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.

Are you sure they didn't inherit a penny from any of the 4 grandparents? Seems unlikely. This may have helped them to pay off their mortgage so early. And with no mortgage payments to pay, no wonder they amassed savings. Then compound interest and it soon adds up!

It's surprising how your money situation changes when kids leave home. Only 5 years ago, I had debt on credit cards. But now I have no school runs, no commuting (I changed to WFH), the mortgage is tiny, as an inheritance allowed me to wipe £70k off the balance, and since turning 55, I could take a big lump sum from my pension, if I wanted to. My financial situation in my 50's is massively different to my 40's.

With potentially £900k to inherit, I suspect that you will be very wealthy one day!!

Capitalism by its nature expands forever so this will only get worse.

I wish people could see that it's not 'the cost of living' it's 'the cost of living in capitalism.'

We could all live differently if we decided collectively not to live like this anymore.

I think you're missing the point.

OP is saying that her average parents (not an insult) have more money than she feels her (also average) family will never have. She's not grasping their money, and shes grateful for all the help they have given her.

My immigrant grandparents were able to buy multiple properties (landlords) despite coming from the third world, and they only worked in a factory. No A levels, no degrees.
They went on holiday too (rarer in those days) and donated to charity

Meanwhile I got qualifications, zero CV gaps and have only worked in corporate environment. I have to worry about food if I get an unexpected payment lol

I’m gen x , born 1972 , no family financial help with house and neither did my husband, did receive a couple of grand when we got married which we were very grateful for.

paid off the mortgage in our 40’s then moved again and paid this one off a couple of years ago. We’ve similar savings to the ops parents and go on fancy holidays so it is house prices mainly I think.

My mum has nearly 100k in savings and she stopped working at 41 due to ill health, and my dad around the same time. 250k house paid off. I earn more than double what they did and don’t even own a house now yet due to needing to stay in the south east until youngest is 18 (next year). Its mad really.

I've no idea how your parents could manage to afford all that on fairly modest wages. They must be very savvy. I'm probably the same sort of age as your parents and my husband and I earned slightly more money. We've brought three children up and paid off our mortgage in our late sixties. We had mainly camping holidays abroad with the children when they were little and we were always careful to live within our means. We are OK now that we are retired with pensions we saved for but no final salary pensions. Decent holidays but no cruises or trips round the world. Good luck to your parents. They sound great.

Parents and IL got on housing market in their 20s - so paid off by early to mid 40s. We didn't get on till early 30s and then had to borrow much more - so won't be done till late 50s.

They had hard economic times during that - all working class started work at 15-16 all of them.

Other thing is IL had one child - parents had three - (would have liked more) and that's had a huge impact on where they both ended up as well - parents were alright in end but more because paternal grandparents who grew up in slums rode the ecomomic winds really well left them quite a bit - most of which will see one left out.

If we'd listened to IL we'd have had kids way later and bought a decade later as well - and it wouldn't be early 50 when they hit adulthood but much much later and be much worse off TBH.

A lot depends where you live too. If i’d have stayed in the north west i’d have paid off a mortgage by now

I'd be proud of them, OP.

My parents also did well by working hard and living fairly sensibly. However when I look at the circumstances of that I can see there's a lot more to it.

In the 70s they bought a nice, brand new family house for 23,000£. My father was working in a reasonably good job - not great but not bad either. Think lower to middle level management. My mother was a stay at home mum until many years later. They managed on that one wage.

That same house today is up for sale for nearly a million. It's simply not an option for a modern couple in a similar position. A couple in their position today would be lucky to afford a small flat with the same income.

Good for them.

I think the price of housing is quite a big factor here - no mortgage from your 40s is going to allow you to accrue a lot of savings.

I agree. My grandfather was a gardener for a local park and my grandma never, ever worked. They paid off their house by their 40s and they have a 250k house and the same again in savings.

Just unimaginable now.

But your TV and Fridge cost a whole lot more, and you had to phone around to get insurances (I remember sitting with a yellow pages and setting aside an afternoon to phone all the different providers eurgh - don't miss that)

We used to rent a tv

Clothes were more expensive, not necessarily made local, or any better quality

is it some kind of forbidden thought?

I knew people older than me in the 80s/90s where both the couple worked and they used the second wage to double the mortgage payment every month and it meant the house was paid off in 7 years instead of 25 years.

That said, as we get older we do accumulate both more stuff and more wealth, it’s partly the compound interest but also inflation.

With respect to housing, a Staff Nurse salary was about £7k a year and income tax was also higher in the 80s (27%). A 2 bed terrace starter home cost 4x or 5x a starting staff nurse salary in many areas of the UK. So people typically saved a deposit and borrowed 3.5X, which meant a second wage could overpay the mortgage - until interest rates went up.

Interest rates as we all know went sky high at the end of the 80s. My mortgage on my £35k house was £550 a month and my wage was £8k gross, so the mortgage was more than my NHS wage net take home. That house now would sell for £140k but wages have quadrupled also with lower income tax and lower interest rates nowadays.

Wage/housing price disparity in large parts of the south is a different kettle of fish of course. It’s not uniform across the cuntry. Typo intentional.

I actually really appreciate this thread as it does make you feel less insane.

I don’t think the OP is complaining about what her parents had just making extremely valuable points we should ALL be talking about in order for us to make decisions as voters about how this is working for us! The points people are making about only one parent working - imagine if we had approached women entering the work force differently and instead of 2 people eventually working full time and all the time, stress, juggling, exhaustion, childcare bills, lack of time with kids and ensuing guilt, we had just split the existing workload so that everyone in society worked 3 or 4 days a week!

What the hell has gone wrong that we are all completely exhausted working every hour god sent, and not being able to afford anything?! What kind of world is then coming for our children?!

Yep I'm 66 and myself and some of my peers are the same.. ( although l got a few million pay out 16 years ago) ..
But without that I'd be same as your parents..
My siblings are the same more or less.
We seemed to save more in the 80s..

You just can't compare today with 30 years ago.

The cost of living : wage ratio is insane compared to when our parents were in their 'build' phase buying houses, raising kids.

They also didn't live in the same insanely consumerist society that we do. There is so much for us to constantly waste our money on unknowingly as these things are normal.

I think we just have to be grateful that they were wise enough to save and can have comfortable retirements in secure housing.

It's great for individuals but at a wider level the difference in quality of life for younger people & the countries productivity are huge issues. I don't think anything can be fixed either now.

Is none of this inheritance from their own parents? DH’s DF was a secondary school teacher, his DM was too until he was born then did some work to do with adult education. DH was given ten grand from his DPs after DFIL’s parents passed away which came from that inheritance and we used that as part of our first house deposit.

DH’s parents were/are absolutely not spenders and when they went on holiday it was always to stay with friends. DFIL is no longer alive but I’m sure DMIL won’t have savings of anything like that magnitude. They did speak to a financial advisor when DFIL inherited from his parents.

Those millennials who inherit from their parents are forecast to be the richest generation yet which means the level of inequality across this age group is going to be massive.

That is really interesting and a good point about the housing price disparity. Round where I am, a low earnings place (Northern Ireland), houses are in some places 10 times what they were 30 years ago or more. It’s quite extraordinary!

I bought my 1st home for £4,500.
2-bed maisonette in a very nice part of outer London.
I was earning £1,500 p.a. - 3x salary was the norm then.

The NDN property was sold this year for £300,000, so I'd need to be earning £100,000 now.

What’s wrong with ‘amassed’? It’s a perfectly good and appropriate word for the OP to use. Are you imagining that it has negative connotations?

I live in a flat. Rented for years because I would never take money from my parents except in dire need.
But then I come from a culture where neither renting nor living in a flat is considered shameful or terrible.
Unpopular opinion, but that's coming for the rest of the UK now. The UK is going to have to live like much of the rest of the world.