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.

I was born in 1968 my Father was older than average but on average salary of approx £22 a week or £1144 a year, they bought a 3 bed detached house in west midlands for 5000 ( my dad was 40 and had £2000 deposit) mortgage repayments on 15 year mortgage were £25 a month ie a bit more than a weeks wages ( it would have been less but mortgages were expected to be paid off before you were 60so he couldn't get 25 year term)
checking ONS a £1 in 1968 with inflation is now £22.16
so £22 a week by inflation is now 25168 annually which is now below average rather than just above

so the house cost 5000 now should be £ 111,000 actually about £270,000
but other things are cheaper now as back then the spend on food was genererally a higher proportion of earnings
chicken then was approx 50p/ kg so chicken should be £11 /kg it is actually nearer £4

however roasting beef or lamb was only 31p/kg which was why we had roast beef or lamb and chicken was very occasionally, just the opposite to now when beef is at least 3 times the cost per kg to chicken
eggs were 20p per dozen which would be £4.40 now which we would consider the higher organic free range price
bread was about 8p for large loaf converts to £1.71
milk 5p a pint or 20pr large 4 pint again that would be £4.40 now but then it was delivered to your doorstep in glass bottles
crisps were 2.5p a packet which is 55p now
a man's suit cost about £24 would have been tailored even at Burtons now that would be £528 perhaps not that different
petrol was 33p a gallon now that would be £7.26 so fuel to my great surprise is actually cheaper now

relatively speaking TV's fridges telephones cost more in 1960's but they would have lasted a lot longer than 5 years and were repairable
postage and newspapers were relatively cheaper
clothing was generally similar but was better quality for price ie the cheaper clothes shops clothes were much better than cheap clothing today

Money was tight when I was young my Mom was SAHM, she had to budget very carefully for annual self catering holiday and Christmas people had less possessions in general
we had less clothes nobody had 5 school shirts most people 2 one to wash one to wear occasionally someone might have had 3, I had one school skirt and 1 jumper, 2 school dresses for summer, a party dress and probably 3 outfits for out of school in winter, your school coat and shoes was worn any time you needed a coat or shoes we had trainers wellies slippers and in summer sandals and 3-4 different outfits for summer out of school. all of my clothes and my 2 sisters clothes fitted easily into a double wardrobe and a chest of drawers we had a single drawer each

my parents only really started having spare money when we went to college, my Dad's work pension (private sector) was not worth a lot as some scandal and misuse meant he never got what he had put in; the widows portion of it for my mom is now about £160 a month she owns the house and has some inheritance but my Dad was 70 before inheriting and that was the first time they probably stopped having to budget every penny, my dad was the greatest generation my mom was a baby boomer

Both parents in teaching, father retired at 50, by which time they’d already purchased the second/retirement home to move into (BTL) plus a small flat outright from inheritance to rent out.

They married young but left it a good eleven years before reluctantly deciding to have children though - and both worked full time throughout. The moment we hit 18 they decided their job was done, kicked us out, sold up and moved away. I think they’d done some savvy investing (buying used life insurance policies or something?) and amassed a fortune.

My widowed mother has more cash and investment property than she knows what to do with or how to handle, but is too tight to pay for the new hip she needs, let alone go on holiday or - heaven forbid - help her children or grandchildren out.

DH and I got together in our 30s, already with a divorce (him) and a child (me) between us and bought the only house in the area we could scrape the money together for. I can’t see us retiring much before 70. It really grates when their generation says they’ve worked hard for it. DH will soon be the same age my father was when he retired and I can’t even comprehend it!

Yup this 100x

it’s housing

lobby your MP for debt to income rations to come back.

some of my favourite quotes are

high house prices transfer wealth from the poor to the rich and the young to the old.

boomers: the only generation to hand on a world to their children in a worse state than they inherited it

When I was a single mother after escaping DV, I was briefly on benefits so was able to furnish my rental through one of these charities. My father came with me and was most put out when I refused to let him have his pick of stuff (for the holiday home in Spain) via me.

Many posters on here saying they won’t pay off their mortgage till retirement age or close to it. Presumably they then won’t have £800 spare each month to save as they will have a reduced income? Also many young people will be renters forever as can’t save for a deposit while paying extortionate rent. Interest rates on savings are max 4 or 5% right now & were even less a few yrs ago. Compare that to the high rates available before 2000 you can see how saving large amounts is harder than ever. Mortgage rates have been lower but house prices are so much higher so no saving there. So saving that £200k is nowhere as easy as you seem to think!

Exactly, we’re mortgaged until we’re 68 so we’re not going to have loads of years mortgage free and working to save money!

The thing that saddens me is the boomers who have the money, but don't help their children and grandchildren out. I just cannot ever imagine being in a position where I was more than able to help my children out financially, but chose not to.

But you will presumably stop paying to feed a couple of teenagers, or stop paying for childcare or activities, or finish with uni fees or support.

There are times of our lives with a bit more money than others generally.

People in previous generations had their mortgages at an earlier stage of life and worked full time from 16.

I'm not saying this is what we'd want or be able to do but we do also have to recognise that the extra fun and freedom of uni days etc comes at a cost later in life.

generational - its so different.
Houses were cheaper, food was cheaper,

Cost of living now is crippling. this is why

One of the things I have talked to my kids about is Uni fees and how to reduce them. One is doing a 5 year degree and the fees are higher than average but if all goes according to plan will be a high earner. The other after wobbling through secondary and pissing about a bit has finally cottoned on to the benefit of getting a scholarship or two and seems to be doing some work. We discussed the benefit of choosing a cheaper place to study (second kid did just that) and have suggested a few places for further study that are fees free or very cheap.
I’ve formed the opinion that for most degrees in most places it doesn’t matter where you study, just work hard, get a good degree and try not to build too much debt.

It’s funny isn’t it? So many get no help, so many get insane financially life changing help but don’t realise it. I have family and friends who have had all their childcare paid for, school fees for multiple kids paid, house deposit paid, my NDN has never paid for a holiday her entire adult life! Insane.

It's a decent observation of how each generation have suffered as the years have went on.

I can't see my 4 DC moving out tbh....

Snap. I also get jealous of these threads as my lovely mum died when I was in my early 30s, and she never owned a property. My dad was absent. I had no grandparents as they were either dead before I was born or absent/unknown and/or penniless.

I've never inherited anything and never will. No grandparents on my side for my children.

Some people don't know how lucky they are.

Yeah that’s really hard

Uni days are not fun. You have pay for university nowadays, and even with modest financial help from my parents I took a year out between my studies to work cause I just couldn't afford to keep going. Student debt is huge and can set you back years.

The whole crux of the matter is that in the 70s/80s you could walk out at 16, get a job, get a mortgage, pay it off by 45, have your house valued at 4 times what you paid for it and then start building wealth. Now, you study till you're 24, save or a deposit until you're at least 30, buy a house and pay extortionate rates till you die. I didn't even have a kid till 38 cause I just couldn't afford it; my mum had 3 by 27 and we were all comfortable. I worked in the NHS until I was 30 and couldn't pay into my pension because I enjoyed eating daily too much. So I'm a million years behind pension too.

Has the OP come back or was this a post designed to provoke rage?

Not designed to provoke rage AT ALL! Some replies have been really interesting. I don’t think anyone needs any further in put from me.

Well I’ll be housing/feeding/caring for one of my children for life (disabled) but I guess on the flip side I won’t be paying to put him through university. Either way, there aren’t many years we’re going to have free of financial obligations to build up a huge savings pot.
I did work all through university though, term time and holidays.

I’m definitely in the boomers had it easier camp. Because they did. My mum had no qualifications, I would ask just what would she be doing nowadays but such people always seem to get help, support and protections that working people don’t. She worked part time as a cleaner all her life, retiring when things started to get difficult in the time when organisations began sacking people and getting 1 to do 3 peoples jobs in the early 00s. My generation should be so lucky. My dad wasn’t much better working as a clerk, with 5 o-levels: he did struggle a bit in the 80s getting made redundant and taking a job he didn’t like for a while. Bought their own house in an area that went downhill, drug dealers living close by, refused to move so I got sexually harassed every time I went out and often when I didn’t, and naturally that was my fault for that generation. They looked down on council house dwellers. That was in the north west. They paid the mortgage off in their 40s.

i worked damn hard to get out of that region. I have a degree, first in the family, and earned postgrad certificates while working in a professional job. Wages fell while those of unskilled people like my parents rose though and it simply isn’t worth it. Having moved away from the north west we eventually had to make the choice of whether to stay, move to a similar shit town or move back to the north west, to be able to buy a house. We moved to the nw ‘temporarily’ and have been stuck here ever since. That cost me my career: I tried retraining but it didn’t work so now I’m doing minimum wage work but which offers enhanced pay for night shifts etc, which is more than I’d get now in many a starting professional post. Our mortgage here is overpaid so will be completed in our 60s, hopefully. I really don’t know why I bothered to try when I could have just sat on benefits and got a council house with right to buy.

Incidentally to the deluded pp who thinks it makes a difference I can cook from scratch and indeed grow veg: I can also knit. It is an expensive hobby now: a sweater from primark will cost half as much as the yarn alone.

Oh, and both believed their entire lives that they were hard done to for having had to live through Thatcher.

I’ve never known anything but having to run up disappearing staircases and decline. Blair’s time was only good for some- it was the beginning of gross inequality - and most of us outside London knew nothing of it.

Tbf in op’s example her father was a teacher, a steady career with a decent pension. My parents in their 80s left school at 14 with no qualifications and have had a completely different lifestyle from lots of the examples here and certainly didn’t end up with a private pension and tens of thousands in savings.

In my circles, my generation are much better off than their parents eg we got qualifications, went to university, travelled, bought decent houses and moved up the property ladder.

How old are your parents op? Maybe they are my generation!

Totally agree with this, my generation of women are so much better off than 90% of our mothers.
It was generally the people who got a grammar school education, went to university, got professional jobs with defined benefit pensions, who hit the jackpot. That was a minority, but they dominate the "boomer" narrative. Many boomer men died early due to industrial diseases too. Thankfully that's largely gone now. Very few boomers in the former industrial areas are rolling in it, especially women (who would get sacked when pregnant, put up with no end of sexism and harrassment at work, no equal pay law until the 70s, no such thing as marital rape, no legal abortions until 1967 etc). I am glad I am living now and not then personally.

A question for those who appear angry at Boomers for having had, allegedly, such lives of ease and luxury - what should they have done differently? Should they have offered to pay double or treble the asking price of a house? Should they have asked for a wage decrease? Should they have voted for a government that would have benefited the next two generations down the line? If you think the latter is true, for whom should they have voted and how would they have had the required knowledge to ensure the desired result? Maybe it’s easier to answer the last question decades after they were actually voting? Or maybe it’s actually impossible to answer since, in my experience, I’ve felt let down by everyone for whom I’ve ever voted and I’ve voted for three different parties.

My parents don’t seem to have led the cushy lives many of your relatives have so painting an entire generation of people as a homogeneous, greedy, thoughtless and selfish mass is harsh in my opinion. For those of you who are annoyed at Boomers, are you principally angry because you will or will not be getting a large inheritance?

None of this wipes out the fact that the cost of housing, food, clothing etc is outrageous these days but blaming our parents doesn’t seem to be a proactive solution, or indeed any type of solution. Why not learn from what you believe they did so badly and do the exact opposite? Granted, I’ve no idea what that would look like but someone might be able to enlighten me and I’ll vote accordingly.

I agree with many posters that the cost of housing is the main factor causing younger generations to struggle.
That said people I know my age (mid 40s) do generally seem less willing to make do and mend than people of my parents generation and I do think our expectations of what should be affordable are sometimes based on what our parents had when we were older teenagers and young adults at the point we might have much younger kids with significant childcare costs