To be depressed about my financial situation compared to my neighbors

How do you know what you will and will not achieve in 20 years. It's irrelevant what this family have achieved, you do not know what they did along the way to achieve a comfortable life. There will have been many other families born at the same time who chose a different path.

One thing I can tell you is nothing comes without a sacrifice somewhere else. People think my husband and I have an easy life as it certainly appears that way looking at us today my husband is a consultant surgeon and I own a third of a mid sized architectural practice, with 5 girls all privately educated. However we were the ones who spent their 20s studying rather than earning money, I was the one who took the risk at 28 to borrow significant amounts to Co found our practice. We are the ones who lived below our means in our early 30s, purchased a house that required large amounts of work and had to live without heating for 2 years, we were the ones who delayed having children and we are now reaping the rewards.

The way to reap the rewards in your 50s is to take the risks in your 20s and 30s. If doesn't just happen whatever it looks like from the outside.

So you were nosey enough to look them up on companies house, and now you're angry at them for making money being landlords, even though you wouldn't want to be a landlord because it's stressful.... what are you actually annoyed at? That they took a risk with their money doing something too stressful for you to consider and it paid off??

Are you dense or just ageist? Must remind all my friends here in Barnsley how well their parents had it in the 80s when their dads were striking and they didn’t have a pot to piss in for months. The only thing they did have were their homes, which they scrimped and fucking scraped to keep hold of if luck had it that family could help. When Christmas 1984 my in laws couldn’t afford to buy their two children any presents and had to have Christmas dinner at the WMC with alllll the other striking miners and their families. Oh they must have been dripping in welfare payments though, oh no that’s right, there wasn’t any. Then look at all the other broken up and ruined industries, primarily across the north. Where they shut down pits and closed down the steel works leaving hundreds of thousands of men destitute, often killing themselves because they couldn’t feed their families, they built fucking call centres and those men, whose only experience of work was hard labour from 14 years old, were expected to retrain, mostly, at their own cost but those men and those women who supported them forged on, they surmounted the massive mortgage fees of the 90’s by sacrificing a comfortable life, they paid tax on earnings so future generations could receive benefits should they need them. So, boo fucking hoo if they are now reaping the benefits of their hard work and sacrifice. The North was fucking decimated when those Northern Boomers were raising their families and I hope they prosper forever more.

Life isn't fair - I get that it's frustrating but it's just the way things are. The only thing you can control is your own actions e.g. can you put money into savings/investments every month for your own DC so you could say least give them help with a deposit when the time comes?
Some people are born into wealth and inherit from parents/ grandparents, some are just lucky in life financially. Unfortunately, I'm neither 😅 but I'm blessed in other ways and I'm doing ok financially.

Baffling isn’t it

Two months ago a young member of my family died very suddenly and in horrific circumstances, when something like that happens money, property, getting and spending seem pointless and trivial. All I want is to stop the pain we are going through, to see my family member again and for none of it to have happened. In the end, especially an ending like this all that matters is love and supporting each other. It is very corny to say "count your blessings" and "live in the moment" but there is morsel of truth in corny cliches. Yes, money is important, we need it to live and to enjoy many aspects of life but don't let the envy of those who have more than you cloud your views of what really matters. My relative is gone, I will never see them again, never speak to them again and we are floundering around trying to negotiate this new and unwanted reality.

Is giving your children future ‘security’ a thing now? I don’t know many people who’ve inherited a £1.4m property portfolio, in fact most people I know are fortunate if they inherit a simple two up, two down. And that’s if all the money isn’t spent on care fees.

I won’t inherit anything but I have a great career and a very comfortable life. My parents gave me a happy childhood and a good work ethic. I certainly don’t need them to provide for my future security. I find that a really odd concept.

So you aren’t prepared to take the risk and hard work, but are jealous of the outcome??

Jeez. My wage is not even £10,000. I sometimes struggle at the end of the month to afford food for myself and I love month to month. Think yourself lucky.

OP could look if it from another perspective.

Being 20 years younger and with an income of £140k, invest half of it.

By the time she’s the same age as her neighbour she’ll have £3M.

So, you're jealous of your neighbour's property portfolio but don't want to own investment properties yourself. You earn way above average wages. You're buying your own home. What on earth is the problem? You just want more? So what are you doing to help yourself get more? And when you have more, what next? Even more?

Stop comparing yourself to others. Unless you're Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk, someone always has more than you. Being jealous is hurting only one person, and it's not your neighbour.

This is why I never talk about money with anyone (including some family members) as there are jealous people out there. Tell them nowt.

It's the luck of when you're born.

I mean, you could have been born 200 years ago working 80 hours in a mill for enough money to buy a sack of potatoes a week so be glad you were born when you were!

First post nailed it. In the 80's/90's the financial advice was to put your money into property in order to retire with a half decent pension. It was also the time when mortgage interest rates were around the 10% + mark. Every generation has their peaks and troughs. (In the 70's, Labour managed to push the higher tax rate up to 90% for top earners). Look at what your generation may excel with. I am learning how to trade stocks and shares in my mid 50's. It's a great way to earn a good return, if you take a bit of time to understand how it all works. My DC are trading and have helped me learn. At their age, we were all ploughing money into property, and most of our parents didn't have a pot to piss in as we grew up. Bitterness will eat you up if you let it.

Get a grip op. When you drop dead, your children will remember good memories and love, not how many houses you bought them.

Rather than being unreasonably disgusted by people who have built a business and improved their financial position, why aren't you doing similarly? Move house, convert your current mortgage to BTL, and take it from there.

the grass isn’t always greener on the other side. My next door neighbor is wealthier than me but I wouldn’t be swapping positions for the sake of wealth. Enjoy what you have and stop being so envious of others.if you spend your time looking at others and what they have you won’t be able to enjoy what you have. You already live with more than what some have.

I understand where you are coming from. Envy is not pleasant and it can feel a bit shameful to experience it when you know you are in a comparatively decent financial position. It’s good to get it out and voice it here when it might be hard to do so in real life. I think the tricky thing is that even if you had what this lady has, there likely would be similar feelings of envy but for something else. It’d be worth reflecting on what might be at the root of it all. Is it worrying you that you’re not doing enough as a parent? Are you worrying a lot about the future that awaits your kids? There’s a lot we can’t control and for me it’s helpful to focus on the here and now. My DH and I have a lot less than you but I’m hoping we will equip our DD with the tools that she will be able to make a decent life for herself. Who knows what’s round the corner. Maybe one day I’ll become a millionaire but at the moment am trying to make the best of each day. You need to shake off that envy as it will get in the way of enjoying life when you are in privileged position. Good luck.

Or then came the crash and lots of lenders collapsed or needed bailouts due to unregulated mortgages that they were selling to heavy adverse customers on IO self cert basis, it was a house of cards destined to collapse

Your neighbours could walk out onto a road next week and get wiped out by a bus. The money they've accumulated would be irrelevant then.

OP, you are focused on one aspect of your neighbour's life. Step back and take a broader view.

I'm a similar age to your neighbour. When I started work there was no pay equality. Unmarried mothers in my small village were shunned. Ditto divorced women.

When i got married we were advised to take out an equity mortgage. Well... that went badly wrong for many people.

When we had children I had max 18 weeks maternity leave. Was back at work when dc was 3 months. All childcare was paid for out of taxed income.

I'm not complaining, I understand how hard it is now for many people to get on the housing ladder. But it wasn't all honey and roses for me.

@bjkhilg890no this was the early 2000s up until around 2010. I was on a normal public sector salary. I used to save £10k for a deposit and then take out an interest only mortgage as a self cert.

I was single when I started so didn’t have huge outgoings. Made hay while the sun shone. And then along came George Osborne who put the kibosh on it all.

Listen, I get it. I wish I was rich AF and could do what I want, when I want with money being no obstacle. But I also know I’m not poor, I’m happy and it’s really not something to think about enough to make a post about. So you’re basically well off but not well off enough? Say that out loud and you may re think your post!

Why won't you be able to help your children? My DH and I are a similar age to you, earn quite a bit less than you - joint income around 95k, and we will definitely be able to help our children - we are saving 2k per year for each of our girls in a high interest account since birth, so each will have a house deposit of around 50k depending on interest. Which I a appreciate puts them in a very privileged position. With an income significantly higher than us you could chose to do similar depending on how many children you have?