Have you gifted your children money towards a house deposit and if so, how much.

[Prettypup]

DS is buying a house. We are gifting them 5k towards furniture etc but I do wish we could give more.

We have two children and will gift DD the same when she’s ready.

We have about 65k saved but DH and I don’t have huge pensions and I suspect we’ll need this to be able to finish work a little early if possible.

Part of me thinks that based on our savings 5k seems a bit mean and we should be giving more. What do you think? I’m nervous of giving too much away at the moment. We’ll be able to help DS with one off little helping hands now and again over the year (a food shop, little gifts for their home etc).

We had £30k from my parents but it was inheritance they had. I really wouldn’t compromise yourselves financially to give them more, you won’t recoup it!

You will get a biased view on here as those who gave large amounts will be more than happy to share whereas those who gave 0 won’t bother posting

We gave DD 5K it was what we were comfortable with at this time as we have also just moved into a house needing renovation. Her partners parents didn’t gift anything. Of her peers the most they have been given was 10k and most nothing.

i did save for my dc but not specifically for a house deposit

We lent money to buy their houses (interest free) because we had the money. We would have loved to just give it to them but it's part of our income. It's important to safeguard your financial future too.

Focus on your pension OP and give DS the 'gift' later on of not having to worry about his parent's financial situation. As someone stated, people who have given less will likely not post. In reality, most people I know had around 5-25k of help and those who had considerably more had so due to circumstantial inheritances (only child / childless aunt or uncle / grandparents who made a lot of money through their home and never needed residential care etc.) What you are planning is very generous and I bet he'd also appreciate help with the actual moving in and decorating .

Op at the moment I think that's a very generous amount!.very generous indeed and if you don't over stretch yourselves perhaps you can help out in little bits at other times eg grandchild etc.

My parents are well off and we weren't gifted anything. I actually appreciate that we can say we did everything for ourselves. So don't beat yourselves up if you can't afford to gift anything for your kids, or in OPs case even a smaller gift is very generous

My family haven’t a pot to pee in. i’ve been self sufficient financially from a young age.

I often have to help my dad out so no cash for our house there.

My in-laws are lovely and financially sound but no money from them either. Never even crossed my mind tbh.

Should add…. didn’t expect anything either! We only bought 7 years ago.

@Prettypup i think the £5k is very generous and as a daughter i would not want or be comfortable with my parent giving me any more money that they would need in their retirement. That’s my view.
If you can afford adhoc treats along the way then that would a bonus

@BeaQuiet Do you always react so badly towards people who are not the same as you? DH in particular has been very successful. Neither of us had anything much growing up. I deliberately didn't say the amount we are giving and some people are giving a much bigger percentage of their savings than we have. We just handed over what we had saved for DC. It's obvious some people can do this and others cannot. My overall point was that saving from birth can help out.

We got £5k from my in laws and it allowed us to buy our first home (it was the deposit). Many years later my dad gave us £70k.

I think you have been really generous and he will never forget it.

Didn't cross my mind either! Didn't realise it was "thing" until later on 🤷‍♀️

People give what they are comfortable with whilst (hopefully) making proper provision for old age. I don’t really see why asking others helps as assumedly what you have gifted an appropriate and affordable amount for your personal situation. Or is it a reverse and you feel you weren’t gifted enough!!

I should add we were not gifted anything when buying our first house. It seems to be a trend in current millennials in particular to expect big financial handouts. I’d have been more than happy with some money towards furnishings.

My parents didn't give us a deposit but bought a dining room table and the first big shop after we moved in. DHs parents gave us their sofa.

We'll probably give DS a deposit once he's in a position to buy a house but haven't got a set sum in mind.

In your situation I think £5k is generous. Plus if you find you have spare money you can buy stuff as he decorates etc.

We have a figure in our heads of between £30-£50k each - they are not aware and we will only hand it over if we are satisfied it’s being spent on something we are supportive of - could be spent on surgery, student loan, deposit etc But we will put our own oxygen mask on first and ensure we have plenty for our retirement, including care home fees as we do not wish to burden our dcs with our old age care or our poor financial planning.
I think £5k is very generous based on your savings - do not leave yourself exposed financially - you will not have the ability to rectify the situation.

This is going to be an increasingly common phenomenon.

Less people having children, and those who do having fewer children.

I know of several only children where they are the only child in the extended family. No cousins, unlikely to have any.

Now of course those relatives might decide to spend all their money or give it to the RSPCA - but there’s a chance they won’t and those children will inherit a few properties.

All very odd really!

Don't put yourself in a vulnerable financial position. As someone dealing with parents who have not had luck around finances (long term serious ill health) but also made some daft decisions, my choice would always be for parents to be as sorted as possible because at the moment I'm looking at getting a second mortgage to house one of them and this could have been avoided. I can afford easily to look after myself and my children but trying to support.parents too is much harder. So a £5k gift is lovely but not to your detriment.

@Prettypup

I've seen threads here in the past from women working themselves into the ground when they have adult children living at home contributing nothing financially to the household because they want to give 'the kids a good start' often these 'children ' are earning more than the parent.
Your priority needs to be your own financial security. £5k sounds very generous to me given your circumstances.

I received nothing from my mother because she had nothing to give, nor will I have any inheritances.
I will be able to do a bit more for my son. He had £5k from me last year towards car/insurance and getting kitted out for university but that came from a redundancy payment.
I'm decorating his room at home and buying him a complete set of good quality bedroom furniture which he can take with him when the time comes.
I will have a pension lump sum in a few weeks time and I plan to give him £10k but I need the rest for much needed renovations in my own home and for a small rainy day fund.

It's not as much as some figures quoted on here but it's what I can afford.

5k is generous and helpful. We never got a penny from our families. I'm not complaining - they're wonderful but simply couldn't afford to help.

Not as yet but we will be, it will be a substantial sum, DH intends to split the inheritance he received from his mum between our two DS, they have also saved for when they are ready to buy.

We were given nothing at all towards our house deposit or any associated costs. However, both sets of parents gave around £5k towards our wedding which totally baffled me as the house deposit was a much more important purchase than being able to afford a fancier wedding.

What you need to consider is that they are in a comfortable position if they've been able to afford to buy a house without any parental monetary input. It's hard these days. So don't worry too much.

We will carry on giving and hope we will live for 7 years. I don't think we want the IHT bill on our estate if we die. This would Masi Eng reduce what dc get. Leaving massive sums of money on death has massive tax bills too. We want to give whilst we can and still leave plenty for us. Ben g dead and having money hasn't helped anyone.

We have various friends who were gifted money for house deposits. DH is 70 and lots of his friends got generous sums nearly 50 years ago. Many of his uni friends married at 23 and never had time to save for a deposit and didn't need to. We had parents with no money!

Similar here. We got 4K from parents for our wedding, nothing for the house and it never crossed my mind that I would do.

op would echo others, surely your children would be mortified if they thought they were being given money you needed for your old age?

I think £5k sounds generous and sensible from your financial situation

Dsis and I were both given £5k when 21, in early 90s
We were both engaged and my Dad said to split it however we wanted between wedding costs and house deposit - which made us budget weddings v carefully!

It got us on the ladder and we were very grateful

We have saved from birth for both dc, now late teens, and put £20k each into property. This should give them around £50-70k each when they need to buy