Have Britons Caught Affluenza?

[Soulmanure]

For some reason, I'd always had this apparently stereotypical image of Brits being somehow extremely sensible about things, including money. If this article has any truth to it, it appears that at least your moneyed class suffers from the same 'keeping up with the Joneses' syndrome that we do. Reminds me of an interesting pre-Great Recession read, Richistan, which chronicles the way in which the rich had essentially go into massive debt in order to appear. . .rich.

"The problem in this country is that we are very bad at budgeting because we don't plan ahead. . . ."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-11382591

Any truth to this?

[MarkSDMF]

I shall reply to this tomorrow when I can read this propperly and not make stupid spelling nistakes.

Short answer, yes.
Oh whos is that, I can see on the near horizon, why I, I believe its... No surely not ! It is ! It is our old friend Recesion coming
back to pay us another visit. Ohhh how nice of him eh

G'night chaps.

[daverave999]

High-pressure marketing particularly in the English language (another bugbear of mine...) has turned the US and British people purely into a resource for the big corporations and consequently people have started to value themselves in a very materialistic way.
The easy availability of credit due to derivative trading and the resultant British attitude towards seeing property as an investment rather than somewhere to live fuelled this attitude. Cheap mortgages caused house prices to rise approximately 15% year-on-year up to around 2007 and it became common to withdraw the equity to spend on cars and holidays (pre-empting this argument- don't give me any of this not enough houses rubbish as a cause for the inflation). It was too easy! Without sounding like a snob, it was obvious something was up when you saw a BMW parked in the driveway of a council house.
I don't think it's lack of forward planning really. More naivety and belief in the Government that 'Boom and bust is over'. Continuous growth is unsustainable and history always repeats itself. Even my parents don't get it yet.

[patrickspark]

a lot of young (and probably not so young) people think they have a god given right to higher standards of living than they can actually afford, resulting in debt,
the "because i'm worth" it culture has a lot to answer for.
as my father used to tell us ad nauseum, if you cant take the cash out of your wallet, you cant afford it !

[satch]

I've never had a loan or ever been in debt.
Everything I have is because we've saved up and bought things as and when.
My wife is amazing with what meagre budget we have. Without her...etc.
A lot of people these days, and especially younger people, seem to have the "want, need, now!" mentality.
Like Patrickspark says:" if you can't take the cash out of your wallet, you can't afford it!"
In a simplistic way that statement applies to a person living alone to the government.

[Aussiewaz]

The US & Britain are not alone in this fiasco. Australia has suffered from it for years. The situation now is so bad that an 18Y0 cannot get a loan for 2K (Which they can afford) to buy a used car. Instead the finance companies make them take out an 18K loan to buy a new car. People are to ready to compete with each other on what is in all reality materialistic wealth yet have lives that revolve around servicing their debts. Since our encounters with the Big C we live by cash only. Yes the business has creditors and debtors but these are managed without any loans or overdrafts. We manage quite fine off of our own personal effort & see no need to have the new car or the fanciest gadgets.

Maybe I'm getting old. LOL. I'll grow old happily & disgracefully though, without a care in the world for those that complain about not being able to service the debts that THEY got themselves into. Need a smoke? I do.

[patrickspark]

satch ! you sound exactly like my father and older sister - i'm gonna request a dna test !!

[Aussiewaz]

satch ! you sound exactly like my father and older sister - i'm gonna request a dna test !!

[cbob]

At the risk of slipping some "On Topic" comments into this "Off Topic Chat", I must observe that Britons, at least the ones posting here, have way too much money to spend on fancy-pants Limited and Regional and Specially Packaged cigars.

Yikes! All these discussions about boxes of Behikes and Partagas Jars and twenty year old classics. One would think you lads are made of money.

There is a thread running asking about "Other Forums" and I'll admit to slinking away from a few that were obviously too rich for me but to be fair, the one Forum that "uninvited" me was not a British one. They were terminally hoity-toity though. A couple of their nicer, more accepting folk are actually posters on UKCF as well but this only proves that you can be a collector of pricey cigars and still be a Real Person.
I'll go off and smoke some of my cheap custom and boring regular production cigars now, and dream of Edicion Regional Bolivars.
.

[Soulmanure]

Pretty surprising responses there--I suppose that there isn't a whole lot of difference, though I imagine that the younger generation will take stock after the experience of loss and be a bit reoriented from being profligate, somewhat like happened with those who lived through the great depression.

Interesting to note, and I wonder if it is less true in the UK, but the wealth inequality in the states has not been as extreme as it is now since the 1920's.

Cbob, you don't have a separate walk-in humi for LE's and Behikes? Why are you on this board?

[cbob]

Cbob, you don't have a separate walk-in humi for LE's and Behikes? Why are you on this board?

It's true.
I'm just faking. I really can't afford a cigar habit. I thought maybe hanging out with affluent, Vintage-Limited-Regional-Behike Jar-buying Britons, some attitude might rub off but (sigh) I guess I'll just slink off and dream of Tinidad Robusto Extras.
.

[daverave999]

We are cut from the same cloth Bob! A $10 cigar is a million times better than a $1 cigar (I have statistics to demonstrate these numbers), but the difference between a $50 cigar and that $10 cigar is much less pronounced.