Just feeling disillusioned today

[GotMooMilk]

Preface this with I love my parents to bits.
My dad is staying and we have been chatting about various stuff. They have done well (good professional jobs) and have a home worth £2m+ and are due to come into a decent whack of inheritance soon from my grandmother (she is 95 so without being callous this is likely, and very rich). Parents have lots of holiday and have retired early (good for them!). Just got a new car, always having home improvements- basically a very privileged life through hard work and circumstance.
DH and I have similar jobs but earn a lot less, have a big mortgage and 2 small kids. I wasn’t complaining but dad asked why our roof was leaking (big damp patch) when we were going to sort the floors, why don’t we have a log burner etc. I explained we can’t afford it atm- mortgage interest rate has just gone up, kids in childcare. We are madly saving to sort the roof before winter but not quite there (DH has patched up for now).
I feel like I’ll never get there. they never have to wait to do home stuff, can afford it easily in cash. Our car is 15 years old but we can’t afford to replace. Grandma has left all money divided between her 2 kids so we won’t get any (which is fine obviously!) but we are struggling. I can’t see a situation where I was incredibly wealthy and didn’t help out my kids with basic things so they and my grandkids could be warm in winter. This isn’t a boomer bashing thread- lots of friends parents are very generous. My parents are lovely so I hate feeling like this, they don’t owe me anything, I need to stand on my own feed etc I know that’s what everyone will say. But life’s hard and it’s frustrating.

I can't understand why any parents would want to see their children struggling while they had more money than they could spend. It's weird.

My parents have basically given us an early inheritance to minimise IHT. It's come in so useful. They wanted to do it.

I cannot understand parents like yours. I'm sorry you're feeling the way you are and I don't think it's unreasonable to hope your parents might help out especially if they have plenty of money themselves.

Everything DH and I have accumulated is for our children. We intend to give the vast majority to them when we're in our 60s to minimise IHT. We're not into buying stuff however, don't care about cars, expensive things, luxury lifestyle etc etc.

I see our wealth as family money, not just mine and DHs.

I feel the same way. We've recently inherited a fairly substantial sum, which would enable us to bring forward our retirement to our early fifties. I'd love this, but there is no chance we will do it, knowing that our children may face housing insecurity and will be lucky to have any retirement at all. I'm sure we will 'enjoy' a bit of it, but we want to share it with our children once they are old enough to use it meaningfully and responsibly.

I totally understand where you are OP, I probably wouldn’t ask either.

No real advice but everyone saying ‘you’ll inherit one day’ aren’t being realistic, if parents end up needing care, that money will be gone anyway. What matters is now and I’d help my kids if I could.

@pastaandpesto I feel sorry for the younger generation. Uni fees, housing costs, wage stagnation, and now higher interest rates when DH and I benefitted from low interest rates for over a decade, free uni, a house on 3x one salary. I intend to pass as much as possible to the kids when they're older, they're teenagers atm.