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While the economy may have been doing ok and all that, I think its still a lot to do with the feeling that everyone around you is doing _better_, and the increa

While the economy may have been doing ok and all that, I think its still a lot to do with the feeling that everyone around you is doing _better_, and the increasingly prevalent need for instant-gratification. A lot of this probably comes down to cheap-credit. I am by rights in the top 1% of national income in my senior-ish BigCo job, yet I look around at the traffic lights and I am surrounded by Range Rovers, Teslas, Porches SUVs etc. I dont think I could afford one of those (I tend to buy 3 or 4 year old cars outright), yet the stats say I earn more than 99% of people ... either most days I am surrounded by the 0.1% club, or people are spending a lot of their income in PCP etc. Is it a matter of "keeping up with the jonses"? Are people thinking "Well these people around me are driving nice cars and I am not, so clearly I am getting dicked over here somehow and everyone else is earning boatloads and I am not." Replace nice cars with expensive holidays, house renovations, latest iphone, latest shoes/handbag or whatever. And all amplified and magnified by social media. Its all the same: conspicuous status baubles making people feel like they're on the loser end of the spectrum. See enough of that over and over (and you will if you use social media) and it'll shift your world views.

justneedaname 28d ago
I think this observation is true. I'm not nearly as high as you, more close to top 15% but only mid-20s still. But this is something I see with a lot of people my age too that I categorically know are not earning nearly as much as me. They'll have < 3yo BMWs, Mercedes, Audis etc. and you just know most of these are all on PCP finance probably costing upwards of £400pm You quite often read statistics about how so few people have more than like £3k in savings and, to me, I can never understand how. But when you start to look around you at how many people are living this "buy now, pay later" lifestyle you start to realise that, actually, for many this is just the norm. My brother's gf is the personification of this. She dropped out of A levels straight away, got accepted onto a nail salon apprenticeship which turned out just to be a way for the owner to get cheap labour, as is common with many of these I understand. So now she just works 3 days a week for a few hours at a time doing nails. But she always has the latest iPhone, always buying shed loads of clothes and other consumerist crap. No idea how she funds it, my parents think my brother's being taken for a ride

justneedaname 28d ago

I think this observation is true. I'm not nearly as high as you, more close to top 15% but only mid-20s still. But this is something I see with a lot of people my age too that I categorically know are not earning nearly as much as me. They'll have < 3yo BMWs, Mercedes, Audis etc. and you just know most of these are all on PCP finance probably costing upwards of £400pm You quite often read statistics about how so few people have more than like £3k in savings and, to me, I can never understand how. But when you start to look around you at how many people are living this "buy now, pay later" lifestyle you start to realise that, actually, for many this is just the norm. My brother's gf is the personification of this. She dropped out of A levels straight away, got accepted onto a nail salon apprenticeship which turned out just to be a way for the owner to get cheap labour, as is common with many of these I understand. So now she just works 3 days a week for a few hours at a time doing nails. But she always has the latest iPhone, always buying shed loads of clothes and other consumerist crap. No idea how she funds it, my parents think my brother's being taken for a ride