the reality of their financial distress.”

Do you have it? Do you see it?

YABU - people with thousands in assets are very poor

YANBU - the nation is suffering from mass financial dysmorphia

I don’t think there’s anything wrong or “dysphoric” about judging your own financial circs according to your own goals- if someone’s idea of a good life is a £2m house and £100k car then that’s up to them, no judgement here. Where people go wrong is in expecting interest or much sympathy from others- save it for your financial advisor.

Almost every single person in the UK is financially better off than hundreds of millions of people world wide. Even if you are living in absolute poverty in the UK, you'll find someone else in the world who will envy you your riches and lifestyle.

Anyone, at any income level, is entitled to feel however they want about their financial situation. There's a strong whiff of jealousy from a lot of posters on these kinds of threads.

I mean, if you don't have the money to pay the electricity bill or are having to skip meals to afford to get to work then that sucks.

My household is pretty stable now, but DH was in an accident a few years ago and was off work as a result for a couple of years as a result. And yeah, we owned a house, with a mortgage that we could only just pay, and I was earning OK money, but every penny was going to cover a bunch of commitments we had made when I was bringing in 25% of household income and not 100%. And I know that on MN people would say things like 'well you should have planned for him losing his job for two years' (because we had six months of savings) or 'you should have sold the house' or 'got a better job' because jobs just fall off trees.

Anyone can struggle or fall on hard times. It's all relative. I mean, even someone struggling on NMW in the UK is comparatively doing very well compared to people in parts of the world who's houses are being bombed or who don't have access to medicine or clean water but it would be utterly shitty to point that out to them if they posted on MN.

I don’t think it’s a simple thing really, having assets is a good thing but it doesn’t necessarily help you in the day to day. Having 80k of equity in a house is better overall than having £0, but it isn’t massively helpful month to month if your mortgage and bills on that house take up every last penny of your income, there’s nowhere cheaper to buy or rent, and you have to stay where you are for work for example. I have a friend in that situation almost exactly who has a good amount of equity in their house but they have nothing left after paying their mortgage/bills/childcare/food shopping, they have to budget strictly every month and have no emergency fund so if anything was to happen that needed fixed urgently she’d be fucked and having to look at loans. I also have a friend who has a council property, works & is entitled UC which pays her rent and the majority of her childcare, she has a lot more money spare every month and is open about that fact- she doesn’t have the assets my other friend does, but in her day to day life she has much more money to spend or save than that friend. If you look at it objectively then you’d say friend A is better off, she has assets, but actually friend B is the one who can go on weekend trips, do her food shop without adding the total up as she goes to ensure she can pay at the till etc. If you asked them both who felt skint and worried about money, it isn’t friend B.

Er…look, I’ll be blunt, I know about Maslow and his hierarchy’s, but I don’t think you can really compare a family on a low income who have to use a food bank, and who can’t heat their home to people who are financially secure.

You are right - I know lots of people who never check their bank balance and then start worrying when they get a notification from the bank saying they are overdrawn.

One particular friend is very frustrating as she will still have takeaways once or twice a week, drinks/nights out, buys new clothes, makeup, coffees etc) and talks as if the overdraft amount is an inevitable consequence of the cost of living increasing. It's like she thinks her outgoings are set in stone as if "this is the cost of living. It's what everyone has to spend." and she has no power to change the way she is living so as to cut back and reduce the cost.

Apologies for any offence. The thread isn't about that thread specifically, it was more about the fact that I seem to be seeing more and more threads like this where people are talking about figures in the thousands and saying it is insufficient.

Ps. I had sympathy with the OP on that thread when she was talking about paying the mortgage as she was paying it all alone. Where she lost me was saying that half of a £900k inheritance would be practically nothing after tax and splitting it with a sibling.

I don't think this is the same thing. This sounds like you lost the majority of your income and had to make cutbacks. It sounds like you were well aware of your financial reality. From what I understand of the term, financially dysmorphia is when there is a gulf between your wealth and your perceived wealth.

So what you're saying is - if middle class children have their education disrupted or are bullied that's not an issue, because their parents are still richer than average?

Not a nice attitude in my view.

I think some people do have a disconnect between how they perceive their financial situation and the reality.

Often people (on here and in RL) make assumptions about what they 'should' be able to afford on a particular income level. These assumptions are often formed quite early on. A particular income level can seem 'massive' until you get there and realise that inflation over years has made that dream income rather ordinary.

Comparisons with neighbours, family, friends can also be deceiving. Many times I have heard a particular family member making assumptions about others. He assumes he knows other people's finances on the basis of what he has seen.

Neither actually. I have a lot of assets and savings, but my income is miniscule so I am afraid to spend.

You raise a good point about comparing to others being misleading. I guess 50 years ago you would compare yourself to The Joneses next door and their new car or foreign holiday, now it is far too easy to compare yourself to The Beckhams or The Kardashians and their mansions and luxury yachts and feel very poor. I think this in turn leads people to a warped sense of what the basics are and start to focus on what they are missing out on that "everyone else" has.

I wonder if this starts earlier and earlier. My eldest son is 7 and is always telling me that everyone in his class has an Xbox and their own mobile phone and their own tablet and official football kits and tickets to see premier matches and... and... and... (I really don't think they all do!)

Your family member is basing his assumptions on what others are showing him. If they are wearing designer clothes and discussing 3 week holidays in the Caribbean then it is natural for him to assume they have a high level of disposable income.

I think that the constant comparison needs to stop. Everyone has different experiences and expectations. It's all relative. Just because someone earns more and has more assets, doesn't invalidate their fears. A lot of the discussions on finances here make me think of the Four Yorkshiremen sketch. It often feels like a race to the bottom. It's a form of inverse snobbery.

Well you've managed to completely miss the point - what is financial security to one person is responsibility to another.

I would agree but this is where the “dysmorphia” i.e. seeing/ experiencing something that doesn’t really exist, comes in.

I believe there is some evidence that individuals who grew up in a financial unstable household (as opposed to just generally poor) never really feel financially stable, however much money they have.

When I was a child we got evicted twice, people used to turn up at the door threatening us for money, it leaves a lasting effect.

I can relate to your experience, not the eviction but more financial ups and downs, so instability to some extent. But in the OP example, I do feel like someone who has always been financially secure and then finds some small degree of hardship is a bit dysmorphic.

There is a prolific poster who name changes who i think has financial dismorphia

Married, 2 children, decent income but good lord…. constantly asking mumsnet if she can afford a third child. And then gets incredibly defensive if anyone doesn’t immediately say “YES!!”

There’s an association between this and neurodiversity. I think it relates to inflexible/black and white thinking. Between us my Ex and I earned £200k, £80k mortgage and both with DB pensions. And one of the nails in our marital coffin was that he would not believe we could afford anything until the mortgage was paid off. But he wasn’t prepared to pay it off early, we had to have the equivalent in liquid assets so it could be cleared in one swoop and should therefore live on dented baked beans until that moment. He couldn’t cope with any other definition of our financial situation or the possibility that there were other ways of living life.

We divorced. He still has a tiny mortgage, much bigger salary, £750k pension and no doubt other assets. He tells the kids he can’t afford anything because I’ve taken it all. No evidence to the contrary can be accepted “because I should have been debt free and because of you I’m not.” He has ASD.

Yes "dysmorphia" in this context means thinking something is not what it is. However that is also for everyone in the context of their own norms. Where I am on holiday this week average annual income is about US$8000 a year which is not much. However children in the UK cannot help only really knowing their own norm whether that be growing up isolated in a cult where certain things are taken for granted or in a rich or not very well off home. I am sure most parents who are middle class do try to make it clear to children not everyone lives in a 4 bed detached house and might not have a mobile phone but it is hard to get children to understand the reality of that difference as it is not their own experience.

However I think we are free to be different in the UK - an utter miser but with loads of money or spend it all like there is no tomorrow. The problems come when two people in a couple are completely different on this issue and also 1 in 4 families in the UK do not have a penny of savings and live pay cheque or benefits payment to their next payment.

I have always felt I can always earn more money and do better and havepushed things to the edge and taken more risks than some women - setting up on my own, massive 1990 mortgage and then when we moved to our current house huge mortgage and using every penny of savings; then more recently giving money to children including my pension; although I feel now I am older I will save up a bit just for me now in case I need care when I am older.

I can relate to this, but not this extreme. I have ASD and can get very fixated or inflexible about money and get a set idea about a goal I need to achieve and then make things very difficult for myself trying to achieve it. I'm working on it and part of this is considering other ways of living. Mine isn't keeping up with anyone, because what other people have doesn't really register with me, it's more being a slave to what I think I should have.

That’s very interesting! What made you recognise that this is a pattern for you?

Getting my diagnosis and then exploring in counselling different ways that all or nothing thinking, and fixations might present themselves in my life. Its been quite a journey over the last year or so, learning that what I thought was unfixable anxiety was actually neurodivergence and then exploring how that impacted me and alternative approaches has been life changing. Also I still have all the spreadsheets organised and archived, which I can look back on with a very different perspective 😂

It’s nothing new, read Jane Austen when they were getting their knickers in a twist over living off of £5,000 a year (probably about £1m equivalent).

Dh is on the autistic spectrum and money and finances are something he has always struggled with. He just doesn't seem to understand money.

But on forums people also just make stuff up. There have been a few threads recently with very questionable finances that have then been removed.

I just think there’s a lot of privileged people who indulge in feeling badly done to, and I don’t think this is anything new.