To be so angry sorting out my parents stuff

When I say additional pension I mean in addition to the state pension.

I’ve been paying into my employer, fully funded pension since I was 26. Current retirees get a final salary pension worth £30k a year (on top of state). My projected output from the very same scheme (no longer final salary for me, of course), is around £10k or less per year, and my projected retirement date to get that is 70 IF I contribute for the entire rest of that time.

A £400 teachers’ pension per month on top of the state pension is actually very good!

All of this is not “boomer bashing”. It’s by way of trying to correct some of these cultural myths that circulate about different generations and the economic imbalances between them. It’s a fact that the big boomer voting bloc and cultural dominance for the last 40 years has led to a lot of mythologising that isn’t borne out by the facts.

Very good advice. When my Dad died it helped enormously that he and my Mum have always kept their filing in excellent order. They have also kept their financial affairs very simple, which was a bonus.

Went to uni in the early 90s from a poor background and had to work 3 jobs????
Not buying it.

Went to uni in the early 90s from a not-poor backgound but with parents who refused to contribute.
Does no-one actually read any more?

Went to uni in the early 90s from a poor background and had to work 3 jobs????
Not buying it.

🚨🚨Public service announcement 🚨🚨
Whatever your opinion on physical possessions, there are a few things we can and should all do right now. Because tomorrow we could get hit by a bus. Make sure you list all bank and savings accounts, pensions, life insurance. Ideally go one step further with phone log ins (lots in the news about families being unable to access phones of the deceased), have Facebook set up with your nominated person. There's probably a load more but that's the list off the top of my head. We would have been absolutely up the creek when DF died if he hadn't left a spreadsheet. He was forever opening new ISAs to get the best rates and we have to deal with 23 accounts (none with much in them, but that's a different matter!).

I’m finding this thread sad for so many reasons now.

First and foremost because of the difficult time OP has been having.

But also how some really interesting and engaging insights have just descended into the inevitable “boomer bashing” (I feel I have to add a disclaimer that I am a late Gen X).

And probably my lasting takeaway is sadness at how some (not OP) seem to HUGELY resent their late parents having spent any of their own money, and others equally resent their parents having saved money!

I discussed it with my older teens this evening and was at least slightly heartened that they were also shocked. It has made me think that perhaps the thing to do is not to just leave everything to one’s kids, but instead to get it all cleanly executed by solicitor. Kids get a nice round lump sum each of a few hundred thousand. Solicitor arranges a house clearance. Anything left in the estate goes to charity. That way kids don’t have to decide if they should keep things or sell them, nor whether there is a fair division of labour between them, nor make judgements about why their DF bought himself a mountain bike in 2030 rather than adding another £5k onto their house deposit.

Maybe you aren't as self centered and heartless as OP's parents. Though from your post, you seem pretty heartless to me.

Sorry OP, but you seem to have a MAJOR chip on your shoulder! We are all a product of our upbringing, and if you have kids of your own doubtless they will have their own reasons for thinking you were a crap parent. Stop feeling sorry for yourself, and move on. Life is too short for all this.

Oh you’ve not heard what she’s been saying then?

Good for her! I am taking from this thread that I need to start doing a bit of this. Music to my husband's ears. He is Mr Minimalist, so there's not much chance of our house ending up overly cluttered.

I feel I should warn anyone thinking of dating a 50 something Manchild with the sun shining out his arse to run away.

I would like to extend that to two manchildren with the sun shining out of their arses. OP, pm me if you want to swap stories!

Additional pension? Before my Dad died, that was most of her pension. She also got the basic state pension which was a pitiful amount in her case. My Dad worked in the private sector and did not have a final salary pension scheme. Fortunately he did have SERPS, an enhanced state pension entitlement which I don't think exists any more. Final salary pension schemes were far from universal and often made up for very poor salaries. My Dad didn't have much of a salary either, but fortunately he and my Mum made a little go a long way and have been OK in retirement.

My mother, who was 90 this month, has spent the last year decluttering. She is eminently practical and I am so thankful for that. I look at my home and it looks like a hoarder's paradise by comparison - I need to learn from her example.

Op, it's one of the shittest jobs. Sorry you are having to do it.

Can you get a company in to do it when you've removed what you want to?

One woman's hoarding is another's treasure trove
Or in the case of Eddy and Ruth Frow who had to have their floorboards strengthened because of the weight of their 'junk' a Museum, the Working Class Museum in Salford.

This post just proves our point! Retiring mid-50s, £400 a month additional pension - but these are all things teachers would absolutely love to have today! Many good employer scheme pensions now will likely pay out not much more then this for a full working life of contributions. Teaching is still thought of exactly the same by the way, if anything lower in status - requires a degree and big amounts of student debt just to start out, and workload and hours are massively more than in your mum’s day. The young teachers at DD’s primary school were easily working 60 hours a week or more.

I agree those were better times. I wish we had arrangements like that in place now. What baffles me is how we got to where we are now, and the only answer I can come up with is greed and stupidity. You can't get something for nothing. Back in the 80s the Tories told people that public spending was far too high and that essential services could still be delivered to a good standard on far lower taxes, because the cuts would just get rid of waste and inefficiency. Not true, and we are still suffering the results of that now. But at every election we see people who are desperate for more disposable income and one obvious way is if they pay less tax. Add in distrust of the government and other public bodies and of course any party offering low taxes will do well.

The other thing Thatcher and her cronies did which has been hugely damaging is (a) enabling council house tenants to buy their homes at huge discounts but forbidding councils to use the proceeds to build replacement housing; and (b) taking away the safeguards around mortgage lending. Most people were only able to buy homes if they got a mortgage, and they could only borrow a maximum of 90% of the purchase price and a maximum of 3 times the male salary. Latterly married couples were able to borrow 2.5 times joint income or 3 times higher income + 1 x the lower income, and single women were finally able to borrow on the same terms as men. When those controls were removed and building societies started converting to banks and lending 100% of the price or even more, interest-only mortgages and so on, house prices went through the roof. An incredibly short-sighted policy.

People of all ages voted for these measures.

"could expect decent private and state pensions"
Yes, @Juliagreeneyes Both my dad and step dad had index linked private pensions, a rarity these days.

Feeling for you OP; I cleared my parents 4 bed house a couple of years ago when mum died and dad bought a retirement flat.
I also have a brother who bowed out of family life over 15 years ago leaving my parents heartbroken; the last time I visited my mother in hospital she called me by his name.
I’m angry about so many things; I was adopted and golden boy was theirs. He hated me and made my life a misery and they did nothing etc etc.
But. It’s done. Mum’s dead and dad’s 95. I never have to see my brother again. So I’m not forgiving anything but I am moving on. because I can’t change anything and hanging on to those feelings just wastes my energy.

All perfectly true, I'm sure. Here are some things that are also true:

Very low salaries, leading to teaching and most branches of health care being increasingly seen as low-status professions, especially when female-dominated. The saving grace, of course, was that they had very good pension schemes in place, but you only got that if you worked for decades at the low salary. Many women who left to get married or on pregnancy asked for their pension contributions back and got them, so lost their contribution record for those years. My Mum trained as a teacher in the early 1950s and worked full-time for several years before I was born, then supply teaching on and off for a few years while my brother and I were little, then back to a part-time post and finally full-time again for over a decade, until she retired in her mid 50s through a redundancy scheme. Her teachers' pension is the princely sum of £326.38 per month. Rolling in it!

The accommodation provided came with stringent conditions about not having male callers and all sorts of other infantilising rules which the nurses of the 1960s and 70s rebelled against. That was one reason it stopped being provided. Another was the financial cutbacks after Thatcher was elected. The NHS sold off the accommodation to get money for essential capital investment and running costs elsewhere.

It's probably not universal, but where a field visit or placement is complsory because it's essential to a course many institutions either cover the cost through the fees or have a bursary, scholarship or hardship fund in place to help students who would struggle with the costs. This was certainly the case in the London medical school where I worked a few years ago and for the course my son did more recently.

Either side of the war ! The War was 1939 to 1945 so they were born late 1930s and 1945 +

Try and remember your mum the way you were thinking before the clearance. It doesn’t seem you are annoyed about anything wrong that she did but more that you are grieving

OP is angry because of the huge favouritism shown her brother.

Hi op,

Try and remember your mum the way you were thinking before the clearance. It doesn’t seem you are annoyed about anything wrong that she did but more that you are grieving. Death of near relatives does make one think over their own life.

My condoleances op 🌺

I hear you, OP! Just the house clearance alone is horrendous. It costs literally thousands to get my DF's house ready for sale - and he wasn't even dead! The tipping fees alone were enormous. I'm not over it yet. I tried to watch the comedy "Only Child" today. It's too soon. It may always be too soon!

Yes, I'd be interested to know what's actually been said to him about this and how he responded.