WWWNRH - thanks for your suggestion. Our mortgage is around £1000 a month, and TBH, renting a house the size and location we have really wouldn't be much cheaper - though I guess we wouldn't have to maintain it !
I'm sorry if my post was responsible for starting off any arguments. It simply seemed to me that some people who appear quite fortunate (to me at least) felt they "paid" for that in terms of an unequal work/life balance. I was trying to point out that some of us have a work/work balance, never mind any life at all - and still have nothing to show for it.
What's that phrase ..... "live to work, not work to live" springs to mind ....
I must also admit that my hackles rise whenever I hear/see or read about people much better off than myself who complain they can't do this that or the other. Maybe as ever, it's a case of "can't see the wood for the trees" when you're actually in that situation, but I do strongly believe that if you are a high earner you have so many more options available to you.
It's like those perpetual articles in the Daily Mail featuring families who've given "everything" up to sail round the world, or abscond to rural France for the lower crime rate and better education, or women who are hailed as heroines because they've given up a high flying career to be a SAHM. In all those cases (at least in that paper) the people faetured are fortunate enough to have savings behind them, or a large amount of equity which makes it possible for them to persue their dreams. You never see a nurse featured, or a dustman do you, let alone your average office worker ?
What really annoys me I'm afraid is when people justify large spending and/or extravagance by saying something along the lines of "I know it's a lot of money but I work hard and I deserve it". Maybe being hyper-sensitive but that sort of remark almost implies that anyone who can't afford similar expenditure, must, by that reasoning, be lazy or stupid.
Being well off doesn't mean of course that you don't work hard, I'm not saying that, but as someone touched upon earlier, I think that good old-fashioned good luck has a lot to do with eventual good fortune (For example, if you earn a lot, you will firstly have had the good luck of fate giving you the aptitude to succeed in a well paid occupation, you will probably have had family support - either/or from parents and partner, you will probably have received decent careers advice at school and/or college pointing you in the right direction and maybe, you might have got your foot in the door because of who you know. Yes, you may well work hard too, but without at least the 1st 3 things on that list, hard work alone isn't always enough to earn good money.) plus of course, the occupation you end up in.
Spending a lot is about spending because you can, not simply because you deserve it, or else, why don't we see nurses (yes, a cliche I know) driving about in top of the range flash cars ???
FWIW, I think that everyone who works their arses off, sacrificing time with their children (not in pursuit of mega-bucks, but in pursuit of enough money to pay basic bills) deserves to treat themselves - but that isn't an option for lots of us.