Can’t believe how much money my parents have amassed

[Tallular819]

My parents started out with nothing, not a penny from their families. My mum was a dinner lady, Dad was a secondary school teacher.

They paid off their mortgage in their 40s. As children we had a holiday abroad every year and multiple uk holidays throughout the year.

They had a lease car which would be replaced every 3 years with a new one.

They paid for mine and my sisters weddings and house deposits.

They’ve travelled all over the world in their retirement and I’ve just found out they have £200k in savings.

WTF?! DH and I have comparable careers, we run 1 old banger of a car, we have 1 uk holiday per year, we’ve stopped at 1 child, we’re on target to pay off our mortgage when we reach retirement, we have a grand total of £4k in savings. We don’t drink, don’t smoke, don’t buy expensive clothes.

Its just hit me how vastly different our financial situations are. I didn’t appreciate just how different the cost of living is today compared to 40 years ago.

My parents are boomers in their 60s. They own their house with mortgage paid off, but don't have masses of savings or good pensions - thry claim pension credit. They worked in various unskilled jobs, things like shop worker and food delivery driver. Both left school at 16. DH's parents were a dentist and receptionist, and they have solid pensions and a modest home owned outright.

DH and I are 43 & 45, we went to state schools, good unis and have postgrad degrees. We own a 4 bed house in London and have 2 dcs at private school. We have good pensions and a large amount in other investments, mainly because we've learned about investing and taken advantage of the opportunities on offer. So we definitely have a far higher standard of living than my boomer parents or DH's, and it's been down to us being proactive about using the money we have.

That was indeed ridiculous, but so is the notion that you can’t buy a property in London for under £1.2 million, which is a common view on MN. I was on a thread recently where the OP had a £425k budget for a 2-bed flat in London and she was being recommended horrible areas really far out, including outside London, as if it was absolutely impossible to get a 2-bed flat in Zone 2/3 for her budget. Ludicrous.

Again, unnecessarily rude. Born in SE London, haven’t lived there for decades. Not familiar with the shared township scheme.

Really, no need.

Ownership

So your parents in law aren’t very nice people but that doesn’t mean all Boomers are stupid and insensitive does it? Do you think tarring everyone from a certain generation i.e. Boomers, Gen X, Millennial is really such a smart idea? Are your generation, whatever that might be, a homogeneous mass or is that reserved for your parents in law’s generation alone? You don’t blame your own parents I notice. Most people don’t. They place the blame firmly on other people’s parents, or their own in laws 🤣

I’ll never be in favour of insulting any generation en masse because I think it’s reductive and unnecessary.

Really? I was earning £15k in my first secretarial role in London in 1994.

Exactly this. I remember having the "I'm so poor, housing is soooo expensive" conversation with my parents and comparing what they paid on their house vs my first house.

CoL is dearer now but some of that is choice. No one in my generation had botox, eyebrows, eye lashes filler, nails and tattoos. Laptops and PCs were unaffordable. Mobile phones ....nope.

None of the younger generations I know knit their own cardigans from recycled wool, sew their own clothes and cook everything from scratch. DiY seems to be less and less. I became competent in every aspect of DIY and gardening because I couldn't afford a professional. I've never paid to have a kitchen or bathroom installed. I jow do this for my DC who are not able to. I lived far more frugally then than now.

I wasn't even rude. I only said it was nonsense. Which it is. Just so unbelievably out of touch.

My mortgage on a 1 bedroom poky house was the same as my DD's on a 3 bed semi due to an astronomical interest rate.

Some things are different but it wasn't handed to us as easily as assumed

Not to me either, but it’s allowed them to be able to spend when they want to. When they replaced their furniture a few years ago they didn’t have to consider what their budget was, just bought was was comfortable.
They have travelled the world, and have only been able to do so because they’ve saved so much.

Out of touch with London?

Well yes, because I live hundreds of miles away.

Lol, my PILs are perfectly nice but very outspoken and completely out of touch. I never said they weren't nice. But they talk to us as if we had some sort of magic money tree in the back garden.
My parents are keen to invest in their kids which I'm grateful for. But they can be totally out of touch too, but that's also because they're not in the UK so prices and housing etc is all very different

The use of word 'tarring' is interesting here.

Great, I hope the next time you see a money thread about a young family struggling to make ends meet you'll too recognise that a lot of it is about the impossibly of circumstances- not just rising costs but lack of affordable housing, interest rates, wage stagnation and unaffordable childcare. Not a few boozy brunches out.

You must be pretty out of touch with house prices in general to think a 2 bed in London costs that much. Plus you don't know what shared ownership is. It's fine to be out of touch, but perhaps do some research before people how "doable" it is.

My in laws are similar. FIL left school at 14, ‘blue collar’ work. MIL hasn’t worked since her 30s. They have a 5 bed, 3 story house (mortgage free) and so much money saved that they have a financial advisor to help them pay as little tax as possible on it and it’s in various different accounts. FIL retired early a few years ago. DH in early 40s, me mid 30s, earn £100k combined and are hoping to buy our first home soon (with some help from PIL) and will need to not drop the ball to pay off by the time we eventually retire. It’s mad. House price madness, stagnating wages and cost of living all make this worse. Our lives were so different even five years ago, we never worried about money and now it’s a constant stress as we have high rent.

What an odd response. I’ve never said anything as brainless as your nice-but-dim in-laws or your disconnected from reality parents. You’ve got a wonderful imagination. You should write fantasy novels 🤣 Or you could simply read what I wrote?

Ah, the old fantasy novel reply with laughing-crying emoji. MN really needs better and updated retorts

You're posting about being kind to poor boomers. I'm asking you to be kind to younger generations as well. There's another reply just a few comments up about fillers/botox/tech... again! As if anyone can get through life in 2025 without a smartphone or laptop.

Ah, the old fillers and Botox reply. So predictable 🤭

I shall assume you simply cannot understand that I’ve never knocked younger people. That’s why slating me for comments made by others doesn’t work! I’m not them and they are not me. They don’t speak for me, nor I for them.

I hope that’s helped you understand basic logic but, if not, I’ll leave you to fling your unsubstantiated insults around like a toddler denied a second yoghurt 😛

Most significant of the hyper-capitalisation effects is rocketing house prices, particularly around the turn of the millennium.

The financial crash was precipitated by reckless mortgage lending which chased house price inflation, and the money printed by governments after the crash fuelled a second housing boom.

In parallel, housing stock was remonetised by banks via buy-to-let mortgage landlords and rents soared. Couples worked to the max to service big mortgages and big rents. There are few ways out of the trap.

A pp put up a chart showing UK house prices in relation to wages over the years. It's the rampant exploitation of housing via price and rent inflation which is causing the greatest generational disparity.

But, most generations of our families have had deprivations and traumas we haven't had, the post-war generations just happened to catch the tip of the wave of peace and increased prosperity for workers for a while.

Globalisation and social fragmentation is going to ensure a different and harder world for our families now.

Um, there is literally a post further up on this page about people nowadays not knitting jumpers or using their cash on botox and fillers nd smartphones...

For goodness sake, how can I get it through to you that another poster wrote that? I’m not them. They are not me. How hard can it be for you to understand that simple fact? I’m starting to despair 😩 Find someone to explain it to you please!!

You used my quote on fillers and botox as an insult, presumably about stereotyping because I called you out on old-fashioned emoji and phrases. So I just pointed out to you that the stereotype of millennials withering away cash on non-essentials is well-established, as per this page. Plus I like chatting to you. I'm developing a soft spot for you!

Edited typos

I’m thrilled to hear about your newfound fondness for me. I shall give you that second yoghurt after all, but only if you eat that last piece of broccoli you’ve been pushing round your plate for the last ten minutes 😆

I think the point that a pp made that we are maybe reverting to a more realistic average of smaller houses is probably right - the blip of the cheap big house of the latter half of the 20th century is probably just that - a blip!

I agree, the 90s and early 2000s were exceptional and we shouldn’t expect to get back to anywhere near that level of prosperity and wages to COL ratio. The problem is, it’s almost 2 decades on, and people don’t seem to want to accept that it was a blip?

It’s also worth remembering it wasn’t all good. DM was back at work after a couple of months with each baby in the late 80s/early 90s, whereas it’s now standard to take a year off and keep your job. We may have gone backwards economically, but we’re benefitting in other ways.

Precisely, there’s ways to accumulate it pretty quickly. I did that as a rough calc whilst I was in a teams call but when you adjust it for sensible options you can easily increase that figure.