[Let's not forget the woes of "impoverished professionals"!]
Designer clothes, five properties - and £20,000 debt
Lucy Ward, social affairs correspondent Tuesday April 5, 2005 Guardian
Boasting "designery" suits and an expensive haircut habit, not to mention a Paris flat and several London properties, New Statesman arts editor Rosie Millard has all the trappings - and more - of middle-class comfort.
But, in exchange for her agreeable lifestyle, the former BBC arts correspondent and mother of four has racked up a far less enviable £20,000 on her credit cards plus hundreds of thousands outstanding on five mortgages - prompting her to out herself this week as a member of a growing breed of heavily indebted "impoverished professionals".
Ms Millard, confessing not only to multiple credit cards straining at their limits but also to a frozen current account (a plight shared by her TV producer husband Pip Clothier), declared her family's situation a prime example of middle-class debt - a trend spreading slowly and surely among British consumers.
Despite two professional incomes, she revealed in her Sunday Times column, the household survives financially by juggling increasing debts round interest-free credit cards.
She wrote: "On paper my husband and I are what is known in polite parlance as 'comfortably off'. In reality, we have no money.
"Anything that comes into Chez Millard goes out pretty much immediately in debt repayment. That, and paying the nanny so we can both go out to work and earn more money. For more debt repayment. An Impoverished Professional I call myself. And there are plenty of us out there."
In tackling the problem she had managed to cut back on black cabs but was still reluctant to give up expensive clothes, Stila make-up and "a decent haircut every eight weeks". Ms Millard, whose £800 gown worn to report on the Oscars was dubbed "best supporting dress" by her BBC colleague Michael Buerk, added: "As I say to my bank manager (whose number is naturally on my direct dial), if you want to keep working, you have to keep looking the part." ...
An unapologetic Ms Millard yesterday told the Guardian a flood of calls from friends and media proved her debt revelations had "struck a chord".
But she argued that, while her family's debts were "horrendous", the equity in her two London houses and two flats, plus the "fabulously chic" flat in Paris she rents to tourists, easily outstripped the money owed. It was because she was "pretty happy with risk" that she had invested early on in a big house in the capital which had risen in value and enabled her to have the family and life she wanted, she said, adding that she would make the same decisions again. ...
<http://money.guardian.co.uk/creditanddebt/story/0,1456,1452396,00.html>
Carl