Decent income, two kids - and living in a 1-bed flat - time to do something?

summerday

For your 5 year old, is it possible to get a mobile room divider to partition off a bit of the bedroom to feel more like 'his' space, especially for when his friends come round?
I mean like this kind of thing (sorry I don't know how to do the special links, just copy and paste this into your browser hope it works).http://www.furnitureinfashion.net/index.php?cPath=128&osCsid=9b5e75f65fecdb8a974a810ea954b8b4

penguine

whitewing wrote: »

We had MIL living with us temporarily for 6 months which meant that DS was in with us. No one that I mentioned it in passing to actually cared. Most had been in similar circumstances themselves at some point. People are actually much nicer than we think. The occasional one is an idiot but who cares what they think.

I agree with this -- we've never had a critical comment from anyone about where we live. Despite the fact that most of my friends with children seem to have upsized and/or extended their property since the kids came along, while we've carried on living in the same 2 bed flat. Whenever I feel a bit embarrassed about it (which isn't very often) I just try to think of us as bohemians (which we aren't really, we're not interesting enough).

Fly_Baby

Thank you very much everybody, you have really lifted my spitrits! :-)

It was nice and reassuring reading your comments because, to be perfectly honest, I expected that most of the replies would be along the lines of "how can you live like that, poor children". My children are not poor in any sense and I am working hard to give them the best.

I remember myself being a kid - I pretty much took everything as it was without giving much thought as to why I and my sister shared a bedroom or why we didn't have a car, for example. So seeing them I believe that they are happy. Not spending all spare money on a rented place allows me to give them more treats (like trips to parks, any books they want, afterschool clubs etc) which we might not be able to afford otherwise. And putting away about £1,000 a month feels great too!

I do hope that my husband will be able to resolve the contract issue and we will be well prepared for the time when we can buy our own home!

Again, many thanks for everyone!!

neverdespairgirl

Fly_Baby wrote: »

It was nice and reassuring reading your comments because, to be perfectly honest, I expected that most of the replies would be along the lines of "how can you live like that, poor children".

AS this is a money saving site, not many posters here would advise you to stop a situation you are happy with, to keep the neighbours on side (-:

More power to your elbow! I shared a room with my sister until I was a teenager (oh, and a room with 11 other girls at boarding school, as well, for 2.5 years) and it didn't bother me.

Fly_Baby

neverdespairgirl wrote: »

AS this is a money saving site, not many posters here would advise you to stop a situation you are happy with, to keep the neighbours on side (-:

neverdespairgirl, yes, I thought that too! I have heard quite a few times that we simply must have our own house since we have children. I know of one family who too didn't have a lot of money but wanted to buy before their first child was born. Now the three of them live in a really tiny one-bed house that gives my friend "claustrophobia" as she puts it herself. And they still don't have the money to get a bigger one and their child is already a toddler - but also cannot go back to renting. I am glad we didn't do the same just for the sake of owning a property.

neverdespairgirl

We rent, and have a 3 year old - fine for us.