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 don't know if the image I've added will show right away but the below graph demonstrates the disparity between average UK wages vs house prices.

This isn't a matter of opinion or debate. Housing (which constitutes most persons' most significant asset) has increased exponentially, wage increases have not kept pace at all - at least not since the 70's.

All the TV subscriptions, fast fashion hauls, iPhones and avocado toast with vanilla cold brew lattes are NOT what's crippling millennials and Gen Z when the average house price is now 8 - 8.5 TIMES the average salary vs in the 70s and 80's where it was 3 - 3.5 times.

Would you like a peek at my bank balance officer? 👮 Are you always this argumentative and who hurt you sufficiently to make you feel the need to be right at all times? Do you need a shoulder to cry on?

Yes thank you!

Also, the post with which I agreed was edited after I’d agreed with it. Previously, it hadn’t called the OP envious or whatever it said.

I expect they were dealing drugs all along.

😂😂😂😂

I agree to a certain extent - but house prices really are the crux. My dad was able to buy a nice house for 18k in the late seventies and by the mid eighties he was earning 25fpa.
imagine earning more than you’d bought your house for!!
This also meant my mum could choose not to work - so the whole issue of nursery fees was irrelevant. School and uni was free… dad just paid for my grant.
Youre right there are subscriptions to pay for - but landline phone bills and televisions and VCRs were rented then and probably a comparable price as were quite pricey @minnienono

I agree with this.

I am going to make sure my kids never know how much money I have.

Same generation
Stretching ourselves with every property purchase has paid off
Sacrificing holidays/posh cars/meals out, etc to get to where we are now
No childcare fees - worked evenings
Working all hours God sends 😀

Have all the baby boomers been on yet to say how young people should just give up Costa and avocado and then they'd be able to buy a million pound house on a postman salary?

Absolutely. I am a tail end baby boomer. Both teachers. We were only able to afford a house, in a low cost area, after a surge in prices and had a massive mortgage for the time which really hurt with the interest rates then. Our first meal in a restaurant after we got married was to celebrate our tenth anniversary. Our first abroad holiday was for our seventeenth. No washing machine for the first four years (launderette for us) and no freezer until we had been married for about six. We don’t smoke, or drink particularly , though DH used to brew his own beer. No telephone, weekly trip to call box to call our parents.
i think we appreciated what we were eventually able to have more because of the wait.
What I do think is hard now is the really late retirement age. I certainly would have found it hard to work to 67.

We have good pensions but have little capital left as we have helped out our two children considerably ( which we were happy to do and which they are grateful for) but we do have comfortable pensions.
i do have sympathy with the current generation but do think that many expect everything too soon. (Not all before anyone jumps on this).

It’s Netflix that’s causing all of our problems apparently!

The difference is that they "COULD" invest whereas today's younger generation have nothing left to invest after they've paid ruinously high rents/mortgages, utilities, etc.

Also don't forget that the older generation benefitted from "windfalls" such as privatised utilities, demutualisation of banks, building societies and insurers, etc.

Today couples both have to work, so also have childcare costs.

Yeah, but their mortgage will have been £40k and yours £240k. There’s your spare £200k they now have in savings - found it!

Both my grandmothers never worked a day in their lives after marriage (around 1940s). Both grandfathers had factory jobs and retired age 55-60 and didn’t work again for the next 30-40 years until death. Regular foreign holidays. All left behind significant sums of money. Blows my mind.

Totally agree. It’s this ratio that’s the problem.

Good for them.

The problem is not your parents, it is the ridiculous cost of living, especially housing, that we have in this country now.

Why?

And houses costing a quarter of what they do now, in real terms - did that help at all?

And yet they are all stamping their feet to get the WFA reinstated!

Does anyone seriously enjoy this intergenerational warring? I don’t think my parents were personally responsible for increasing house prices over the years, just as I don’t think younger generations are responsible for the cost of living crisis. I think we should focus our ire on the politicians who make/have made some dreadful decisions rather than our own parents.

But it's not fixable in the short medium or longterm.

The economy and therefore capitalism would collapse - capitalism (and our current political system which exists to enable capitalism) won't allow that to happen to itself .

Rory Sutherland of Ogilvy's (who I think coined my favourite phrase - enshittification - i.e. things getting worse in the name of progress) is very interesting on the whole issue. I heard a recent podcast of his where he explained the birth of the house price lunacy came from lenders taking two salaries into account rather than just the 'breadwinner's' - most usually the man. So, people could borrow much more and prices rose. And so women continued to work too to pay for the house and so it went on.

Agree. And remember, flights abroad and holidays were really expensive (relatively speaking) back in those days. As were TVs, so in that sense, it's really unfair to say the young shouldn't treat themselves. Why shouldn't they if that's the only thing they can afford as buying a home is out of reach (if you even manage to get a job - really, really tough for first jobbers now).