100% agreed, love this. And to my point on the traffic light warning system... No one should be duped into spending £900 into that DT GCSE (remember the plastic mold machine you made a door buzzer out of in year 9?) x Curry’s PC world circa 2003 aesthetic lamp under the guise that’s a normal purchase for a young family to make. The things they have are abnormally excessive IMO and it isn’t normal.
In this household we’re thankfully doing quite alright (touch wood init) but our salaries are the only money we’ll ever have...so like most normal people we’d actually consider the value work adds to our house’s value before it’s done? Is spending 0.5% of your house’s buy price on a sink (as they’ve feigned to) actually all that wise - is it going to see returns? When you come to sell the house is the addition of £250psm marble tiles going to add at least their cost in ttl value? I am going to guess definitely not
Not everything needs to be an optimal money maker and I’m far from a skinflint, I’m not advocating buying those horrible shiny white landlord tiles that seem to sap heat from the very marrow in your bones just to make a few quid. But when your salary is it you’ve got to make better decisions init? Like you’d either re allocate that £4k of sink money to cover 30%+ of the bathroom’s entire cost, or chuck most of it in savings. Because very few ppl have the benefit of brands or parents subsidising their budget.
I really fucking resent them presenting their lifestyle & excess as normal for a young family because I know so many (otherwise smart) young women who are in serious financial trouble because they believed the shit they saw on Insta was realistic and followed suit. It’s insidious and you have to actively train your mind against what you’re seeing, how fucked up is that?! For all the fuss they make about models giving teenage girls anorexia you’d think they’d have a thing or two to say about young women spending double digit %s of their salary maintaining debts because of these lot wouldn’t you!
Edit: sorry for dissertation can’t sleep xx