This will probably get me into trouble... but how can you have money worries...

[emkana]

... when the wife is a full-time GP and the husband a solicitor? I'm just reading "What about me?" by Kate Figes and the narrator in the book is the GP and she moans about not having enough money to buy a decent car or to fix the roof. Now, I estimate that the combined salary of that couple would be about £150.000 a year, wouldn't it? How can that not be enough????????
I know, I know, the woman is the narrator of the book and so it's subjective and you spend what you have so it never feels enough and all that...
but still it puts my back up, am I supposed to empathize with the narrator now over her troubled lot or what???

i've got a dirt devil... it sucks.

oops! just realised the punn. it wasn't actually intended. i was just making clear that my vacuum cleaner is a load of rubbish

PMPL@DC, we had one of those hand held dirt devils when we first got married and couldn't afford a hoover - bloody crap, ended up with a scrubbing brush scrubbin the carpets.

I can understand that people who struggle to live from hand to mouth every day would find it irritating when a comparatively well off person complains about their financial circumstances. But I agree with Mud () when he/she says that a lot of this thread, especially the earlier stuff, just smacks of 'i'm poorer than you' mentality.

I really don't think that when an MNer in a higher income bracket comes on and complains about their financial circumstances that they are intending to rub anyones nose in it. To suggest that they are, is grossly unfair, IMO.

Hulababy is correct when she says that it is down to disposable income. Not everyone with a high household income has masses to spend on 'luxuries'.

NDP - you are right, but why do people with high incomes not have a lot of disposable income? Because they choose to spend it on other things - it's a choice they have and therefore, imo shouldn't be complaining about it. People on lower incomes don't have that choice.

I was out with a group of girls not long ago and one was harping on about 'being skint'. She and her dh are doctors - they had just moved to an ENORMOUS house (well 7 beds) and totally gutted it, renovated it and refurnished it, bought a brand new BMW X5, been on about 3 foreign holidays in the last 6 months and she was saying 'oh, it's a nightmare - I've still got curtains to buy and they are sooo expensive because the windows are huge and we've got Eurodisney coming up in September....' Honestly - is she expecting sympathy or what??

Btw - it's not an issue at all that she is obviously 'well off'/wealthy or whatever but to complain about being skint is just ridiculous. People who are skint only dream of taking their kids to Eurodisney - I think that's the point emkana is making.

i guess it depends on what kind of person you are. dw and I are a bit hippy-ish so if someone is complaining that they have no cash but are driving a mercedes and hiring cleaners, we'd just say 'well sell your mercedes and do the cleaning yourself you silly arse.. a car is a car and surely it doesn't take very long to clean your house'

i don't agree at all with the disposable income comparison. i just see that as wussyness.

those who say it's uncouth to talk about cash probably live in the luxury of no major financial worries

well the kids won't be getting a Robo dinosaur for xmas and I drive a shite ford fiesta and we go on holiday to a friends cottage but I never think of us as having money worries - there is always food, clothes and the morgage gets paid

'wussyness'

yes

enid just hit the nail on the head (for me anyway)

Well, I must be a mercenary Capitalist pig then.

Ho-hum, best go polish the Merc.....

(Enid, I agree)

not a capitalist pig.... maybe just a wuss

Same here Enid - dh's ford fiesta is so crappy he can't get in by the drivers door and has to climb across from the passenger side! Ha ha!!

i used to have a car like that!... i got fined

We may have a Merc but I clean the u-bend..... Am some sort of halfway marker

EEEK!

That was to DC

Ha ! The bendy pipe in the lav

used to have a colleague called u-bend - cos he always ended up hugging it in staff parties

(also to DC)

new crap things happen to my car every day

you cant open the central locking from the drivers side now, you have to open the passenger door then walk round