Only freedom will do

PositiveBalance

*Confused face*

Who or what are we talking about with the crazy amounts on food and cars etc?

smallholdingsister

You had to click on the link a few Ed posts back and you get a Daily Fail online article.

Get well soon Ed.

hiddenshadow

Hope you feel better soon, Ed!

hiddenshadow

smallholdingsister wrote: »

MMM is pretty scathing about >1 kid and >0 pets.

This is partly why I can't really get behind MMM and don't read his blog fully. We could, if we chose, emulate his path (esp as he used to be a software developer, I believe) - move into a tiny studio flat in central London, walk to work, save/invest all our money, etc. I don't think we'd be miserable doing that, per se, but it would worsen our lifestyle..would have to get rid of the pets, and given our introverted/semi-lazy natures I'm not sure we'd ever actually leave the flat except to go to work. I'd rather not do that for 5 years, even if it meant I could reach FIRE at the end of it (assuming that were true - rents in central London are crazy expensive!).

Karmacat

Hope you're feeling better, Ed - remember this is a holiday, though, you don't *have* to post, even though we're keeping your thread warm for you

edinburgher

Sorry, too many quotes to do properly, so will try and quote from the thread summary below! Some will be in the wrong order, sure we can make sense of the chaos

choccielover - Yep I thought exactly that too Ed.

The list of must haves and can't live withouts is amazing. £100 a month on sky, £90 on gym and yoga, £100 on hair.

£100 on Sk@y doesn't surprise me, that seems to be a typical bill for someone who has never considered switching. Inlaws spend more than that on V1rgin despite being light internet users and not 'following' any series. The gym is daft - how many mothers of 3 young kids get time to go the gym?! We struggle to manage working schedules and childcare to allow Mrs E to go to 1 class a week (and that's a recent thing). As for hair, that's just a joke. Our combined bill is £10 (Mrs E hasn't had a haircut in 5 years and it looks great). In fairness, she spends a wee bit on hair extensions and tongs etc.

mrsp1987 - Childcare's a bit pricey isn't it?!

Going out takeaways costing £60-odd a month and they have surplus income of £167 a month.

Childcare looks horrendous. The really sad thing is that the few £££ difference between some of the lower paid partner's salary and childcare costs may be all that's keeping these people afloat.

As for takeaways, I can't talk, our takeaway incidence has gone up massively since DD came along, but spends are *always* taken from our pocket money (so we're hit in the pocket, not the household budget).

AlexLK - Seriously though, those lot are making me feel quite wealthy.

The headline is also misleading: none of them see anywhere close to £50,000 p/a as the newspaper is quoting pre-tax figures.

Alex, we'll drop the paddling pool thing for now. DD loves her (plastic) paddling pool that daddy bought her for £1.50. What on earth would a paddling pool be made from otherwise :rotfl:

You feel quite wealthy because you are wealthy. We were both gifted cars via a generational wealth transfer, with some sublte differences. Mine was a 2nd hand Suzuk1, yours was a brand new R@nge Rover?

Your second comment actually made me laugh out loud. Only the wealthy think of wealth in terms of income, the rest of us poor schmucks think about salary.

smallholdingsister - How do you spend £300 a month attending weddings?

Recent wedding attendee here. £70-80 on a Premier 1nn, £100 on a present, £40 on drinks (would have been higher without the hip flask), stag and hen dos were £2-300. So considering they're in the SE? I can see it being a thing. We're at the end of a long round of all our friends and rellies getting married off - we are not inconoclastic enough to say 'no'.

hiddenshadow - How on earth do you have a £500/mo mortgage combined with £1,180/mo utility bills?!

Is one of the family possibly a lizard person who needs to live at a steady 28 degrees celsius?

Seriously, this looks like an obvious typo. We lived in a huge 2 bedroom tenement flat on the top floor (easily half the size of their house). When our creaky old boiler was on 24/7 for 6 months because the controls broke and we were penny foolish re. fixing them, we never passed more than £180 a month.

I bet it's a combo of old boiler, 'the children' and every bulb being a 150W halogen spotlight...

smallholdingsister - Translates as "We actually planned three kids but fear criticism of that choice"....person with 3 kids posting!

It's funny. As a child, big families were pretty cool, they had the novely value. I went to a Catholic school, we had at least 1 family with 10 kids.

Awareness of ecology, depletion of resources and replacement rates as an adult have changed my tune. 2? jobs ago I worked with a chap who had 13 kids. He worked p-t, his wife was an unheard of kids writer and yet he had the gall to say that he had never relied on the state. Well, there's the £13k of CB for starters....

People will do what they will and I appreciate that money doesn't determine how big your family is. But it should be a consideration and it should behove all families with more than 1 kid to try and encourage their children to be super green

smallholdingsister - You are right. Sorry to chat on your thread, Ed.

MMM is pretty scathing about >1 kid and >0 pets.

I like the chat, as I've said before, I think my thread has achieved sentience

I think MMM sets himself up as an unattainable outlier (i.e. you'll probably never get this good, but it's something to strive for). I bet he's surprised that so many people are following his example. Something has 'broken' in the traditional life plan for a lot of people and I think it's wonderful. As I've mentioned before, I've read his main posts, but don't follow as he's too sweary and Murican.

hiddenshadow - But if you plan to have 3 kids and don't improve your finances as you go, I don't think you get to play the "woe is me childcare is sooo expensive" pity card...you made your bed, lie in it.

(Says the forever-childfree-and-grateful-for-it, but I'd love to rescue another dozen pets...don't do so because we don't have room and the vet bills on our 4 are manageable but sizeable. I'm consciously choosing not to add to our furry kid count as a budgeting choice.

Surely the problem was that they never had time to make the bed as they were so busy procreating? :rotfl:

Ps. I hope you neuter the rescued pets were applicable.

choccielover - I have 1 and I'm sticking with 1. Could afford more (on paper) but reality is that we enjoy lovely holidays with 1 and sending 1 to a good school ain't cheap. So we stick at 1 because it's all we can afford when we look at what we want to "do" for that child.

Species imperative aside, we were not put on this planet just to have kids and then turn into a gelatinous mass in an arm chair upon reaching 60.

At this point in time, I would also be happy to stick at 1. My main reason? I feel like !!!! and have done for nearly a year! No amount of love stops you feeling sleep deprived

pavlovs_dog - Personally I have loved having a sibling and would want my offspring to enjoy those bonds too. I like the idea of 3 little ones, but I suspect OH and our finances will be content with 2.

Personally I found the inevitable personality clashes with 4 siblings to be quite stressful, exacerbated by a general feeling of skintness and 'being on top of one another' all the time due to space concerns. Mrs E has a drama llama sibling, think we should have become even more awesome as an only child!

Secret Saving Squirrel - Hope you feel better soon Ed. As for that article, it is rubbish, just lazy journalism as those figures really don't stack up. As well, if the average income is 26500, many of those people were earning much less, so they are nowhere near being high earners. And if you can't afford the basics, including figures for gyms, hairdressers etc in your budget is just insulting the readers' intelligence.

It was always obvious clickbait, but I think rather than insulting our intelligence, your second point shows that the sample interviewed have no common sense! Also, I bet they spitballed most of their figures.

I was going to go for the old canard about 'oh, average income includes the richest and the poorest, look at the median', but interestingly enough it doesn't support the argument in this case (actually slightly higher). This suggests that incomes are becoming polarised in the UK, with some really rich people, a reasonably large 'middle class' and a swelling underclass of (actually) skint people. This is worrying for anyone with children.

hiddenshadow

edinburgher wrote: »

As for hair, that's just a joke. Our combined bill is £10 (Mrs E hasn't had a haircut in 5 years and it looks great). In fairness, she spends a wee bit on hair extensions and tongs etc.

DH got BIL to cut his hair before we met (we go up less often now). We bought a hair cutting kit off bay of e for £30 a few months ago - have only used it twice but it's already paid for itself from that alone, and should last some time yet.

Seriously, this looks like an obvious typo. We lived in a huge 2 bedroom tenement flat on the top floor (easily half the size of their house). When our creaky old boiler was on 24/7 for 6 months because the controls broke and we were penny foolish re. fixing them, we never passed more than £180 a month.

I guess if it includes the £100/mo sky/broadband/etc type bills, maybe? Even then if you assume their actual utility bills are £300/mo that's still another £800/mo on "extras".

Ps. I hope you neuter the rescued pets were applicable.

Only had to neuter stupid cat as everyone else came pre-snipped from the rescue, but the only non-sterilised animal I'd consider is a (female) horse, and even then I can't see breeding one (much as the idea appeals in theory). Thankfully I think these days all rescues require snipping pre-adoption or evidence thereof immediately after.

At this point in time, I would also be happy to stick at 1. My main reason? I feel like !!!! and have done for nearly a year! No amount of love stops you feeling sleep deprived

Ha, this is a main reason we don't want kids. I'm sure we'd love them and be good parents, but we don't have any urge to put ourselves through all the hassles/expenses of children (singular or multiple).

edinburgher

It's a hard thing to admit HS and sometimes I feel like a bad person for doing so 'surely every other parent feels the same?!' But then I remember that I'm not everybody else, I'm just me

Not sure Mrs E would agree with me fully yet, she has the rose tinted glasses given to all mothers upon the birth of their first child. But we'll reach an agreement, too big a subject to be fighting over.

mrsp1987

I don't think the utilities was a typo because I think it included council tax as well. It's still an absolutely outrageous amount of money though! Our combined monthly household bills including our mortgage payments cone to about £950.
I think you hit the nail on the head when you said these people packed common sense.

edinburgher

That's pretty low Mrsp. I checked our spreadsheet and our bare bones spend for the month (pay mortgage, tax, eat, watch TV and have a small car) is £1650 or so.