I’m a middle-class woman living in the Cotswolds – Trump is ruining my life and you’d never guess how: FELICITY BROWN

At the weekend I did the calculations, feverishly prodding at my iPhone calculator. But it was no good. However I jiggled the numbers, there was no way I could afford Paxos this summer.

It was a Sophie’s Choice between that and redoing the kitchen. I’ve needed a new Aga for a while and refuse to compromise on quality. So be it. I just had to break it to the children. I knew they’d be devastated, but that’s the Trump effect. We’re all suffering now.

I know I am tuning the world’s smallest violin, but spare a thought for those of us who rely to some extent on investments – money we’ve saved or inherited and put into share portfolios, from which we sometimes withdraw profits to pay for little luxuries such as holidays, house painting or parties.

Thanks to the devastating effect of US politics on the global markets, we’re all pulling in our horns and steeling ourselves for a few weeks or months of online Asda rather than Ocado.

Last week, as Trump played push-me pull-you with tariffs, share prices globally plummeted. I watched as my portfolio zipped downwards and my mood simultaneously went as low as the Nasdaq.

Would Trump care if he knew the damage he was doing to Middle England? I suspect not. But apparently, over a quarter of Brits invest in the stock market to some degree – many in Isas, into which you can put £20,000 a year and on which any income is tax-free. That’s important in these high-tax times.

And spare a thought for our cousins across the pond – I believe it’s more like two-thirds of Americans who own stocks and shares. They are sure to be watching their investments with dismay.

Last week, as Trump played push-me pull-you with tariffs, share prices globally plummeted. I watched as my portfolio zipped downwards and my mood simultaneously went as low as the Nasdaq (posed by model)

In my case, as a Cotswolds-based single mother of two teenagers at private school, I very much need (OK, ‘need’) that extra income – assuming I’ll usually have a boost of about £40,000 a year.

I work hard running my own interiors company, but the school fees (remember the Government has just slammed VAT on those) are astronomical.

My stone house is beautiful but old, and needs constant attention. I have a housekeeper three times a week to keep the cobwebs at bay and a gardener once a week to manage the flower beds and the lawns, which are already looking overgrown.

My outgoings are eye-watering and that’s without the private club membership, the weekly suppers with girlfriends and the upmarket dating app subscriptions.

So topping up my income from investments is a necessary part of my annual outgoings. It is used partly to fund the week in Greece, and a couple of weeks in

Polzeath, Cornwall, in early July; these being a stalwart given of many private-school families.

One friend down the road was planning to get in a landscape designer to create a walled garden. That is now, she mourns, totally out of the window. ‘Bloody Trump. He’s ruined my summer’

Much as I try not to rely on shares, my income simply doesn’t cover all the costs. Last year my portfolio performed brilliantly, and I used some of the profits to take my teenage daughters to New York as a little extra half-term treat in October as well a week skiing at New Year.

I am not the only one heaving a sigh and pulling in my Gucci belt.

One friend down the road was planning to get in a landscape designer to create a walled garden. That is now, she mourns, totally out of the window. ‘Bloody Trump. He’s ruined my summer.’

It is all the talk at yoga, and there’s a lot of performative ‘Let’s not go out for lunch, I’ll make something’.

One other friend needed (OK, I know) extra cash for a cottage in Salcombe, Devon. ‘It’s desperate for a revamp – it hasn’t been painted in years. The kitchen is decades old.’ She estimates their portfolio has dropped in value by about £50,000.

I was also hoping to throw a birthday party for my 18-year-old in May. There’s no way I can stretch to a marquee on the lawn, never mind the cocktail bar I had in mind. And although some optimistic souls are saying this is a blip and that the markets will have recovered by the summer, I’m not so sure.

You see, if you take your remaining money out when markets are down, you crystalise the losses. That’s just not an option.

The last time this happened was during Covid. Funnily enough, it was easier to rely on my earnings at that time; school fees were discounted (though not by much), and we weren’t allowed to have people in the house. It was just me and the two kids.

I froze or cancelled all my memberships (what was the point?) and we lived a simpler life. Thank goodness Ocado still delivered, but horrendous outgoings on groceries weren’t so shocking when there was little else to spend money on.

It took a good two or three years for my portfolio to recover. The markets are built to grow, so they always do in the end.

For the moment, the only solution seems to be to treat the financial markets like a bad boyfriend (ugh, Trump) and ignore them.

I’m stepping away, hunkering down, and contemplating a world in which I tackle my own housework. That is the next step.

Terrible times indeed.

• Felicity Brown is a pseudonym. Identifying details have been changed. 

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