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.

And yet pensioners are poor, need all sorts of benefits (triple lock, winter fuel) paid for by working people.

in actual fact, as plenty of examples on this thread show, pensioners are the richest demographic, with those that have led sensible lives enjoying retirements that today’s generation will only dream of.

The older generation married young. DH and I were 23 and 21. They/we lived quite simply, ate a lot less than people do now, rarely went out, but scrimped for a mortgage at huge interest rates. Houses were much cheaper. Mortgage was paid off by the time we were in our late 40s. You will inherit when they die. Few of the older generation had any inheritance from their own parents because only the privileged owned property. Times change, that’s all.

Lots of couples get together young but can't afford to get married and save a house deposit so prioritise the house because they don't want to married but living in different houses for years. What's surprising about that?

Higher interest rates on much smaller valued cost less than moderate interest rates on huge values.

Yes, things have changed, for the worse.

@lifeonmars100 you are totally correct about the double income aspect. My main friendship group are aged between 55 to 63. Divorces or being long term single have wrecked my friends hopes of nice retirements. I managed to get on a defined benefits pension scheme, by the time I retired early that scheme had not been available for at least a decade.

I am of the boomer generation cited here. I had no parents by 26 and my stepmother nabbed dad's share of the house by destroying his will so I didnt inherit. My husband did not inherit til he was 67, shortly before his death, and we diverted that modest sum to our girls. But he earned a good professional salary in IT and we were able to have nice enough homes all along. We travelled a lot, always cheap deals and adventures. Never a package holiday or anything luxury. Always ran cars into the ground. But that suited us. Second-hand furniture usually.

Huge pensions and some careful decisions by me on my own and my husband over our lifetime have left me comfortable beyond my wildest dreams. But widowed so there's no jubilation. Both daughters have nice homes thanks to us, and I am about to divert half my husband's pension to them now. When I die they will be set for life, essentially.

So all these people saying, I will never be as rich as my parents. You will be, because they will be leaving it to you. Unlike my experience. Many of these parents will have had legacies from their parents.

And I would say that my older daughter and most of her peers had been to Oz, NZ, Thailand, etc etc etc by the age that I was when I got my first mortgage. And whoever said "mortgages were tiny when they hit 15%", they weren't. They were 3 times your salary and it was a big hit.

Compounding interest is amazing. If you were to invest £50 a month, over 40 years, at a 5% return (which is incredibly modest in historical terms) you would have over £76,500 and over £52,500 would be from interest.

Yep my dad on his own had over £100k. Plus his paid off house. You wouldn’t have thought it though to look at him. You wouldn’t have thought it if you went in his house. Or if you went for lunch with him. He spent nothing on himself or anyone. His proudest moment was when he went over the £100k amount. He was born in the ooor part of a poor northern city. Dad was a factory worker and mum also worked there for a bit too. They never owned their home. In fact he bought his DM’s home as an extra pension pot after retiring and took the rent from her housing benefit. My mum probably has a similar amount - less in cash but a more expensive home. Again, she was brought up at the poor end of a poor northern city. Parents had low paid jobs. She worked hard all her life and is enjoying retirement.

The house we lived in when I was a child was bought for around £45k. That same house is worth over £200k now. They don’t live there now and went separate ways but that’s an example what something bought in the 80s is worth now.

Just about to write this. No expensive mobiles, used the call box at the top of the road, just one TV in the house and it was rented (Radio Rentals, remember them?). Our cars were always old and Dad spent hours getting them road worthy but we kids used public transport. Clothes, other than holiday clothes + school uniform, were presents at Christmas:birthdays. My Dad had a mortgage and lived through really high rates during late70s/early 80s but he eventually benefitted when he sold his 3/bed semi that he bought for about £2k for £240k. Unlike your parents, we never had foreign holidays. A week in Wales at Whit was our annual holiday. Dad’s making up for it now, cruising the world
snd good luck to him.

It’s house prices. That generation saw an insane increase in house prices. Easy to amass 200k savings when you have 20 years of income and no housing costs.

I live in a neighbourhood which was built in 1955. There are still, amazingly, some people here who bought their homes new, or who moved pre 1970s. All had fairly modestly paid, blue collar jobs. I would guess all have paid off their mortgages. All the newbies are well paid professionals, because although our houses are cheaper than the national average, they are out of the reach of a lot of first time buyers. And certainly out of the reach of people doing comparable jobs to the original owners. This is what it means to be the first generation worse off then our parents.

This 100%

How do you divert your husbands pension to your girls? Do you mean you just give it to them, or can your husband’s employers pay them instead of you?

So all these people saying, I will never be as rich as my parents. You will be, because they will be leaving it to you. Unlike my experience. Many of these parents will have had legacies from their parents.

Firstly, not everybody has parents who will leave them anything. And secondly, what it buys you is much less than what it would have in the past. People are not as rich as their parents. That is a fact, verified by research by places such as the LSE, etc etc.

No one is criticizing boomers for being so fortunate. And yes, many have also made excellent decisions, and been diligent and hard working. And made do with less. All those things are true. But this boomer dismissal of the escalating prices for the younger generation is really awful

I bought my first house in my 40s because I had to save for a deposit (no family help for me). But was lucky enough to benefit greatly from it when I sold after 10 years - much more than the young couple who bought it will see from it. I really worry about people coming up behind me.

When I heard that 25% of pensioners are millionaires, I thought that couldn’t be true, but having read some of these posts I thought “Wow!” I thought we had done quite well to save a modest amount, but I’m amazed at the wealthy retirements some are enjoying. I suppose having an inheritance is a major boost, but my parents left very little. Still, we managed to save enough for some nice holidays which I’m grateful for.

Who are all these idiotic boomers, the ones who can’t grasp basic facts? Are they real people or a bogeyman, largely fabricated to make subsequent generations feel better? How did these absolute fools, if they exist in the numbers I’m led to believe from reading this thread, even survive, let alone build a fortune for themselves?

Conversely, you state that no one is criticising boomers, but I can see with my own eyes on this very thread that that’s not a true statement either. There’s lots of criticism actually.

Finally, you say you’re really worrying about the generation coming along behind you. Can I ask what you’re doing to help them if you’re so very worried?

I know, it's mad. Same with my parents.
Yet this generation put it all down to being good with their money and us being bad 🙄

We were poor a lot as kids - I remember mum tackling me to the ground to stop me answering the door to the milkman or paper boy as we often couldn’t pay. Yet between my two families I had multiple foreign and domestic vacations a year and we never once got the electric or water shut off. After they split up somehow my mum ended up managing to buy several properties up north for renting out on just a carers salary. My step dads house is now worth over 400k and he never earned over £25k a year

my husband earns $92k a year and we are constantly in a battle to keep the damn utilities on. Health insurance and stuff swamp us. Our kids have only ever had one non domestic vacation and that was to visit family back home in uk.

very different times

Why are you criticising your parents? Are they another stupid pair of idiots? I genuinely never realised that so many people had dumb parents. I’m honestly shocked to discover this. How the heck do you even manage to have basic conversations with these brainless fools?

Pre-consumerist society. The older generation tended to buy just what they needed as opposed to buying all the shit that is thrown at us today through Amazon recommendations, Ebay boredom buys; and Lidl's weekly bargain stuff to fill your garden shed with. Women used one handbag at a time, instead of having 24 other ones on a shelf, the same with shoes... Make do and mend.

I used to be an ex-shopaholic until I switched it all off.

You what? 🤣

Idiotic boomers - like the people insisting that its just normal changes over time and the current younger generation are not, in fact, worse off, and if they feel like it, its because they buy avocado toast and dont save.

And the women in a group I belong to who are utterly and willfully blind to the privileges they have had.

I am not criticizing boomers for being lucky. But I do criticize them for being so dismissive of what the evidence shows about generational wealth.

What am I doing? I sold my house for a reasonable price and turned down a higher offer because I had accepted one from a pair of first time buyers. I will be leaving money to the younger people in my family, because I will be able to do so. But mostly I am correcting the ignorant statements made by people who do not want to accept that life today means the next few generations will be worse off then their parents.

After that - ODFOD.

Early 1980s mortgages hit 21%. People lost their homes all around the globe. Mortgages might appear tiny by today's standards but they weren't when compared to wages, etc.

Totally agree.

My neighbours bought their house (exact same house as us for £4000. We bought it for £400,000.
That extra wealth isn't because I buy a few more things on Amazon than my 80 year old neighbours, or because I buy an avocado

Interest rates may have briefly been much less affordable, but mortgages now are much much larger. It's an important difference.

But the gap between salaries and house prices then compared to now is indisputable. Boomers were born in a very lucky time when the house prices snd salary gap exploded giving them wealth they didn't work for. What annoys me is they deny this luck