Hello all,
first post, so bear with me.
A question has been rattling around my brain for a while.....
I am married with no kids. My OH and I both work, with a joint income of about €110k. We have a reasonable mortgage which costs €1400 per month, and no other loans. We have two cars, both old and bought a few years ago for cash (one '94, the other '00 Punto). We save/invest roughly €850 per month, and the rest of the monthly money goes on living expenses. We aren't miserly, but don't splash out either. All in all, we are very happy (and lucky) that our outgoings meet our income, and neither of us feel the need to splash out on new cars etc. Sure, we'll replace them when we need to, but that's not yet.
So my question is this... How is everybody else surviving? We regularly see people with 2/3 kids, two '06 cars, etc. and know that they cannot be earning twice as much as us. Is it all going on the never-never? Are they up to their eyes in credit card debt? Have they remortgaged to pay for the foreign holidays?. Just the cars alone will have cost €40-50k between them.
I feel as if I am missing something here? Can anybody enlighten me?
first post, so bear with me.
A question has been rattling around my brain for a while.....
I am married with no kids. My OH and I both work, with a joint income of about €110k. We have a reasonable mortgage which costs €1400 per month, and no other loans. We have two cars, both old and bought a few years ago for cash (one '94, the other '00 Punto). We save/invest roughly €850 per month, and the rest of the monthly money goes on living expenses. We aren't miserly, but don't splash out either. All in all, we are very happy (and lucky) that our outgoings meet our income, and neither of us feel the need to splash out on new cars etc. Sure, we'll replace them when we need to, but that's not yet.
So my question is this... How is everybody else surviving? We regularly see people with 2/3 kids, two '06 cars, etc. and know that they cannot be earning twice as much as us. Is it all going on the never-never? Are they up to their eyes in credit card debt? Have they remortgaged to pay for the foreign holidays?. Just the cars alone will have cost €40-50k between them.
I feel as if I am missing something here? Can anybody enlighten me?