Two car leases at $1,000 a month? Large mortgage at high interest rate plus house bills, £3,000? Student loans at another $1,000 a month. Credit card and other debt at $1,000 a month? Groceries and eating out $1,000? Perfectly doable, I should think, given what gets put in case studies.
But what you just listed added up to $8,000 a month. So they would be putting away an extra $2,000 every month, which would mean they are not going into debt.
These people are literally at a point where they can't pay there mortgage, so you would assume they are at least spending more than $3,000 a month over what you are stating AND we have been told they do not live a lavish lifestyle and spend $0 on daycare. I'm just wondering maybe their income isn't as they say or there are hidden debts we are unaware of.
Target/Walmart, clothes, shopping as boredom -- easy to drop $1K/mo and not even know where it went (when I lost weight and needed an entire new work wardrobe, one trip to WHBM cost me $600 -- and that covered clothes for about a week). Department store makeup, $200/pop. Salon - regular hair/nails/etc, $200/mo. If you shop at WF or the like, $1K/mo for groceries/eating out is low. Starbucks every morning, lunch out every day -- $400/mo. Home Depot/Lowe's runs, Bed Bath and Beyond for trinkets, another couple hundred bucks a month. Kid activities and clothes, allowances, toys, another $2-400 each month. Full cable/internet package $300, phones for everyone another $300. Prime/Netflix/Hulu, grocery delivery, other subscriptions call it $50/mo. Lawn care and cleaners, $500/mo.+ Two annual vacations with no travel hacking or deal-shopping, average $1K/mo. (airfare with kids, 2-Br place; skiing would be more with gear rentals and new clothes for kids every year). Fun weekend activities like movies and festivals -- $500/mo. Gym memberships ($200/mo). Hobby toys (fancy mountain bikes that are used 2x/yr, jet skis/boat, tennis equipment, golf gear, all of the requisite clothes to go with + costs of access to course/courts, cost of boat slip, maintenance of equipment, etc.). Jewelry. Etc. etc. etc. It's really, really easy to fritter away a $200K salary without even noticing it -- or without even feeling like it's a luxurious lifestyle (if your neighbors are going to the Caribbean and you "just" go to Disney, say).
When DH and I married, we made $180K combined -- between me changing jobs with a significant pay bump and adding two incomes, I more than doubled my income from the year before, and suddenly had more money than I ever dreamed of. Imagine my surprise to discover that with that huge salary, we could afford "only" a townhouse. We still drove 4-5 yr old regular cars that were paid off, and most of our vacations were local or to visit family (though one of those was skiing with my dad). Yes, we did save, but no more than maxing out our 401(k)s and putting a little more aside post-tax for EF, car replacement, etc. Other than that, we managed to spend every penny on completely un-memorable things like Home Depot, eating out, going to the movies, the occasional weekend at a B&B, etc. It was never tight, but boy, it sure didn't feel as luxurious as I had expected -- we really couldn't figure out how the people in the big houses across the way could afford them, or who these people were in Conde Nast Traveler who could afford $500/nt hotels on vacation.
I think this is the fundamental problem with our televised consumerism: you make something like $200K/yr and you think now you're rich, and that means you get the big house AND the car AND the fancy vacations AND the maid/gardener AND eating out all the time AND the clothes/jewelry/shoes AND private school AND AND AND. But that lifestyle is a $500K/yr+ lifestyle, not a $200K/yr lifestyle. So if you are focusing more on what you think you "should" have than on what you actually earn, you can set yourself up in a lifestyle that you really can't afford long-term.