Behind The Finery

My wife Suzie has been organising a hen party for our daughter, nothing spectacular, just a group of girls heading into the big smoke for a candle-making course, followed by dinner and a cocktail bar. Because there were quite a few people attending, all three venues required small deposits, which my wife happily paid. All told, the combined deposit came to around $100 per person.

Most of the group are around our daughter’s age: very late twenties through to mid-thirties. When my wife posted in the hen WhatsApp group to say she’d paid the deposits and to share her payment details, the replies came flooding in, almost without exception, all saying the same thing: they’d need to wait until payday to pay her back.

This surprised me. Most of these young adults have well-paying professional jobs and are part of double-income households with nice homes, nice cars, and a taste for dressing well. On the surface, at least, a $100 deposit shouldn’t be something that can’t be managed before payday.

It’s a good reminder that what you see on the surface masks the stress and difficulties a lot of young professionals face. Financial life can be difficult, even when you face the world in all your finery.

Behind those well-appointed front doors and polished social media feeds, the financial math most likely looks vastly different. The nice car is often leased, the stylish wardrobe funded by buy-now-pay-later schemes, and the beautiful home carries a mortgage that swallows an eye-watering percentage of two solid incomes. When every dollar is pre-committed to maintaining the standard of living expected, there is most likely shockingly little margin left for the unexpected, even a routine $100 deposit.

Watching the messages trickle into that group chat was a reality check. It served as a humble reminder that prosperity is rarely as simple as it looks from the outside. Underneath the fine clothes, the nice cars, and the carefully curated lives, many young people are treading water, trying to keep their heads above the tide, and hoping no one notices how hard they’re kicking underneath.

I’m maybe a bit naive, but their professional lifestyles are not what I envision when I think of people living paycheck to paycheck. My mental image, traditionally anchored to low-wage or service-industry struggles, definitely needs an update for the 21st century.