Look rich but very poor

[greyfoxy]

I live in a lovely house in a nice area, I wear nice clothes and I know people perceive me as being well off. The truth is I have absolutely no money. It's 2 weeks until pay day and I have £15 left. I will end up using credit cards to buy the essentials which is why I'm in this mess - my repayments are huge.

Anyone else relate to this?

People want to have fun at Christmas. I’ve never been in debt, mortgage free and save significantly each year.

It’s good to socialise with friends and family and people on mumsnet are quite strange with finances. If this is just one month it’s really quite normal and will be ok by pay day. People just need perspective. If in debt that’s another matter, I can’t tell from the OP.

That doesn’t sound too bad? Can’t you just add the 12k to your mortgage? Or use the savings to pay off the debt?

@iamnotalemon yeah, I’m foolish and I would like to have cash than these items, however I keep selling and re buying a new items, that’s how it buy more clothes, by reselling my old ones which still have label on..
it’s a pure madness, I mean who needs 30 jackets and 50 bags?
I think it’s comes from the times when I was young child and I longed to have nice clothes and nice items and there were not clothes/ items available..so now I’m buy all these to satisfy what I never had..

I think this type of childhood issue can resurface as you say and cause overspending issues.
Unless you get to the bottom of it then it never stops and you end up on a cycle of spend-shame-spend
Can you seek counselling??

Apologies just re read it and said repayments are huge, so my mistake here.

I guess we all have deep rooted reasons for our behaviour - I'm not perfect. Just a shame if you have these assets that could make your life a bit better and give you more money to spend.

I cannot believe the amount of people who live their lives this way. I see them in work, neighbours in debt up to their eyeballs just to have that car or that house or those clothes.
This lifestyle would give me the fear, I wouldn't be able to sleep at night.
Status is everything these days I suppose, at any cost.😮

Just what I was thinking - being in mortgage/rent arrears arrears, being on UC and just about getting by, needing to use food banks - having a holiday is a distant memory and unreachable - choosing eating or heating - that's poor
NOT holidays, high earnings and high spending.

You significantly live beyond your means yet go on ££££ holiday by business class. Facade of affluence without the means
Stop the holidays,downscale to a air B&G in uk
Get a second job and address your dysfunctional relationship with money
Your DH has a dysfunctional pattern and you both go along with it. Maddness

Well she wouldn’t feel anything being dead!

I can't relate to this but would say-what can others do to help? what type of advice do you think you might need to alter your situation?

It must be very hard but is there a way of breaking the cycle of debt? so you get to the end of the month, then not only get to the end of the month but start paying the debt you're in

Agree, we earn £8k after tax plus perhaps another £700 in interest and have no mortgage or car loans . We’ve been business class one way to Asia and this year going both ways to New York it’s bloody expensive. Unless she means short haul where you can get some good deals.

to that poster- going business class but having to have a second job , do you not see the other people in the lounge at the airport and think this lot are not funding all this by a second job! And doing a second job you don’t need when you could be spending time with your children .

You just never know when the next curve ball is coming. We've been told that we'd start seeing mortgage rates begin to drop again in 2025 and now they expect them to climb back up to 5% again. You can't just cross your fingers and spend to your limit and hope that you'll get a fair wind.

The most expensive thing to buy is money.

If your paying for essentials on credit, its a sign you need to get some help. Please make it your focus for this year.

It happens to alot of people, there is no shame in it. If you have good quality clothes/shoes you don't need to buy anything new this year and noone will notice.

There is a terrible YT channel called the Financial Diet. The guy who runs is the anti-christ when it comes to therapy, but he asks the hard questions and you can see where people have tripped up in the past.

You are very foolish

I'm still half laughing/half crying over the poster who said 'we don't live in an expensive house - over £500k, less than a million' 😂

You are not poor. You are a spendthrift living beyond your means.

What an awful way to live !

Holy shit.

I've heard it all now.

Do you mean me or the PP?

I’m surprised people with a take home of £7.5k are struggling so much with debt. Ours is more or less the same. We have expensive gym memberships, mortgage is around £1300. But we have about £2k left a month after all our regular spending, we spend about £8k on holidays a year and manage to save and overpay the mortgage. The biggest thing I guess is I drive a car we own, paid £10k for 5 years ago. I can’t justify dropping £30k on a new one. DH has a company car which sounds great but costs us about £600pcm on tax - he does 30k miles a year though so it’s essential to his role.

We don’t have credit cards and it’s only been 4 months since we stopped nursery fees.

Bet you feel like you are rolling in it now the nursery fees have stopped! I can't believe the prices of nursery fees.

This has got me thinking.

I drive a kia. Have 1 holiday a year within Europe as I don't like flying. (And I don't find a holiday with young child relaxing).
Household Income of about 70k
310k of equity and 16k in savings.
No debt.
I don't think the fancy life appeals to me. I like cheap and cheerful

But you’re not as in your post you stated you are not making a dent in the £20k balance.