Outside of bills, utilities etc, what do you spend your money on?

luka said:

Barty

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Do you remember those green halloween Jaffa cakes you bought? Best night of my life that was. I ate two whole boxes of them and Luke just stared at me uncomfortably, almost as if he felt like he was interrupting something.

Yeah course I do!

luka said:

I think Barty is real. I trust him. I like him.

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What’s all this? Did someone stealth bollock me?

Just drunken sentimentality

Oh I see. I thought this thread was from this afternoon.

martin said:

What I can’t figure out is, how comes when I was young and skint I was going out nearly every night, buying records, CDs, tapes and books weekly, smoking like a lab rat, going to football (including away games) and up to see mates in Sheffield and Edinburgh/Glasgow frequently…whereas now, having an OK job and being better off than I was then, that all seems impossible without a bank loan? Has everything got dearer, or have I just got tighter?

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I haven't got the metrics to hand but I read that since the 80s, income has more or less plateaued and housing prices have almost doubled. I think that was in the states but I'd guess the same can be said for western Europe too. No idea about the rest of the world.

john eden said:

Holidays / other travel

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oh yeah, forgot to mention this. we fly to the UK at least two or three times a year to visit my wife's family, a couple of airfares each time plus rail, hotels, etc. probably runs between $10,000-20,000 per year.

Left my laptop in a cafe yesterday, a new one would have been a big expense and I was already totting it all up when managed to get it back.

are you on holiday? looks like a sunny day in spring?

Ha, I just nicked that off the internet. No, I'm at home in rainy miserable England.

pattycakes_ said:

I haven't got the metrics to hand but I read that since the 80s, income has more or less plateaued and housing prices have almost doubled. I think that was in the states but I'd guess the same can be said for western Europe too. No idea about the rest of the world.

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Yeah, that would make sense. My parents bought their first house in the NW London suburbs in 1960 for £3,200, which wouldn't even buy you a storage unit now.

When I was renting in the same area (a MASSIVE 3-bed semi) in the late '90s/2000, the house value was £160k when we moved out. Can snap it up now for just under £700k. How this is all going to pan out, fuck knows.

martin said:

Yeah, that would make sense. My parents bought their first house in the NW London suburbs in 1960 for £3,200, which wouldn't even buy you a storage unit now.

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That's a bit misleading since a quid then was obviously worth a lot more than a quid these days, but a quick google suggests that amount is equivalent to about £70k today - still a pretty stark contrast to today's prices.

Leo said:

oh yeah, forgot to mention this. we fly to the UK at least two or three times a year to visit my wife's family, a couple of airfares each time plus rail, hotels, etc. probably runs between $10,000-20,000 per year.

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Fuck me! All that money and you only get to go HERE?!

last summer i went to visit friends in amsterdam. one of them kinda got lucky and sold the shares of the company he founded with a group of friends making him rich all of a sudden. i don't know how rich exactly but he's been living a lifestyle of debauchery since. we went out, drank a lot and finished taking xtc. the next morning he told me to come with him for brunch, something i had never done before. he takes me to one of the fanciest hotels i've ever seen, marmor and gold kind of expensive, and apparently there's some sort of master michelin star chef presenting his new menu for a select group of people. i'm in there wearing a hoodie and some sweatpants, smelling like cigarettes and beer and i'm sweating from the night before. the rest of the guests are all in suits and are all looking beautiful. it felt as if everybody was looking at me. i didn't belong there. every 5 minutes a group of waitresses come in the room, swirling around the guests in perfect choreography, and present a bit of food from the new menu, some of it is presented on teaspoons, and they're all ridiculous combinations of ingredients. i lasted for about 15 minutes and then told my friend i can't handle this and actually ran out. i can't deal with this kind of excessive wealth. it made me feel so uncomfortable. it's all such a fucking waste.

well anyway. i wanted to ask if you guys can get along with rich people? for me, i find it increasingly more difficult.

Well... I used to work in the city and a lot of the people I worked with were wealthy. It was... ok, not really. When I left there were like two I was friends with and if I met up with them and their mates it was horrible cos they always went to expensive bars where I could never afford a round (and barely afford a beer in fact). I don't get that, just cos you have more money you have to spend more of it on the same things? I feel that a bit when I watch Curb Your Enthusiasm when you see Larry ask someone for a favour (oh you're going there, can you take this with you please?) and people expect a tip - basically if you're super rich you've got to expect to be bled all the time for small amounts by everyone just doing normal human interactions. That seems very depressing to me.
There is a girl I met here in Lisbon who owns a clothes shop... but I went to her flat for dinner and it was unbelievable, everyone else I know in Lisbon rents pokey little places but their flat was just huge and old and right by Avenida Libertade, kinda the place you would expect the Spanish Ambassador to live. Then she moved to a new place and I was invited to a party there and it was kinda horrible... the flat was even bigger than the other one and I nipped out with my friend for a smoke and she took me to the floor above cos it turned out they owned that too and were renting it too a friend. And they still own the other one. It's family money. But the people at the party bored me to tears is what I'm saying, all kinda rich and irritating. I made my excuses and left as quickly as I could.

I don't know any rich people. It's a constant niggle.

Oh and there were these girls I met. I have to be careful here but they are close to (in fact one of them is part of) the royal family of a middle-eastern country. They hired this massive flat here in Lisbon and I dj-d there. They insist everyone turns off their phones and then they take off their headscarves and start taking coke, drinking like fuck. I became quite good friends with them in fact, went back to their hotel room the day after the party (party started on Friday, got home Sunday evening), well I say room, it was a suite with a living room bigger than my flat. No smoking allowed of course... but they said "fuck it we'll pay if there's a fine" and just chained fags for twelve hours. Nice girls anyway, learned about [their country] and next time one came to Lisbon she invited a load of us out for dinner, we sat in the VIP bit of this restaurant/bar on the roof and she paid for all our food and drink all night.
Next time she came round ours for dinner with her husband... possibly a bit of a come down for her cos she owns a house on Bond Street and presumably several back home... but it was nice. So yeah, she's actually cool despite being super wealthy and muslim and so on it's never been a barrier.

The richness I've encountered is usually so stiflingly dull. Necessity breeds imagination. I suppose the flipside of the dullness is that laddish finance behaviour. Hard to know which one is worse.
Posh restaurants are terrible - why would anyone want to spend time in such an uncomfortable, uptight environment where people won't stop addressing you as 'sir'?