If you got a big financial leg up from your parents …

[anotherside]

I’m talking a significant amount, at least enough for a comfortable house down payment. So say at least 20-30k and then all the way up to £millions.

So if you received a big cash/property gift from parents, have you always been entirely grateful for it? Or is there some part of you that wishes they hadn’t given you it, in order that you could have achieved (or tried to achieve) everything completely independently.

Wouls be interested to hear thoughts on this (along with how much you actually received if willing to say, as a leg up of say £30k vs £300k vs £1 million is qualitatively pretty different).

Exactly this. I would snap your hand off for financial help and having bought our house independently of any help doesn’t make me feel smug.

I had help from my mum and I’m eternally grateful. I am hoping to do the same for my daughter but I do worry that all the future gazing isn’t giving her everything she could have right now. I’m talking big things, that she doesn’t actually need - but say when she was younger she didn’t go to Disney (I know, big problem right?) but hopefully you know what I mean. Is it always best to look to the future, they are only young for a short time. Slightly off topic I suppose! Sorry OP.

We did but I'm grateful that the bulk of it came when I was old enough to do sensible things with it. We'd learnt to stand on our own two feet and could have coped without it.

We received a £25K as a house deposit from PIL.
I was initially very uncomfortable about it as I don't enjoy receiving gifts that I can't reciprocate.
It didn't help that DP has very poor credit, so the house and mortgage had to be in my name.
That was 15 years ago now and all my scruples have long gone! I understand now that it's what they wanted to do, to make sure that their grandchildren were secure.
For their part, time has shown then that I can be trusted to make the most of the money and to do the right thing by their son and grandkids.
So it all worked out really well.
I can understand people feeling anxious over a similar situation though.

We received some money, at the lower end of the scale you mentioned, from my husband’s parents, when we moved into this house now. They inherited a lot from FIL’s parents - I think even they were surprised by how much there was honestly! And they’ve been very generous since then with things like paying for DD’s swimming lessons, paying for expensive trips when we all went away to meet up with DH’s brother who lives abroad (they didn’t pay for the holiday itself but for some meals and activities when there etc).

We’d lived pretty frugally and saved hard prior, and also had a fair amount of luck in that we were living in the (tiny) house DH had bought at the right time years back. We’d managed to pay off the mortgage and were in a good position to move, however once we started looking my in laws offered us the additional to be able to afford a house that we loved but was out of our budget (40K). We could have borrowed the extra but they didn’t want us to do that. They gave the equivalent sum to DH’s brother who as it happened was also moving at the time.

I’m incredibly grateful and I always will be. I love our house. My in laws have their quirks and I find them very frustrating at times but they are undoubtedly very generous with money and it’s definitely appreciated.

I don’t think we’ve been robbed of an opportunity to work harder or anything. We already work hard and saved for years. We’re older - mid 40s so it’s maybe different to getting a ‘leg up’ early on as a young adult, they wouldn’t have been in a position to do that for us back then (I mean we weren’t together back then but they weren’t able to do it for DH then is what I meant).

We don’t have anything in the way of spare cash now we’ve moved, but I’m hoping to build back up and once DD is older I really do hope we’ll be able to help in the same way, god knows the way the property market is she’s likely to need it.

This is such a good question- on mn people can be so pissed off around eg their parents spending/ leaving their inheritance and then they drip feed they got a deposit for a house when they were younger!

My parents gave me nothing
They threw me out at 18 and left me to it

My in-laws bought us a house
A gorgeous 3 bed house with no strings or blackmail (my parents would hold the 'after everything we've done for you!' over my head if i dared to say i wasnt doing sonething for them or refusing to give them money)

We paid rent until darling fil died and mil has given us lump sums of 3k every year

I'm beyond grateful

I had help from both parents. I’m grateful for the money but I have a terrible relationship with my mother. She has NPD and BPD and is the perpetual saint/victim. The financial help has been thrown at me many times and used as proof of how loving and caring she is. It was £20k. She’s a multi millionaire. I’m grateful for the money but it’s not an amount that would impact her in any way and she’s had huge benefit from all the adulation from friends and me. She usually implies she bought my first home for me outright. I wish I hadn’t accepted the money.
my dads cash came with nothing but love and he was so happy he could see me happy in a home that he loved.
each circumstance is different.

I think I must be alone or maybe outdated in not wanting my kids to have children if they can't pay for their swimming lessons.
But then I come from.a culture where kids pay for and help their parents, not the other way around.

I received no financial support from family. I had my first child at 16 and got on with it. Rent, bills, day to day living, college and then Uni.
My dad does give a monetary Xmas gift but nothing life changing, just for me to buy the kids a present from Grandad. Never had anything from my Mother (Parents not together, brought up by dad, NC last 14 years). I don't resent my dad for this, he also struggled along and I know he would never have been in a position to provide much if any financial support.
In contrast, I try and help my kids as much as I can, and have put myself into debt to do so. However, I am in a good financial position and any debt is something I can easily manage.

My mum gave me 30k before she died. It didn't make a massive difference to my life if i'm honest. Would have much preferred her not to have had the money to give me(medical negligence by Mr Baumber which caused her early death).

I don’t feel better sense of achievement from not having any help to be honest.
It makes life a lot more restricted in terms of choices.

I have reasonably wealthy parents and PIL but DH and I have never received a penny from them. They are well into their 80’s now and have just hoarded it all with very little expenditure over the years. I think this is in part because they also inherited a lot of it themselves so they consider they are looking after the money rather than it being theirs to spend.

The result is that DH and I have been extremely career driven and reached senior roles and paid off mortgage etc before we had DS.

The problem we have is that due to the structure of our extended family or DS will likely inherit a vast sum at a relatively early age.

He is an only child and we were older DP. I was 43 and DH was 49 when DS was born. Our DP/PIL have already said they’re going to leave the bulk of their assets to him as there is only 1 other DGC between them. In addition to this I have 2 siblings with no DC who also have significant assets eg house plus mortgage free rental properties etc. They have both said they are leaving everything to my DS. They are both older than me so likely that DS will inherit a large 7 figure sum while he’s still a child and inevitable he’ll have a ln even bigger 7 figure sim when DH and I die at which point he may only be around 30.

I worry about how that will all impact his life. I don’t think it would have been good for me to receive such sums at such a young age.

I don’t want to sound ungrateful but I wish the amounts were less. Enough to help him and make life easier but not enough to destroy all need to do anything constructive with his life.

He’s only 4 though so plenty of time to try and make sure he’s as level headed as possible by the time it all happens.

We received a lot of help and I am so grateful. It’s given us much more choice and reduced financial stress a lot. That said it comes with guilt that we probably can’t do the same for our kids, and also a bit of a disproportional standard of living as we live in a lovely house (thanks to generous gifts to help reduce mortgage to very small) but can’t afford say private school like a lot of people assume we can living in a house like this. The financial gifts were given specifically for house purposes so although we could technically sell and get the money out I think that would not go down well as it was for a specific purpose so I guess that’s slightly catching? But all in all i am grateful every day and would love more than anything to be able to help my kids in the same way - and well downsize when they move and will certainly use the money as a deposit for their homes.

Neither of my grandparents owned their own home, so there has never been any real wealth in our family to pass down. My husband's family are similar. We've never had any 'leg up' financially.
However, both my parents retired around the time my sister and I both had our first child. They did a large proportion of our childcare, so saved us loads of money that way.

I'm talking about people who literally don't do anything. Sometimes they are hooked on drugs. Having an expectation of money has killed their ability to look forward in any way. I would class myself as a person who 'works modestly', so I completely agree with you on that front.

I have received a significant amount of financial support from my parents. Due to having a very complex disability that needs permanent house adaptations and live in carers, renting was never possible for me. They helped me purchase my first flat by gifting me £50k for the deposit. This was up north. I then needed to move to London for my career. My flat had increased in value but I was still miles away from being able to afford anywhere in London that was big enough to modify and near accessible transport so they gifted me £300k. I do feel very guilty that I needed all this support but my parents reassured that I would get that money anyway so I may as well get it earlier to kick start my life. I'm eternally grateful for that as it enabled me to live independently which is not a given with my condition and work in my chosen field. I've not needed any more financial help since then and don't expect to in the future.

We received (DH and me) a solid amount of money when our parents died. We didn't expect it - we had no idea about their finances except we kept asking "are you ok" and they said yes.

I dont believe parents should cushion children's lives once they paid for university (if they can afford it). Too many parents today are trying to shield their children from any disadvantage that they end up doing the opposite

Interesting comment about how it can make people lazy... I agree and have seen this first hand. Married couple in their 40s raising their 2 kids in her parents house as they been promised it in the inheritance (only child) the parents could easily live another 20-30 years before it even becomes ‘hers’ I don’t think I cba with that as nice as it probably sounded in theory to her a decade ago, I’d just try and make my own way!

This is lovely. I do think that if you have good parents you have won the lottery of life. I would certainly rather have had a good, functional family than the money (although the real win would be to have both!)

Couldn’t agree more , it’s been our number one focus to enable our kids to launch debt free and with a roof over their heads. And they are absolutely grateful and aware of how lucky they are

I got given my home, a 4 bed detached house in the sticks when my grandmother died, I was 16 and it was in trust until I was 30 (grandmother very wise, protecting from the excesses of youth!).

So never had a mortgage or paid rent - feel very, very fortunate to be in that position, and despite never being a high earner being able to have a very comfortable life.

Yes I did and there’s never a day that I’m not grateful for it. And I can do same for my DC and I’m grateful every day for that too.

Yes, I do think there is a better use of my spare money than helping my kids. Many better uses, actually.

We have had a similar experience. We were gifted over £100k from MIL to buy a property...which I'm immensely grateful for, but she expected a say in the property we bought, expected to turn up whenever she wanted without invitation. It created a mentality of 'its a family home that the wider family have access to' when in fact it's our family home. I think it has led to resentment on her part and lots of guilt tripping.

Money can be a great thing, but it can also destroy relationships depending on the person's personality.