Anyone else’s parents refuse to spend on food and heating even though they’ve got loads of money?

[mariavontarp]

Wondering if it’s just a quirk of my mum’s, or a generational thing.

She is in a great position. Been mortgage free since the early 90s, generous pension and savings. She will spend £££ on theatre trips, home decoration and getting the garden done, but absolutely refuses to put the heating on and insists on eating manky jars of chutney from 2018 rather than “waste” it. It drives me wild that she turns off the plug socket behind the TV every night to “save energy” but will happily spend hours ironing teatowels and socks!!

Is it just my mum that has baffling priorities?

What a caring daughter 🙄. Hope your kids don't do the same to you, when you inevitably do the same as your mother

Yes, my mum is like this and I can completely understand it. She’s a product of her time and her upbringing.

Her secondary education was based around learning to type and learning how to run a home. Ironing was part of that. In her eyes It shows your are educated and a moral person.

She was brought up with rationing and then within 15 years of that ending there were huge interest rates and bread and fuel shortages and three day weeks.

When the welfare state was implemented she had school assemblies about how the state would care for the sick and the elderly but tgat this must not be abused.

She probably takes it to extreme but she isn’t contributing as much as some people to a mass of cheap stuff going into landfill.

Yes, I wish she’d eat better and have the heating on and run hot water to shower daily but there is only so much I can do.

The best one for me is my mum spending hours ironing her bed linen but she refuses to drive out to the garage where she got her car from to receive a refund of £250. She sees it as pointless!!

MiL is like this ! Spends £££ on the house and garden, many new kitchens, fireplaces, furniture sets. Has lots in the bank.

I swear the latest new fireplace - has not actually been switched on in 3 yrs..
Won't put the heating on . Or rarely. The lack of WFA has triggered 'well i will just reduce my heating further'.

@coxesorangepippin I read your post to my other half who is anti tumble drying due to huge amount of electric it uses. He really laughed and said that’s me, even down to the 10k holiday. We also have an old car, it’s the oldest on the street by far. Was bought 25k cash and will be run in to the ground. We live in an expensive road. The retired GP down the road has a new jag and Mr Quantity Surveyor has a new car via his work every year as does next door neighbour who moves their personalised numberplate each time.

We live more like everyone’s parents on here though only in our fifties. Relatively comfortably off we spend a lot on holidays and not items, nothing replaced till it wears out ever. Very much look after the pennies and the pounds look after themselves mentality.

God the fuel allowance - that just went into their holiday fund or was withdrawn to have as spending money now means they'll be starving to death all winter 🙄 they're so funny sometimes aren't they

What a caring daughter 🙄. Hope your kids don't do the same to you, when you inevitably do the same as your mother

ODFOD. No, I'm not a caring daughter because as I said in my post, my mother was abusive. She also allowed my father to abuse me. It took me til I was in my 30s to cut them out of my life because I was so damaged by them.

Thankfully I'm nothing like my parents. My children are loved and cared for and were a close family. My upbringing was nothing like my own children's. So yeah, take your judgement and DFOD.

I used to work with the elderly as a social worker. So many times I heard that someone's vast savings were being kept by for a rainy day. I used to say: "This IS the rainy day!"

Now I am just about in the category myself, and I spend what I have to make my life easier and more comfortable. But I do now understand the desire to leave some money to my children to make their lives easier.

I think with most be people like this, it is a generational thing. My grandparents who'd be 100ish, if still around today(died in their early 90s), were exactly like this. My mum used to find it ridiculous and I guess it was but they lived through the war, then rationing. So it was a mind set that never left them.

We've got lots of holiday photos of them in different parts of the world but even at 80 they would cycle 2.5 miles to the shops on their bikes, instead of paying the bus fare.

Yes! My MIL is like this. She once had us eat left over dim sum for breakfast because she didn’t want it to go to waste. She also got annoyed at us when an extra baby wipe had come
out that wasn’t needed and demanded we ensure we stuff it back in so as not to waste.

But she goes on about 3 trips a year costing about £12k each!

@CeeJay81 your grandparents, that’s exactly like us. Their mindset may have also been it’s better for the body. I walk the 3 mile round trip in to town if I don’t need to carry a lot and have time as it’s better for me than driving.

@AyeupDuck it is obviously good for your health in that example and actually not a bad idea for health reasons but they also didn't have the heating on or waste a thing though. They'd have the mumsnet chicken lol. They were very old fashioned. My grandad finally bought a washing machine, after my Gran had a stroke, this was late 90s/early 00s, before than they'd still wash clothes by hand!

Don't get me wrong though, I loved them. We had many good memories with them too.

I have no issue with people who are as mean as shit even though I think they are utterly mad- but I do have an issue with these very same people moaning that they will lose their WFA and that the gvt aren't thinking of the pensioners when the reality is that a great many pensioners have more disposable income than the average working family after factoring in housing costs and childcare . Yes 'some' don't- but as can be seen on here plenty do, they just don't like spending it or drawing on assets and yet the rest of us not of pensionable age are expected to do exactly that whether we are on poor incomes or not .

I think this whole situation about 'care' costs is partly to blame and seriously needs sorting out pronto as soon as country can reasonably afford it - we need to be paying into some kind of insurance based system with people living longer and given that with more women working longer hours till later in life it's not always possible to have elderly frail relatives living with you etc.

Luckily my 85 year old FIL eats well and has his heating on, uses his dryer etc and will eagerly offer help with cash to my working 26 year old who lives in flat share in London and struggles at times - he is a very good egg and is adamant that any gvt money should be going to those who really need help and public services, not the savings accounts of people like himself

Heard on radio:
Caller : Govt is disgusting for cutting my mum's winter fuel allowance, she has a big house and cannot afford to heat it
Radio bod: could she not release some equity from her house to pay bills etc?
Caller: No, she can't, that's my inheritance...

old people cannot win on MN

😁
I understand.
Both my late Grandma and my Mother in another country had different quirks. My husband is 74 and just about starting.
Although food and heating, that cannot be touched! 😐

I asked my dad if I could have £400 in lockdown, he made me set up a direct debit to pay it back monthly, and then he went out and bought a car cash for £40000. 🙄

Yes but they grow up with rations and the house was much colder. Apparently they get a headache when it’s too hot. We forced solar panels on them so at least they now put lights on and charge the electric car which we also convinced them to do. They will boil one kettle (even kettle vs pan boiling took ages to convince them) and keep hot tea in a thermos all day in the winter, woolly long cardigans. Lots of time outside in the garden still.
To be honest, they are hardy and healthy. And out in any weather.
Use by dates is a thing of modern times so naturally they are suspicious…

The real issue right now is not wearing the bloody hearing aid! No problem with glasses but some really weird reluctance about a hearing aid.

It’s not generational, I’m 40 and similar.

My grandparents died recently in their 90s. Unheated house and ate tiny servings of rank food off bread and butter plates (ie not even a proper dinner size plate of food). They left over £1m in savings to their many descendants. I do wish they’d spent a bit more on feeding themselves and living comfortably!

I have heard a lot of call-ins to radio 4 over the last year from disgruntled people of all ages bemoaning all sorts of things (not just WFA, but cost of living in general, increased expenses for landlords etc) and when asked by the host “so what are your plans, how will you cope?” The answer is invariably “well I do have some savings …”

From experience with both my parents, hearing loss is a very tricky issue. Years ago my Dad started complaining that nobody speaks clearly now, they talk too quickly/softly, your Mum included ...' 'No, Dad, I can hear Mum perfectly clearly'. 'Thank goodness you're here! I've been telling him but he won't listen ...'

Of course he was going deaf. Once he accepted it he was very sensible about it and got hearing aids, which he always wore, and got them regularly adjusted. It didn't solve the problem but it was a big help.

A few years down the line:

Mum: Nobody speaks clearly now, not even your Dad! They all speak too fast, too quietly ...
Me: I can hear Dad perfectly well.
Dad: Thank you! I've been telling her, but she won't listen ...

Mum was also going deaf. She got hearing aids too but she hates them. She does wear them but I don't think she's getting them adjusted often enough and they're not making nearly as much difference as they could. A big problem is the huge waiting lists on the NHS. My brother and I are both suggesting going privately instead, but she's very reluctant. It's not lack of cash, I think it's just the sheer faff of everything. To be fair, she's nearly 92, widowed now, and she lives on an island with serious ferry issues, so it really would be a faff. Ah well.

War time mentality.

So?

Yep! My grandads got a very good pension and 50k in savings.

He re-uses teabags.