The Edcawber Principle

You are all so helpful and positive that multiquote fails me for the first time ever and were I to respond point by point, I would almost definitely break the internet :coffee:

Hiddenshadow - our friend group are largely Mrs E's friends. I have a few work friends and we're happy with the very occasional beer soaked trip to the pub (say every few months). It's expensive, but it comes out of my pocket money and it's money well spent imo. Mrs E's group, on the other hand, is large and ill defined, so there's basically the offering of an event (usually with a restaurant meal) every few weeks. I miss about half of these, but she feels obliged (which she shouldn't). All for saving money, but it wouldn't really improve the budget as it's personal spends and I think it's fine to have a little walking around money?

We use the babysitting excuse a lot (and legitimately, we'd pay £50 an evening for a babysitter with even basic credentials and some experience)!

There are occasional board game nights etc. and they're fab, it's just that our unimaginative group of snowflakes reverts back to posh restaurant 3 minutes later. Which is a PITA with the uneven incomes, as some of the group are the horrible !!!!!! having 4 courses at a 3 course dinner and downing cocktails all night because they're only paying 1/x of the bill :mad:

We're not averse to cutting back, it's just that the overspending is pretty fundamental (comments to KC, below).

Karmacat - it's definitely not our forever house - I don't feel any connection to it. I'm aware that I spoke about it as if it was back in the day, but I was in a pretty dark and fearful place back then, still fixated with the baby we lost and trying desperately to 'put a ceiling' over at least the financial risks in our life, something I thought that I could control. This led to a ton of overcompensating with DD and I think the wrong decision was made.

If we moved, it wouldn't impact on our friends per se, but we are trying to make different types of friends. I thought I had it sorted when I started to add 'work friends' at my last job, but that fell by the wayside a little, much as I worked at it.

Mrs E and I had a proper chat. It took a while for the fact that we have a structural issue with our spending to sink in. It was the sort of thing where she was talking about "less takeaways" and I had to politely repeat the fact that no amount of takeaways really affected the fact that our basic mortgage/housing bills absorb 50% of our income! She shares my frustration that a basic suburban life with one kid and a car appears to be beyond the reach of a couple with ok wages.

As for snobby - I don't know - maybe it's more that overcompensating for DD thing again.

ZTD - I don't like our house because: 1) we moved from a tenement flat where the dimensions were like a set from Land of the Giants (25' living room, hall you could hold a football match in sort of thing). The current house feels poky and cramped - you can only have 3 people sitting in the kitchen at any one time and you need to dance around people to get through doorways etc. 2) because we can see all of the house, I'm acutely aware that some of the fabric hasn't been maintained - it feels like we're running to stand still just to bring this back up to code 3) It has become a money pit, but it's tiny 4) I hate hate hate gardening :rotfl:

P2P - I was targetting a relatively ambitious yield (which was the wrong way to address our budgetary issues) - but I was massively diversified and had my eyes open. I suppose a mix of leverage biting me on the !!!! and significant issues with due diligence affecting some of the larger platforms. I think I may yet get some money back once firms go through administration etc.

As for patience - if I was a patient man I'd probably rule the world already :rotfl:

I don't sit around on a day to day basis coveting the salaries and lifestyles of our friends and neighbours. When you are dragged along to night out after night out with the same boring bunch of petrolheads and gadget addicts, it's hard to avoid comparions (which I'm reliably informed are odious). Honest to God - all I want is one friend who doesn't give a rat's !!!! about what car they drive :eek:

Greying - I'd never accuse you of spouting feel good nonsense - you just think about things on a deeper level than most of us

That whole post was quite lovely - I suppose we're just waiting for our friends to realise that they like us for ourselves as opposed to the fact that we accompany them to restaurants far too often

I sometimes wonder if it's 'just us'. We have a lot of interests. We discuss the world, politics, society, ethics and science at home. We enjoy a documentary as much as a crappy sci-fi movie. We cook (well) for ourselves and love trying new food and new experiences. We look outwards and can't really be arsed talking about work, cars and shiny !!!!. We both feel (to quote Frank Turner before he got vaguely famous) that "the air-conditioned life has left me gasping for some real conversation". Just waiting for the conversation to begin.

Gallygirl - I know you and my old MFW friends are always lurking in the background in a positive way - like 'The Godfather" but without all the murders

Alex - Praise from Caesar! At the risk of this becoming a total love-in, I've always admired your DIY skills and the fearless way that you're reinventing yourself despite yourself

I do feel like a good Dad most of the time, that is my single biggest positive takeaway from the last couple of years. I have been fearless in protecting family time and our life together and while I rarely feel like a parenting guru, I know what good looks like and our family is doing well :T

I think that we will decide what to do re. moving in 2020. As it stands, we are tied into a long fix with the attendant ERCs and I am not giving away my equity. If nothing else, all the money we have spent on the house has increased the value and because values in our area continue to climb, we'd probably get our deposit and most of the money spent back if we sold (unusual, as home improvements are often just sunk costs).

Mrs E isn't so keen on moving. I think she feels invested (financially) in the property due to our renovations, that we need to get a certain level of enjoyment of the improvements before we move. Perhaps she would feel differently if she'd spent a year herding contractors?

Suffolk lass - That's an interesting tale - I think I grew up with quite a few people who were in a similar boat.

I think that sometimes we all have a public face and our private doubts to carry, I think I just got tired of being a duck yesterday, my splashing was above the water line

Tuesday feels a bit brighter than Monday did.

Positive Balance - Ctrl+A, Ctrl+C before posting :rotfl:

I am sorry for being overly upbeat