Some people just seem to have unlimited money

FBaby

rachbc wrote: »

I think this is the real secret of your success not thritfiness - I'd be able to retire at 50 and afford uggs if I didn't shell out 100's month on childcare, a bigger house to home the blighters and endless food that makes them grow and clothes to replace the one's they then grow out of...onder if I can sell them on ebay?

I totally agree, Gosh kids are expensive!!! OH and I would be minted if it wasn't for them!!! Somehow wouldn't trade them though!! Saying that, it is one of the main reason why we decided not to have a child together. The prospect of paying an extra £500 to £1000 extra each month (mainly full-time childcare costs) kind of helped the decision! It all coincides for us, DS will be 18 when I turn 50 and the mortgage will be paid. That leaves Uni fees, but granddad has kindly started contributing monthly since they were born towards this, and I will expect them to work part-time to contribute, so hopefully won't be too bad.

FBaby

Pollycat wrote: »

Quite possibly - but whilst I'm buying reduced mince to batch cook shepherd's pie bases, some people with kids are buying takeaways (which are vastly more expensive and less nutritious than cooking from scratch) - not because they don't have time but because they don't know what to do with an unpeeled potato, a raw onion and some mince or can't be arsed to cook.

Ladyshopper seems to be able to have a decent lifestyle even though she's a single parent.

And my house is actually big enough for quite a few kids.

Are you talking about selling the kids' outgrown clothes on ebay or the kids themselves? :rotfl:

To be honest, no thrifty home cooking compared to take aways is going to amount to the cost of childcare. My DD is now at secondary school, but I pay £300 a month for breakfast/afterschool club for my son.

Pollycat

And you and rachbc are comparing your childcare costs to my present situation.

I'm actually more than legally old enough to be a great-grandmother.
Child care costs during the time I might have been a parent were vastly different to what they are now.
Child minders?
The most likely option was to leave your kids with your Mum.
Of course nowadays, lots of grandmothers are working themselves.

Breakfast clubs? Afterschool clubs? Not in my day.

And the number of people who went onto 6th form education was a lot less than now.
And the number of people who went onto University was even less than that.

jtr2803

It's all about what's more important to you surely?

I have a young lad who works for me as a trainee and he often makes comments about the fact I have two big holidays booked for next year when we have a flat to pay for but what he neglects to realise is my car is almost 12 years old and covered in rust, his is only just over a year old, the last time I went out for dinner was three months ago, he went out for dinner last night, I haven't bought any new clothes since May, he spent £200 three days ago......while OH and I live in a relatively new and well sized two bedroom and two bathroom flat we pay below the current average market rent and we rarely go out, eat out or buy clothes. It helps that OH doesn't have to run a car and he has no financial commitments. Apart from a few Zumba classes my weekly spend is incredibly little. I did a lot of comping in my spare time last year which paid for most of Christmas too. We just choose to spend our money on travelling together because that's what is important to us.

It's so easy to try and compare your lifestyle with that of others but it's just not that simple. A friend of mine was working three jobs to pay for her nice car and new furniture but most people just looked at the £30k car and assumed she was rolling in it or had maxxed out her cards!

There are those who live way beyond their means, a friend of mine looks to have a perfect life, brand new four bed house, big wedding, holidays to Mexico and two lovely kids but last time we chatted, they were in £25k of debt and being kept afloat by his family.

As long as my family are happy then that suits me just fine

Pollycat

Rachbc & Fbaby
you have missed the point of my earlier post - reproduced below.

My point is that even somebody who hadn't had kids just as we didn't could look at me & my OH and wonder how we fund our lifestyle - if they had been the type of people who drove round in BMWs, holidayed in 5* Far East hotels, shopped in M&S for food and wore designer clothing (if that even existed 40 years ago), knowing that they couldn't afford to retire early as we did.

Pollycat wrote: »

Both I and OH are retired (not yet aged 60) and have what (I guess) a lot of people would consider a very good lifestyle (I like it too. )

Foreign holidays, no mortgage etc.

BUT - we worked for it.
When our contemporaries were driving round in BMWs, we didn't. We had smaller (less expensive) cars.
We didn't fly Business Class to the Far East and stay in 5* Spa hotels.
We did go to the Far East (and other places) but on more of a budget (although we didn't have to).
We were happy with that and often saw more of the country than those people holed up in a 5* All-Inclusive resort in the middle of nowhere.
I worked hard at finding bargain holidays.

We saved hard, not hard enough to make it a chore but enough to make sure we could enjoy our retirement.

Whilst other people were shopping at M&S, I was (happily) cooking big batches of chilli and bolognaise sauce.
Whilst other people were buying ready meals, I was busy cooking them from scratch.

I still work hard at saving money, even though we aren't in debt.

If I see mince reduced at our local Tesco, I buy it.
In fact, if I see 500gm packs of mince, I buy lots and split it into 340 gm packs (12 oz) which is enough for 2 of us.
That way from 6 x 500gm packs I get 9 meals for 2 people instead of 6.
I bought 6 x 500gm packs of mince for £6.60 (instead of £13.20). That's 9 x 3/4lb which works out at less than 40p per person.

I buy reduced veg and make my own soup for lunches.

I buy most things on BOGOF, anything that keeps, and put it in my garage (I can it my corner shop).

I buy a lot of clothes from charity shops, that way you can get one-offs.
Most people say I always look good.

I don't have to work so hard at saving money but I feel I can then justify buying say, a pair of UGG boots.

I don't even need to justify that - I just like to.

I guess I was born thrifty with a spendthift underside - IYSWIM. :rotfl:

It works for me.

OP
as per your post, £50K is a reasonable income.
Maybe your friends are doing something you're not, money-saving wise.
Or maybe they are up to their ears in debt.
Or maybe they have won the lottery and haven't 'fessed up.

Whichever way, be happy with your lifestyle - or change it.

cannyscot_2

Ladyshopper wrote: »

Quite possibly people think that about me. I'm a single parent to two children, and work part time. I live in a nice 4 bedroom house, and we go on a decent holiday most years (cruise last year to Mexico, doing same next year to the bahamas).

Its a combination of budgetting, being frugral, and being organised! I was also lucky to have had a lot of equity when I sold my last house, so my mortgage isn't horrific on this house, and even with prices going down I'd say I still have over £100k equity, and I overpay where I can.

We're not into designer stuff (daughter would like to be, but has a couple of abercrombie and fitch tops bought from ebay to satisfy that!).

I shop around, I buy when special offers are on, I buy birthday/christmas presents in sales as I see them throughout the year. I also used to make massive use of tesco clubcard vouchers which gave us some fantastic holidays (Florida x 2, Lapland, and the flights for our cruise earlier this year). Unfortunately a lot of the ways of earning tesco points easily have cut down now.

I don't have debt other than my mortgage, and I save hard for things. I would rather build memories with my children by having great holidays, days out etc, than buying them the latest computer game or gadget.

Saying that, although we have some exotic type holidays, I also bought a tent last year and we have enjoyed several camping trips which we all love, and look forward to many more in the coming year.

I work in Finance and get a better picture of peoples financial lives than most. It is very easy to see why some appear to have more than others.

With a lot of people it is a material facade-they need to fell better about themselves so need to look like they are well off with designer stuff/cars.

At the other end of the spectrum there are very clever people who look after their money well and quietly go about enjoying themselves but are very prepared to compromise on lots of things.

There are a number of good books which document just this -millionaires who were pretty frugal.

Like Lady shopper we don't do takeaways/designer gear but we do do holidays/cars via tesco points/airmiles/sun holidays/ebay and any other cheap deal we can get. Most people would think we are pretty well off as we got a brand new car via tesco points-our neighbours bought one on finance at £400 a month. I too shop at M&S outlets/oxfam and look pretty well dressed.

I am not the best with money probably because I deal with all day and can't be bothered with too much effort but I do and can see just how much money people waste.

I help out 2 relatives -the first spent £500 on each child-I spent £150 in total , the second got his eldest the latest iphone on contract-Mine get the best deal around and have to contribute /get it for birthdays and sell their old phones which they must keep in good condition.


I am changing my ways this year and am going to stop helping my relatives out/paying lunches for friends etc and am planning to be better off and cleverer myself! as I have recently lost my job.

Ladyshopper

FBaby wrote: »

Can I ask how much maintenance and how much tax credits you receive?

£200 a month maintenance

Up until recently £200 a month tax credits, however son in last few months has received DLA (never applied before as didn't realise entitled) so the tax credits have doubled. These will be used to get a tutor for him though, so won't just be extra money going into the family pot if that makes sense.

ab.da54

Spidergirl76 wrote: »

Why are some of you trying to see the worst in my post and making out that I had some nasty hidden agenda behind asking? I asked a question, in a lighthearted way, and have had snipey replies from ZARA and cbrown.

Having read your opening post, Spidergirl, it doesn't come across as a lighthearted one, to me.

Have you looked at your own finances to see if there is an area you could cut back on, to increase luxury spending.

A salary of 50k is a pretty good one and will, hopefully, enable your family to enjoy some of the benefits of a higher waged household

Ladyshopper

cannyscot my car was half paid for with tesco vouchers too 2 years ago, and will be kept until it dies probably!

It is definitely down to choices. I get laughed at at work, and used to get called the coupon queen, as I used to get all my shopping for practically nothing at tesco when they would take coupons against any products. Unfortunately they don't do that any more. I kept a spreadsheet one year, and made £4000 of overpayments against my mortgage from money I had saved by using coupons to grocery shop.

I do car boot sales and sell a little on ebay (not much) and will basically do anything I can to supplement my income a little to be able to put it towards holidays and days out.

If i was being really sensible I would keep on overpaying the mortgage, but after our first cruise last year which we absolutely loved, decided to go on another one this year. The kids won't be kids for much longer at 14 and 13, and I have saved every single penny through careful spending and good saving.

I've probably been lucky in that I've always had a sensible approach to money, don't spend what I haven't got, and don't like to be in debt. Because I've been on my own for 10 years, I have to be sensible, because there is only me to sort it out, and I want to be a good provider for my children. Once they hit 18 I will be going back to work full time and attacking the mortgage to pay it off asap.

Ladyshopper

FBaby wrote: »

Ok, read you don't get much maintenance, so you must be quite a high earner that on part-time work (unless you consider 30 hours part-time) you are able to afford such holidays. I was very frugal when I was single too, still am in many ways, never bought the kids designer clothes, shopped in charity shops, I too buy most of everything in the sales and make do with special offers, but I certainly never had £1000 to take my kids to luxurious holidays, especially not during school holiday time.

I don't consider myself a massive earner. I work 30 hours a week, and am a police officer with 10 years in the force. So no, I'm not on minimum wage or anything like that, but am on around £26k. I negeotiated a term time contract a few years ago, so I work more hours in the week, and have the majority of school holidays off.

As I stated, I've had 3 great holidays paid COMPLETELY by tesco vouchers except spending money, which I saved up. The cruise this year had the flights paid for by airmiles (from tesco vouchers), and the cruise itself had a deal on whereby you got a child free, so only had to pay for 2 of us instead of 3. It was $900, so around £600, which is a week all inclusive, all food, drink (not alcohol, took own).

There are holiday bargains to be had, and I spend a hell of a lot of time on the internet searching for bargains for everything - holidays, presents, clothes, groceries. People joke that bargain hunting is my hobby, but in reality it probably is. I certainly wouldn't have achieved all those things for my family without it, so I for one think its worth the hours of research.