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 am of this age but it wasn’t easy. I had two blouses both handmade, worn shoes and literally no cosmetics or accessories as a young woman. We would share a coke on nights out in the pub and lived off pasta. I was skeletal. Our dining table was an ironing board and we had asphalt floors in our house. It was though easy to get a mortgage through building societies. They were non profit and wanted to help young people. We did however live though 13% interest rates never knowing what our mortgage payments would be or our shopping bill.
It wasn’t easy and it’s not easy for you young people. I feel for you

Thanks @Golfbluemotion . Seems that the idea that just because you had struggles and had to work hard does not mean that you were not also lucky and privileged is really hard to grasp and I am not sure why. I can only imagine that the defensiveness is because of decades of voting for policies which have led to where we are.

Whatever. You want to get judgey and patronizing, you get it back.

I was born in 59, so technically a boomer.

My youth was not sweetness and light with the streets flowing with milk and honey.

Every generation likes to say the generation before them had it better in some areas.

For part of the 80s, every woman I knew was the only one working in her family as the husband had been laid off. There were actually problems in my country for white males to enter the military, fire, or police due to hiring policies.

We were priced out of the city I grew up in by 1986, I can no longer afford to purchase a home within 200km of there.

Apartment rents doubled in less than five years.

We only had two children because that was all we could afford.
No travelling when the children were small other than trips to Granny's house.

Then came the economic crash of 08 resulting again in financial challenges and job losses. What my cohort had just managed to gain, many lost again.

Now that I'm retiring, I am amazed at the number of people in their late 50s to mid 60s who are still carrying mortgages.

Yup, Boomers have it great.

May be they lived more frugally between holidays etc. No mobile contracts, no WiFi bill, fewer takeaways, new clothes. It soon adds up.

The teachers pension used to have a really good lump sum payout when you start drawing it. Less good now!

I'm not the poster so can't answer on her behalf but I always find it surprising that it's not more widely known that you can gift as much as you want to your offspring (without IHT) as long as it's regular and you can prove it's from income and not savings nor impacting your standard of living.

E.g. if you already have a state pension plus perhaps a good private pension, the poster could simply pay her husbands' pension into her girls' accounts. There is no 7-year rule either.

Jesus @InShockHusbandLeaving. Is this shitty attitude why your husband left?

Where does she say she wants something from them? The post is about cost of living changes and how much more difficult
it is these days to achieve similar levels of savings. Suggest you get your eyes tested.

Well done them, I had double that after years of hard work and investing etc now in my 60,s
but my ex partner of 30 years stole the lot even the money I’d saved for our daughter to pay for uni and or a house deposit
we didn’t thankfully have any property in common or I would of lost my home to
never ever trust anyone when it comes to money!!!

It’s really quite fascinating all of this. I think that along with the cost of living our expectation of living has gone up too. I think I’m closer to your parents age. My parents were married by 21. November renting a house for years in your twenties whilst travelling. They also started work so much earlier. I’m in farming where it would have been normal a a 14 year old to help out at the farm all day Saturday and pull a 40 hour week in the summer hols. That cash paid for first cars and a good chunk of house deposit.

A play date was the garden hose and the tv not a £30 trampoline park or even a £10 parking ticket to the local adventure park. We are out so little compared to the expectations of generations today. Less divorce.

Not saying things are easy now at all but people made very different t choices 40 years ago

Um, he didn’t. It’s my username. Does your face really resemble a chilli 🌶️?

That’s an interesting take if we do add on the things they didn’t have, the Netflix subscriptions, the TV and sky, the broadband payments, cost of insurance for multiple cars, cost of mobile phone contracts and devices and electric will be sky high compared to their outgoings, all things we see as essentials now they never paid for.

I think we all eat out more, eat a wider variety of food that’s more expensive.

Pet insurance, posh pet foods, pet grooming etc none of these things even were even thought about.

I do agree it’s mostly house prices or rent that’s the biggest gap I think the other things add up to way more than we’d like to think about.

Well done to your folks I hope they can enjoy retirement.

Plus if they had a public sector job then as well as state pension they have a very nice final salary pension .

The vastly different experiences on this thread made me want to share my own.

I turn 40 this year. My husband & I have just cleared the mortgage on our primary home. We have 2 small rental properties that we cleared the remaining balances on a few years ago.

No financial support from either parents - if anything my upbringing hindered our chances.

Husband university educated and contributed high value over the years but now in a minimum wage (maximum happiness) role.
I only managed GCSEs but worked my way into a relatively well paid job.

We both worked from age 16 (met when I was 17, married at 25, 2 kids by 29), saved, avoided credit and overpaid our mortgage whenever possible (which makes a massive difference).

We bought our first home 17yrs ago - it was a huge financial stretch and needed so much work that we largely did ourselves...think polyfilla & paintbrushes.

On paper we are well off but I don't think anyone would know this from meeting us and certainly would not suspect it based on our backgrounds. We have an older, functional car, take 1 holiday abroad a year and maybe a sneaky UK weekend away but are not extravagant.

It is tough, certainly tougher than years gone by...but with a bit of luck, it can be manageable.

Completely agree.
The solution is council housing, and lots of it for ordinary and middle class working people. Unfortunately, every attempt to build more housing is vigorously and angrily opposed by, yes, you've guessed it, very comfortably off and nicely housed baby boomers.

I should add through, I don't think we should be unhappy about falling birth rates. Yes they will create big problems for human beings but its great news for the planet and just about every other living thing on it.

What will happen to all the comfortable houses when the boomers die?

Someone younger will move in @InShockHusbandLeaving !

But will they turn into NIMBYs by dint of being in the boomer’s former home?

My husband died a few months ago. We had converted his pension from his employers to a different kind of pension with risks attached but much more flexibility, ie with one of the big pension companies, which is the sensible course of action when someone is terminally ill. Now I am undertaking the task of relinquishing a big chunk of it to the children. I am not yet sure how it works.

Good for them. They have been prudent with their money and can rest easy that should they need residential care when they are older they will have the means to pay for it.

I think a lot has to do with where you live.

I've read a lot of the PP/s and can't quite work out how come they are relatively 'poor' with 2 people working fairly decent jobs. Obviously a lot is to do with the age of posters and how soon you have kids. Having kids early usually equals less spare income.

I'm Gen X.

I can remember walking into an estate agents 20 yrs ago and asking if it was possible for me to buy a house, on my own. It was. In the couple of years I was there, it doubled in price, the market went crazy (Yr 2000).

Going back to Baby Boomers era, company shares were quite a big thing and encouraged. My GP's did it and my parents. Lots of money to be had.

Less consumerism v more investment.

Same with my parents and their contemporaries. My mum was a long term sahm, and we had a lovely house in a nice area.

Both my aunts worked in shop floor retail, were both able to buy houses in London. One aunt retired in her 40s, other only ever worked part time. My MIL went part time when she had kids, and carried on part time until she retired.

But I have to work full time (as does dh) to afford our tiny 2 bed house with the kids sharing a room.