To feel resentment that my parents are so well off

I know houses are, in lots of places, ridiculously expensive but what makes it even harder for a lot of people to save a deposit is that they rent while trying to save and rents are expensive in a lot of areas.

Of course not everyone can live with their parents while saving a deposit but lots more could than do.

Someone has probably already said this in the thread but houses used to cost 2-3 times annual earnings 50 years ago, now they are 7-9 times.

My parents bought a house in the 70s for basically nothing, then sized up in 1995 to a 4 bed that cost 65k & that house is now worth about 600k. In the South East.

They earned 25-30k between them. We earn 3x that and are the same age as they were in 1995. No way we could afford the deposit necessary for the 600k house. We would probably need 250k cash to make the mortgage affordable.

I feel so sorry for people trying to get on the housing ladder nowadays. DH and I only bought our first place 7 years ago with a tiny deposit but I think if we’d have waited any longer we’d still be renting as the prices have shot up. I look at our kids and wonder how they’ll ever manage it. I think we’ll have to help them but we’ve got three and, even with our income, I’m not sure that we could give enough to each of them to help significantly 🤷‍♀️ They’ll just have to wait until we pop our clogs.

Nor mine 😂

You've clearly never met my mother.

That is what they have told us and I don't see why they'd lie 🤔

Why are people saying they need £50/£60K for a deposit. Both my DDs have bought with a much smaller deposit recently, one in the SE.

I do think it's harder though generally these days.

People had to live closer to were they worked though, and they could mostly .I think commuting came in the laye 60's 70, before that you lived right next to where you worked.
My parents also walked everywhere.
Cheap fuel up to early 1970's then it all changed again.

Most millenials and Gen Z don't drink that much. Pubs are half-empty these days, that's why they're closing at a huge rate of knots.

If you're on a low to average wage and trying to save for a deposit that's upwards of £60K, and you can't live at home with your parents to save money (I couldn't - lots of parents can't afford their offspring at home rent-free indefinitely either) then no matter how much you stay in eating beans on toast, that deposit just ain't gonna happen.

The baby boom generation just got really, really lucky. Unless something huge happens - like a world war - that creates a massive reset of society, it's unlikely the (comparatively) easy access to jobs, houses and wealth creation they enjoyed will ever happen again.

I feel similar irritation with my own parents. They think the million pound house, the generous pension, the lack of debt etc is down to 'working hard'. I work hard, full time in a professional role, have qualifications coming out of my ears, and still can't afford anywhere near the lavish lifestyle and holidays they enjoyed. And I've got debt and several pensions that won't do much more than keep the wolf from the door. It is what it is, though.

This is the problem...the basics are just so expensive now that reducing luxuries barely makes a dent.

It will never happen, you'll be mugged for theh coffee money in Croydon.

Of course its relative but not everybody is out on the piss every weekend and fortunate enough to live with their parents to save. That in itself is lucky! If I saved for 20 years I'd still not have enough. This is the point people are trying to make. I don't doubt people have worked hard but you can't deny we have to work even harder to have a fraction of the things boomers benefitted from.
I too work a second job alongside full-time in the NHS. I don't go out drinking. I don't smoke. I pay £1500 to a landlord without bills. Life is expensive for basics.

I think the poster has a point. It’s not just the coffees. When we first bought in the late 1970’s we had saved for the deposit for just under five years. Lived with parents to keep costs down, worked every bit of available overtime. I worked evenings in the local pub and my DH picked up mini shifts at a local factory a few evenings a week. Every other night was spent in - helping around the house, watching telly, playing board games. If the weather was good, going for a walk, walking the dog etc. We literally saved every penny we could. I’m afraid that from what I’ve seen with friends and family the idea of ‘saving for a deposit’ is very different these days. People seem to think that a night out every week won’t do any harm but the fact is that it costs a fortune when you add in the obligatory cocktails and taxi rides to and from which seem to be essential these days. People seem to forget that everything is relative to the time in which you live.

Tell me you know nothing about the role of NHS community workers without telling me🤣. The equipment I carry fills a whole car boot never mind one case. Jesus christ.

And when my mum started her hairdressing apprenticeship that’s exactly what she did. Walked to the other end of the village to the bus stop, two buses, a ferry ride and another bus at the other end. I worked with a girl in the early 1980s who did a similar thing in reverse. Every day. Six days a week. Bore off seems to be the standard phrase on MN when you don’t want to hear a truth that doesn’t fit your narrative. How is it clueless when you’ve actually lived it ?

Yes so multiply that by 24 to get your deposit (which even then probably might not be ebough)...24 years. So for me I'd be 58. Yes, it's definitely the coffee that's the problem🤣

Oh bore off.

I live twenty miles from my work. To get there by public transport I would need to walk a mile to a bus stop. Catch a bus to a different town, change buses at the bus stop, catch a bus to a village, then walk a mile along a busy A road with no pavements. And I'd be late every day because the buses don't even run early enough to make this possible.

My husband travels all over the country for his job.

It's comments like yours that prove my original point though, so thanks for that. You are utterly clueless.

Only at today's prices though. Won't work if property keeps going up

Excellent suggestion. In just 150 years you'll be able to buy a whole studio flat in Croydon!

Anyway, the AIBU was AIBU unreasonable to resent that my parents are so well off ?

IMO you should resent the successive governments that have led to the country being in such a state that has led to this. Not your parents who simply have played the game as best they could (and probably had a fair amount of luck in the process).

And probably at least be happy that you have a chance in the future that you might inherit their wealth to continue the cycle with you and your own children, which is a lot more of a chance than some others have.

We had to buy a house 45 miles from where we both worked because we could not afford to live any closer.

Me and DH used to travel together by car even though he started work two and a half hours earlier than me. We could never have afforded 2 cars nor for one of us to get the train. Not long after we got our first house the mortgage rate went up and up and up and up. We were living on beans on toast in order to pay the mortgage.

Of course some people today are hard up but many are not. My neighbour moans and groans about what a struggle it is to pay his rent, bills etc. He buys 4 energy drinks a day! How much is that costing him? He also smokes. Maybe stop wasting money on completely unnecessary things that may well kill you and you could afford your bills

It's not about "having the last word" really. Just pointing out what you're saying is a generalisation that I haven't seen. And my parents FWIW didn't need to replace everything as my gran had only lived in the bungalow she left for about 4 years. She was an amazing woman who moved house at the age of 91, and then put in a new kitchen and bathroom at that point. So all was good and pretty new just not to their taste.
In-laws wanted to make their house bigger so knocked through into garage and re-did whole of downstairs.
This is all fair enough. They all love their homes now which is great. But you can't claim that retirees don't waste money on "unnecessary" new kitchens etc and it must be the younger crowd. There just isn't any evidence for that statement.

Don't be an envious prat. Life has always hard for the majority of the population throughout history. Your parents grew up in an unusual period of economic growth because wwii devastated the continent. Prosperity was also fueled by enormous leaps in productivity owing to technology advances.
But now we are back to business as usual.