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?

Not exactly the same but I have had acquaintances assume I am affluent when I am not.

I too live in a nice house in a rural area, but it was a dump when I bought it. I've spent 13 years repairing and renovating. They don't see that.

I'm careful with clothes, I know how to alter them so they fit me properly which makes them look more expensive. I buy natural fibres rather than synthetic and I repair rather than recycle. My wardrobe is full of stuff that is 15 years old. I polish shoes and reheel them, rather than replace them.

I keep my cars for 10-12 years. Wash them myself. It's hard work but I seem to have everyone fooled. 😁 At least I'm not in debt. Everything is a bit tight but my ds doesn't notice that our income is lower than his friends' parents.

OP, what can you cut out? Buy supermarket own, rather than brands. Cook from scratch. With a bit of practice it really isn't hard. Stop having takeaways. Do your own nails. Buy supermarket toiletries. Stop buying takeout coffee. Take a packed lunch and thermo-cup of coffee with you in the mornings. That should save you £300 a month.

If you have a car, get ATS to service it rather than the main dealer. Ask about less expensive tyres. Look for cheaper deals on phones, insurance and broadband. Turn your heating down by one degree and wear a sweater.

Take it in turns, with your partner to plan a staycation each for this year.

Spend the next three months finding cost savings, stick with it for the year and you'll soon turn it around.

Showing my age here 🤣

Yeah, I mean it's your life, but if your DH doesn't seem to think a life without holidays is worth living, even if you get yourself into thousands of pounds of debt, how are your children going to grow up, if they've never known any different?

If they don't get well paying jobs themselves they are going to see themselves as failures if they can't do the things they considered bog standard basics as children. But most people can't afford multiple expensive holidays and holidays a year.

By bringing them up to consider luxuries as essentials, and huge amounts of debt is both normal and justifiable, you're making it so much more likely that they will also grow up into overspenders, except they might not have the careers to even keep up with repayments as you are.

But the pp has 800k of equity so actually has wealth far beyond most of the country. As long as the 12k on the cc is interest free and isn't stopping bills and mortgage getting paid, what's the problem.

So whilst your maths is correct, you could equally by that token say the pp has 791k of assets, taking off the cc and adding in the savings. Obviously its tied up in a house but that would buy them a decent mortgage free house in most areas of the country so hardly a worrying position.

I'd rather have 800k equity and 12k of debt than 100k equity and 0 debt.

If your initial post is true I can’t believe you have the brass neck to plead poverty to your mum when your so called lack of money is completely self inflicted, no sympathy whatsoever here, it’s all of your own making.

The majority of people who work for a living, even the high earners, have had to adjust lifestyle in the last couple of years in the face of cost of living; you haven't done it yet.

It's really simple - the longer you avoid the reality that you can no longer afford your pre COL lifestyle, the larger your debt will grow.

Is your DH also taking a second job? They have an expensive hobby and must have a holiday each year, what are they doing to ease the financial burden they seem to be heavily causing?

A lesson I learnt in my 20s was that it's much easier to buy something expensive on a credit card than with cash from your current account. The latter feels like parting with hard earned; the former kicks the can down the road.

I hate seeing my bank balance go down and always think twice. Similarly, I take my weekly spends out in cash, harder now as some places don't take cash for a coffee but there's something about the notion of "when it's gone, it's gone, so don't fritter it and lose tabs on the spends"

So your dh is at best financially irresponsible, financially abusive at worst, and your solution is to get a second job? Fuck me, I hope you wake up one day.

@greyfoxy It looks like you are not alone. Reading through this thread, I'm completely astonished how many people earn whopping salaries but are still in debt. This is just sheer financial incompetence, which is even more concerning given how many British people work in the financial sector.

• All posters on this thread who drive massive SUVs and have monthly car payments of £200 or more need to get a grip on reality. Cars are the biggest wealth killer. A B-segment car is a suitable means of transport for almost everyone. Instead of having a monthly car payment, buy a small second-hand car outright between £5000 - £10000.
• If you are in debt, stop going on holiday. You are in debt and you are broke. If your debts aren't so bad then perhaps a cheap European holiday once a year is fine.
• Stop buying expensive clothes. Most people do not care about fashion, and even fewer people care about what you are wearing. Only buy clothes when you need them. Buying second-hand clothes is a win-win because you are getting your clothes cheaper, and also avoiding the massive environmental impact associated with the fashion industry.
• Stop eating out all the time. When you go shopping, try the supermarket-branded food- many of these products are indistinguishable from the branded products that they are imitating.
• Pay attention to your subscriptions. It is fine to have a few subscriptions for things which you are using heavily, but cancel all subscriptions associated with things that you rarely use.
• Stop replacing your phone and technology all the time. I used the same laptop for over a decade. The phone in my pocket now is over 4 years old (I don't consider a 4 year old phone as being old, but other people would). I will not replace my phone unless the new phone I buy is affordable. Many people have monthly phone payments- this is insanity. Again, same as with the car- don't pay for it monthly. Find a phone that you can afford which costs a few hundred £, and buy it outright.
• Stop drinking alcohol. It is expensive and causes a plethora of preventable diseases.
• After paying off your debts, be sure to set aside a sum of money every month for investing in the stock market. Be sure to be putting a large % of your income into your pension if your company does a salary sacrifice scheme as the pension is probably your most powerful investment (and don't worry about the fact that a large % of us will pass away before being able to use our pensions- if this happens, your pension pot will be inherited by your loved ones).

I could not sleep at night! Hate debt. What would you do if something went wrong? Surely it would make sense to have even half of those luxuries and clear some of that debt?

If you are struggling so much for money, are you able to pay for your nice house?

Do you own/rent/have a mortgage-do you need to move?

Some crazy shizz on this post!
We are proabably better off than we look because we don't have big holidays and so on. But we are paying two university rents for our DC (thankfully one finishes end of June and have two mortgages (one on house we rent out and one on our current home) so no flash car, house or otherwise. We do live in a decent area, but not in a posh house.
I pay my CC off every month. DH doesn't have a CC, he's a named user on mine. He'd say I was too careful with money, but it's how I was brought up. He wasn't brought up having CCs, I was brought up paying it off in full every month. Only debt we have are the mortgages.
OP, what are you repaying? Can you manage that at all - get advice/ Downsize? Buy clothes on vinted etc.

Mine too! 😂 But when I think about keeping up with the neighbours, that sketch does spring to mind! Classic! 😆

if he wont "do without" holidays then cut back in other areas

ALso Holidays dont have to be sooooo expensive - pick slightly different holidays and do them differently. He is keeping up with the jones' which is difficult - but you can do other cut backs around how you buy stuff for the hobbies so get savvy with second hand where you can, cutting back slightly on events or whatever and pulling back sharing lifts etc

Skiing it is well known there are less expensive places with good skiing - go slightly out of season or end of term week etc (are the kids private?)

I like how YOU have to have a second job so he doesn't go without holidays!!

I would suggest getting savvy with switching debt around to lower interest rate systems as if you are paying IR on Credit cards its like 30% sometimes - switch it around interest free at 2% per switch and then snowball it down - so if its more than one card you phone them up get them suspended and pay the highest cost one only till gone then work on next etc.

Sell extra stuff in the house that is not being used or is no longer useful to you - put the money against the debt. With that sort of income you should be able to pay back some principle every month - make it a priority and shop at lidl.

TO be fair though one less holiday a year, couple of less expensive outfits and a determination to pay it off and you will be sorted.

I recall sitting to two Dr Wives talking and they were similar and DHs wanted certain cars in the drive of certain types of houses and it stuck me as spectacularly daft. You will have nothing in pensions and so on and living in penury.

You are particualrly vulnerable as the lower income/SAHM are you even paying into pensions at the moement?

That's exactly what it is, and to fit in to a specific clique or demographic.

The people who I know who are struggling are either due to an unexpected change such as redundancy, or divorce, or due to keeping up with the jones mentality.

I err on the side of caution now due to having got in the shit as a student and it taking afew years to get out of it. We don’t have fancy holidays or new cars but we are financially ok and could weather a storm ok.

Agreed, I could have bought a bigger house than I did but I didn’t want to spend all my money on it and also wanted to leave a substantial amount in my savings.

I’m shocked by this thread. How can you have a really decent salary and so much debt? How is someone saying 20k “isn’t that much” debt?!

Partially, it’s clear how much children cost, because I am childless and earn 40k and my DP earns 32k and I feel like we have so much money! I have no debt other than student loans, and appreciate this is all basically solely because we have no kids, but I definitely do not understand how some people seem to be earning huge amounts more and are in thousands of pounds of debt.

I’m sure some posters would consider my 40k a paltry salary but I just feel like spending above your means is so common now. Credit card debt for things like holidays and general overspending seems like it’s becoming less taboo and I just don’t understand this or think it’s a good thing. It should be frowned upon imo.

Yup. What OP describes is what me and DH call "flash on finance" it's no way to live. There's so many people who do and I always wonder when their bubble will burst. We have lots of friends who pull out their credit card for essentials. I'd find it so unsettling.

May I ask, what's the point? I'm not being snide and sneery, a genuine question.

My grandmother is like this. She has multiple properties (owned outright) and a substantial sum in the bank. She's 81 now.

All her live she lived in her small, boring town. Hasn't been ahywhere, not even in other cities in her own country (not the UK), except for a one single occasion, when she was a student in a bigger city when very young.

Eats horribly, the cheapest, often out of date stuff and very weird food combinations. Even something mundane like a chocolate bar (it's an example, insert anything bar the absolute essentials) is a 'luxury she cannot afford'. Wears old rags, mended and re-mended multiple times, decades and decades old, nothing new ever. Never goes anywhere for entertainment, no theathre, cinema, concert, restaurant, anything where you need to spend money, ever. The flat she lives in (she can easily afford a house, it's her choice) is in the same condition, with same furniture and no updates whatsoever since she moved in, 60 years ago.

There's plenty more, but you get the picture. Yea, she has quite a substantial sum of money. Yet not long to live, and all her life was extreme Scrooge-ing and that's it. 'She worked, she saved, she died' should be on her gravestone.

I'd rather die before I'd be 10 years old, if her life is the only alternative, tbh. Or live like the poster at the beggining of the thread with debt and holidays 5xyear.

Now I understand you certainly don't live as extremely as my granny. But if you have the money, why 'live poor, look poor, dress poor, go on poor holidays'? I'm not advocating wasting your savings at all, but surely the balance could be found?

I can't believe all the posters who feel they are "broke" and are then having 3 or 4 holidays a year.

we are far from broke but dont have huge salaries. We have one decent holiday a year (last year was 10 days in Cyprus) and a couple of weekends away in the UK. I couldn't get into huge debt and then swan off on multiple holidays.

I also know plenty of people in a nearby, very aspirational SManchester suburb who spend far more than they have and have multiple holidays, new cars etc, etc. and are pretty blatant about living on credit with no means or plans to pay it back. They just keep spending, knowing that at the end of the day, if they keep paying a bit, they won't cop for the lot - and if the debts are called in, there's nothing to pay them with, so they don't care. To some extent, I envy their laissez-faire attitude, but they give me the rage because they could (like me) be making a net contribution, but actually, I'll be the one bailing them out and paying for their care and pensions in the years to come.

@ThisGreySeal Some of those people will be thinking of their chunky six figure inheritances from their boomer parents that may be coming their way in the near future - another reason, rarely talked about, for this “let’s go here or do this because life’s too short” mindset.

Wow. We take home just a few hundred less than you and have one 2 week European holiday a year.

We might both go away separately for the night with friends and have another short break with the kids.

You are living beyond your means. It doesn't have to be all or nothing. Just have an ordinary holiday. Go for a weekend somewhere here rather than skiing. Go for a week in France rather than the US.

Absolutely bonkers !
Could never be this irresponsible. Do you have kids?