Boomer parents who don't help their children

♥️ What a lovely idea.

Absolutely, my DC don't ask me for things. I offer because I have a lot more than them and I can still remember having to count every penny when they were small. I remember crying because I had taken a year off maternity after first 2 DC and I could only afford 4 months after youngest DC. I felt like the worst Mum and vowed then I would make it up to my youngest ds when he was older. I was able to do that by gifting him £55k towards house deposit to add to his own savings for deposit so he could afford to live locally and was not forced to go further afield in search of a cheaper home.

Well your parents just sound absolutely awful don’t they. Hope you have gone NC with them. How despicable for you that you had to have boomer parents. I hope you let them know in no uncertain terms how disgusted you are with them and their sort.

I wish!

My mother was widowed in 1966 with 2 children aged 3 and 12. She had a mortgage she had to pay (once she was 'allowed' to open a bank account) two jobs on the go (no real childcare then. I got a free place at the local nursery and all the Sahms thought that was appalling. How dare she when they had to pay. )two kids both of us having medical issues and the terror of the married neighbours thinking she was going to steal their dull and unpleasant husbands! That makes me a 'boomer'.

I was deeply affected by all of the above and grew up in the 80s and 90s when things were not easy at all. Women had few rights and, remember, marital rape was legal until the early 1990s. The only real way I have 'had it easy'was getting social housing in the late 1990s - we somehow got a big three bed (second h) with one child and pregnant with the second. This would never happen now and I hate that for my kids and grankids generations.
It doesn't stop a huge majority of us 60s kids being compassionate, and absolutely not multi fucking millionaires.
And if I ever have a bit of spare money, of course I help my children. I wish I had more for them
Maybe I should been more together and 'grabby' but me and my h and most of my friends are in no way what we are painted as. It's sickening to read the nastiness

This is very true. I’m a ‘boomer’ but was brought up working class on a council estate. I had to work from age 16, giving my mum a good chunk of my weekly wage, none of that secretly putting it away for me that so many MNers who are not boomers seem able to do. We didn’t have a car and our holidays were one, wet, week a year in a caravan, usually only a couple of hours train ride from where we lived. On MN posters who are not boomers seem to be on high salaries with husbands also on high salaries, two cars, holidays abroad every year, can afford cleaners and gardeners, (when I was growing up only the very wealthy and Royalty had those), and have children at private school. If MN is anything to go by they are doing very well for themselves indeed. But they are no more representative of of their generation than some ‘Boomers’ are to theirs. Most of us are just ordinary people.

It was there for the taking if you were born between 1959-1964 so what did you do wrong do you think?

In 1978 I was home with my boomer parent mother, who didn’t have to work, because my dad’s working class blue collar job was enough to cover the cost of a semi detached house back then, even though he had zero qualifications and a low stress job, when they were in their early 20s.

What does this mean?

YABU for being annoyed she won't gift you some now to avoid inheritance tax. I wonder if she's planning to leave everything to her boyfriend anyway?

Not just Boomers, I would guess. Parents (of adult children) don’t have to give money to their adult children.

Nice if they do, their choice if they don’t. 🤷‍♀️

Every single thread with ‘boomer’ in the title never has anything good to say. The term is always used in the most disparaging way to dismiss an entire swathe of people who just happened to be born within a particular time frame. All using £50 notes to wipe their arses. Yes, things are harder now, but a large percentage of the baby boom generation endured terrible poverty that young people now could barely even imagine, and many are only marginally better off now. Why does everyone focus on the ones who ended up wealthy? Maybe because this site is overwhelmingly middle class. And as for passing on their vast riches, some people are incredibly generous and others are absolute misers. That has nothing to do with what year they were born and more to do with their personalities.

I’m guessing they’re not millionaires but if they were and you hit hard times you’d be ok if they just left you to get on with it, even though they could give you a helping hand?

Urgh I hate peoples responses on this thread. Of COURSE if you have the means, you help out your children.

I’ve had the same from my parents. I’ve been homeless so you can’t get much lower. A good example I used to privately rent ,had to move all the time, my parents hobby is checking out house prices. So I’ve been made to stand at endless estate agents windows in my area whilst they check out the housing market and point out beautiful homes……at the same time that I was being evicted and had nowhere to go.

is there anyway you can help SIL? Just a little would go a long way? If it was me I’d put an envelope of cash through her front door anonymously so she’s got some money for heating and stocking presents this winter.

I’ll add that to took more than 27 yrs to pay off the mortgage and the extension took all my savings.

Enormous wealth?

Possibly in upper middle class circles. Not for those from working class backgrounds.

My 2 bed house cost 22k in ‘86. I built on accessible accommodation for Mum.

I’ll be lucky to get 150k for it when it’s sold to pay my care fees (assuming I don’t do my cousins’ kids a favour and kick the bucket before I need to go into a care home.)

My furniture is nearly all second-hand. I’m hoping to replace my carpets at some point - they were here when I moved in.

My dad was a coal miner. I taught for a living.

My parents helped me go to university. That was their contribution to my adulthood. After that, it’s been up to me to make my own way. I don’t have a problem with that.

Just responding to.part of this to say it is not at all unusual to work full time with very young children, as I and many others do

I wouldn’t have it in me to watch my child struggle as a grown up with something that I could help with, be that time/money/skills. When we brought our first house we were short of £4000 on our deposit due to the mortgage deal expiring, one set of parents gave us the money because they didn’t want us to lose the house.
Another parent who didn’t have spare cash helped renovate it when they weren’t at work as it needed a new bathroom, plastering etc When we had our first child another parent had our child one day a week to save us nursery fees etc
I never had to ask for any help, it was volunteered by the people that cared about us when we needed it.
No one is entitled to funds from anyone else, however you would need to be a pretty selfish person to be wealthy enough for multiple holidays and know that your child can’t afford to heat the house for themselves/your grandchildren and not offer help.
My Grandmother always used to say that people who accumulated great wealth were tight fisted , that poorer people were usually more charitable.
She grew up in poverty and raised her own children as a widow and said it was always the neighbours that had little to spare that would offer to help and not the ones who could easily spare it.

On the face of it, it sounds as if the MIL is very mean and thoughtless

Wind your long neck in from your mil's business. Greedy mare!

I recently read this article on Substack and found it quite interesting. (The writer is in favour of families working together as a unit across the generations i.e. has a multi-generational attitude to financial planning.)

Young adults are poor despite every metric that suggests otherwise
(It also discusses an article from The Cut on this topic: It's Hard To See My Parents Living So Lavishly)

"I think that Millennials and Zoomers are not doing fine. In fact, I think there have been structural changes to our economy and society which clearly explain why these cohorts are failing to move through the five pillars of a stable middle-class existence: education, stable employment, marriage, homeownership, children." (Emphasis mine.)

I think this is quite insightful and is core to the generational divide. I think that the five pillars he mentions are very important goals for most people but that younger adults who would normally be starting to tick them off aren't managing to do so, for various economic/structural reasons. Some "boomer" parents interpret as their kids rejecting those very important goals "so why should I give money to my feckless kids". Others interpret it as "so I'd better give my kids some money to get them over the hump!"

I don’t know a single ‘boomer’ in real life who thinks like that. There is a wide range 1946-1964 so maybe it’s the older end of that range. Many people my age (60s) still have kids at uni or kids who are just flying the nest as we had our children later. To paint ‘boomers’ as this one foul group of old people living in the lap of luxury who don’t give a shit about anyone but themselves is offensive and ignorant.

You can't control other people and what they do with their money but MIL sounds awful. I'm amazed you spend time with her. If you've been able to gift and help with deposits and weddings, why would you (or your husband more to the point) allow your sister to go without heating in the winter months. Surely there should be accountability on your husband if you're holding the MIL to account.

You’ll get lots of support for your MIL. But of course she’s being greedy and selfish. I couldn’t let one of my children struggle like that and not treat them occasionally or help out with bills.

Hell I treat my friends sometimes who aren’t as blessed financially as me to the odd meal and social event. Not to patronise them but because I care about them and I know they would treat me if the situations were reversed. As for expecting the struggling daughter to sub her, that’s outrageous and self absorbed.