Dear Bel,
This might irritate some, but I must get it off my chest – especially at this time of year. Put bluntly, I’m worried sick about money and I don’t feel it’s fair.
My husband and I both earn decent salaries – I’m very aware of that good fortune and I’m grateful.
We both work long hours in careers we love and which actually make a difference to society. Our two children are both at private school almost by accident – they started in the lovely pre-school and were so happy we never had the heart to move them.
After-school clubs help make our working lives possible. My mother-in-law helps hugely, too. But in the past few years, costs have spiralled. Our interest-only mortgage has doubled, as have our monthly bills. Our weekly supermarket shop is now eye-watering.
The new tax on private education has hit us hard, though our wealthier friends are unfazed by it. Lucky them.
Oh, I can hear some of your readers mocking me. But what do they know about our needs? We’ll probably move our youngest to a state secondary school, believing she might even be happier, but I feel angry that the Government’s class tax on education is pushing the decision, not what’s right for us.
We don’t live lavishly: I happily buy everyone’s clothes second-hand. We don’t go on fancy holidays. When we do go away, we rent out our house on Airbnb to help fund it. Yet even a week in a modest cottage in Cornwall feels extravagant, and a (rare) simple meal at the local pub for the four of us rarely leaves much change from £100. Despite trying to economise, we end up in the red every month. It feels like the harder we work, the more we’re penalised.
We wanted to build useful, fulfilling careers and give our children security and opportunity, but right now I feel punished. Because of the cost-of-living increases everybody is facing, you find your mind moves on rigid tracks of money – even though you know there’s much more to life. Can you help me look beyond the everyday worries?
ZOE
Life has never been, and never will be, ‘fair’; we all have no choice but to accept inequalities of wealth, talent, looks, sporting ability, popularity or whatever, writes Bel Mooney
That is certainly a tall order! Words of wisdom are needed … although, like many people, I’m irritated by ‘feel-good’ quotations, woo-woo New Age ‘spirituality’, cracker barrel homilies and advice to tiptoe through the tulips (as it were) and be hopeful.
There is so much of that stuff on the internet – countless gurus, self-helpists and nut-jobs telling you that, with the right attitude and sending your demands up to the universe, you can achieve anything from growing bigger breasts to feeling as de-stressed as a daisy. Fat chance when the bills come in, eh?
How can people ‘look beyond the everyday worries’ when those worries loom larger in their viewpoint than anything else?
Once I stood before the most sublime sacred mosaics in Ravenna, Italy, with an admirable, other-worldly intellectual who told me confidently that all the artistic work we contemplated was done ‘to the glory of God’.
‘No,’ I argued, ‘it was done by everyday artisans who needed to put bread on the table for their children.’
You and your husband understand that all too well, Zoe. You both work hard, try to make society healthier and safer, earn decent money and feel grateful for your good luck. But you also find the general cost of living a source of worry – and fret because your educational choices for your children add a burden, especially since this Labour Government clearly doesn’t consider you ‘working people’.
Why else would they seem so very determined to penalise that wide band – the ‘middle class’?
Rachel Reeves gives good Grinch. Boo!
I don’t think it’s fair either. But life has never been, and never will be, ‘fair’; we all have no choice but to accept inequalities of wealth, talent, looks, sporting ability, popularity or whatever. Anyway, before people write in castigating you for choosing to pay for your children’s education, I’ll suggest they save their precious time.
As a true Brit, I believe in freedom and individual choice. I’ve known wealthy people who chose state education and ‘working people’ who scrimped and saved to go private – and I reckon it’s their business and nobody else’s.
But let’s leave the politics behind – although I hope you feel reassured I’m on your side.
It’s vital to try raising our heads above the murk in which some of our leaders would have us remain. There is a lot to worry every single man and woman trying to cope with an increasingly complicated life – but shall we also try to find the sources of joy?
From the general sense of your letter, including some details I had to edit out, I strongly suspect you know already what they might be.
It’s nearly Christmas, Zoe! You’ll be feeling frazzled about presents to wrap, food to order between online meetings with colleagues, stockings, elderly parents to collect for The Day, and lots more… (Oh, did I buy crackers? Have we got enough to drink?) All that!
So I want you to pause as you read this, take a very deep breath and let it out with a whoosh. Then do it again. That should calm you instantly. The next step is to stand still within the new calmness and focus on the view beyond finances – or ‘getting and spending,’ as the great poet William Wordsworth expressed humankind’s ancient preoccupation. What can you see?
Let’s imagine you, your husband, son and daughter are standing, holding hands, on top of a hill.
There in front of you is the vista of your life, lying spread out under a starry sky. (I often ask our talented illustrator Neil Webb to give us stars at Christmas, because they’re beautiful and have always shown people the way. When in doubt, look up. Even if the sky is cloudy, they are still there.)
Is one star bigger than the others? Well, that is your family’s special star to follow.
And in the foreground at the foot of the hill there’s a dark pine forest. These trees are the relatives of the one in your sitting room, only they’re not decorated for Christmas and can seem very daunting.
Your road ahead winds through the forest and you have to take it – even if the way often seems so hard. But you hold your children’s hands tightly because that’s your job and it matters above all else. And in the distance you can see beautiful fields and a welcoming house, sparkling in starlight. That’s where you are always heading – home.
And you realise how lucky you are, to have those hands to hold and that goal always ahead. You know when you get there (as you do every day) you will continue to be blessed by family love and fun. Even if you feel hard done by at times, that is unassailable.
You see where I’m going? Yes, I’m on that path, too. And ‘fun’ is the key word here – not in an empty, meaningless sense, but because fun is actually important.
All of us need to be a little light-hearted at this time of the year and to make an effort to celebrate even the smallest bits of good fortune in our lives: a sunny day, tea with somebody who’s good company, fairy lights, feet up with a good book or TV programme.
That’s what midwinter celebrations were always about: laughter, a brimming glass and flames in the darkness.
After all, it doesn’t cost much to light a candle. Don’t forget, Zoe – it doesn’t cost to open your heart and bring light into the world.
And finally… A letter that illuminates Christmas
Last week’s letter from ‘Anna’, remembering the death of her adult daughter, unsurprisingly touched many people.
I must share one letter I found very moving.
Christine writes: ‘Our beloved son died suddenly on December 21, 2008.
‘At the time, with Christmas lights already up, I vowed never to have them lit, indeed never to put them up, again.
‘My very wise husband said: “Nonsense – we will keep them switched off until Christmas Eve when they have to be lit up, otherwise our son won’t recognise our house.”
‘In his 31 years our boy had missed only one Christmas with us. In addition, said my husband, every year we’ll put up those lights our boy loved so much, look at them and remember him with a smile.
‘Well, it took me a while to smile again, but I did, and each year my heart is lifted by our Christmas lights.’
I want Zoe (today’s letter) to reflect on that – and everybody else, too.
‘Count your blessings’ can seem trite and even insulting when you’re unhappy and blessings seem thin on the ground.
But now I shall approach 2026 with the beautiful vision of Christine’s Christmas lights with me – all illuminated so that the spirit of their beloved son could find his way back home at Christmas.
Thank you, Christine – and all those who have written to me with wonderful words of appreciation throughout the year.
I give thanks for many things, but the regular readers of this column are right up there, twinkling away.
I may not always get things right (who does?) and I sometimes get tired and fed up (who doesn’t?), but knowing my words can uplift and console keeps me going.
I won’t be here next week, so wish a peaceful Christmas to one and all.
