Baby Boomers - The selfish generation?

[YellowTulips]

Ok - so this came out of another thread...but it got me thinking and gathered a few responses.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/1743690-Please-I-NEED-to-know-if-IABU-before-I-take-a-stand-with-my-in-laws?pg=1

I have posted below as I did on the thread. What I am interested to know is if this is a really wide spread issue?

Disclaimer: Whilst I know (far) to many people this applies to, I have to confess my parents and PIL's so no signs of bonkers retirement plans (just good planning to give them a good standard of life).

Ok - so post below:

Whilst this case is at the extreme end of the spectrum, there seems to be (from the posts here and chats with friends/colleagues) a real reluctance on the "baby boomer" generation to make sustainable retirement plans.

Here in the UK many friends have parents who for years have lived off rising property values and the expectation that they can sell up or remortgage to fund what are clearly highly expensive lifestyles that can't be maintained over 20/30 years of non generation of income.

There seems to be a groundswell of entitlement often laughingly termed "spending the kids inheritance" - which in principle I don't object to - you can't take it with you and I personally would rather my parents enjoyed retirement than "save" or god forbid "scrimp" for me, but I am seeing this taken to "spend the inheritance and then let the kids bail us out".

I have lost count of friends who are now in some form or another subsiding their retired parents - parents who have "blown" life savings and house equity on mad "let's buy a house in Spain to live in half the year" or let's "travel around the US in a huge RV for 2 years" or "buy a boat and sail around the med" because they refused to really think if they could afford it.

Before I get beaten up, I don't object to people wanting to help family in desperate straights, I just seem to hear more and more stories where these situations were totally avoidable and parents have been - put bluntly - bloody selfish at worst and in denial at best.

The families involved are now making sacrifices that impact their children at the very time they should be the priority.

Do I just have an unlucky social group or is this issue becoming more prevalent?

Rant over.....hand me a !

Yes, you be chancellor. I'd be useless at the job. I have no political ambition, and besides, I can't do hard sums .

Yabu. I think op what you describe is the visible minority.

The bb I know vary a lot in terms of wealth. The wealthier do go on nice holidays etc but they have also planned for retirement, they haven't wasted their money and won't rely on their children for money in the future. They also tend to be generous with their children and grandchildren.

Others who are less wealthy have lived very conservative lives and have looked after their money and have worked hard (still are) and have small pensions. Many do own their own homes (their only asset likely to be sold to pay fir care homes). Some of these may well have to ask for their children's support especially as they are likely to live a lot longer than expected. But they haven't wasted money through extravagance.

I know of one couple who have been unlucky in business and although they are still trying to succeed in a new venture they may possibly rely on their children when they are elderly. This couple haven't been careful with money when they did have it. They haven't gone out and blown their retirement nest egg however. I do think they are in the minority.

What I think will be very interesting in the future is what the bbs leave their children in inheritance. This will vary greatly(!!) and I will be interesting to see how their grandchildren (the children of today) view their parents lifestyles, choices and attitudes to this unearned windfall (or booby prize).

There is a fair amount of research into this as generational trends are quite a big deal to both governments and industry. This govt paper from Australia is quite interesting and takes some international research into account rather than being purely applicable to just that country www.aifs.gov.au/institute/pubs/fm2011/fm88/fm88a.html

I also remember an interesting study from a few years ago that concluded that the housing bubble was the first time in recorded history that wealth was transferred from the younger generation to older generations en masse and warned of financial and social ramifications, but damned if I can find it now!

That's interesting LoremIpsum, and seems to bear out the "older pensioners frugal and generous/younger and middle aged hedonistic and selfish" theory. From personal experience, I would have expected the older pensioners to have been frugal, since that's how my own parents acted - they were constantly worrying about not being a burden . Though exFIL is from the same generation, and is as selfish as fuck.

I come in right at the tail end of the baby boom, or the very start of Gen X, depending on the dates used, and can't imagine not helping out my DCs if they need it (and DS in particular is likely to need some support even as an adult), but I wouldn't want them waiting till I died - they'd probably be pensioners themselves by that stage.

my Dad is now 82, he was a child during the war, so although he remembers the bombs, etc, he does not really remember the hardship. He benefitted from the house prices, and lives quite well now, but is not at all reckless. Far from travelling around, he would prefer to just sit in his chair and read the paper. My slightly younger mother is the same.

'I have lost count of friends who are now in some form or another subsiding their retired parents - parents who have "blown" life savings..'

I am quite surprised that you know so many people who have done that. My parents fall in BB agegroup (as do I maybe? 1965..not sure) and they'd never blow their money, ever. They've always worked really hard and saved. Yes they now have a lovely home but my goodness they worked for it. I can't think of any of their friends who have behaved very differently either tbh

My parents had very tough lives financially until the 1980s - Cardboard in their shoes type stuff.

They did well in the 90s due to house prices in the area they lived in rocketing. They then moved to a cheaper area meaning they could buy a detached house mortgage free. My dad retired in his 50s as though he didn't have long on a decent pension - about the equivalent of a 50k salary after tax, which isn't half bad when there's no mortgage to pay.

They're pretty frugal still though so I really don't recognise the people in your OP. in fact most of my friends' parents are still supporting their children financially rather than the other way round.

In contrast my PIL, who "downgraded" to a 1.5m house and take several v exotic holidays a year complain more about having no money. My FIL is still working to fund their lifestyle at almost 70.

I'm a bit bemused by some of these stories. I'm a baby boomer (1947) and I don't recognise the descriptions of self-centred oldies hoarding their money or blowing it on cruises.

Someone earlier talked about the impossiblity of buying a "doer-upper" as the babyboomer generation could afford to do. The difference was - in the case of many of us - that we bought the property at that level, but couldn't actually afford to do it up. Most of my contemporaries lived in houses and conditions which few would tolerate now.

We did live on one salary - out in the sticks, property was cheap and job opportunities were few, and anyway, most mothers stayed home. No nurseries, and playgroups were just starting up. When you had coal fires, no central heating, terry nappies and so on, life wasn't the bed of roses some of you imagine. We didn't complain because it was normal - life was, physically, hard work back then for many people.

We didn't have a car for many years, and then we would have one old banger, replaced every few years by another. It was used only at weekends (husband and children walked to school) because we couldn't afford petrol. We had no foreign holidays - we usually visited one set of grandparents or the other. We had no television until someone gave us their cast-off black and white one. We never ate out, unless grandparents treated us - maybe 2 or 3 times a year.

We did have a house. We had our parents' old furniture, or we went to auctions and bought things as we could. Our children wore hand knitted clothes and hand-me-downs - again, most people we knew were in the same position. I baked and cooked from scratch. Adults (us) didn't buy new clothes - you wore whatever you had when you got married, no matter how dated it looked. I cut my husband and children's hair and never went to the hairdresser myself - I let it grow or had a friend cut it.

I just don't see that level of "making do" being generally acceptable now. Things are different - the next generation's expectations are different.

So...to the present. I know full well how hard it is for young people to buy property - and I don't understand people of my generation who would deny that. Our children, and the children of my friends, need our help to buy; we're still helping students, some of us have the next generation living with us.

In our case, we still don't have much in the way of luxury - we spend a lot providing child care, we don't actually have that much free time, and our children will continue to need our help for the foreseeable future. We still run one ageing car.

I do know people who go on cruises - they no longer have a mortgage, and they do have a nice car. Tends to be one car, though. These "richer" pensioners don't live in vast houses; mostly quite modest ones, bought when their children were young, and the furnishings will have to last now. Anyone who has spare cash is helping out their children and grandchildren - and to be honest, I don't grudge them a cruise now and then. Many of them started work at 15 and spent many years taking their own children camping just to provide a holiday.

There are selfish people in every generation, so let's not fall into the trap of blaming a whole generation for the way things are. If you want to change the situation, use your vote wisely - and don't let politicians divide and rule.

What a measured and well put post from babyboomersrock.

I dislike blanket generalisations about baby boomers or indeed any social groups. It invariably covers too large and diverse a section of society and is unhelpful in that all is achieved is a reason to be about people en masse when in fact individually they probably don't behave in the way that is assumed they do.

I can only comment on the BB's I know, which include my parents.

I dont resent them doing well out of property, they took advantage of a situation and who can honestly say they wouldnt have done the same? I know that I would have done. My mother was in the public sector and got a pension that is worth more than a lot of working salaries now, despite working part time in a low status position. I dont resent that either.

What does get on my nerves is them, and their peers, all moaning about their financial situations due to interest rates on savings, rising fuel costs, general rising costs etc when they are living mortgage free in a house worth many many times what they paid for it, with substantial savings and a lifestyle that the rest of us could never realistically achieve no matter how hard we work.

They refuse to see that while interest rates on savings are annoying, they are very fortunate to have been in a position to amass those savings in the first place, especially when (again in my parents and their friends cases) they had one person in a skilled full time manual job and one in a non skilled part time job. A couple with children in those jobs now would struggle to pay rent, never mind mortgage, holidays and savings.

They had it very good, now they are having to tighten their belts like everyone else. Yes it is annoying, but it isnt "not fair" as my mother would have you believe. I have to find the same living costs as she does, plus mortgage yet she still insists that they have it worse than us despite them having a much larger income.

Re: Helping the children. Not in my life!

My mother particularly, but also my dad are of the mind that "We did it, you just have to work hard". She is a bit like the new rules on Tax Credits "You will just have to get more hours/earn more/get another job" without accepting that if it was that easy, I would already be doing it.

I would never want or ask for help from them, but when I briefly moaned about my kitchen falling apart and not being able to afford a new one mum said "Well just work harder and save up, we did it". Errr....no you didnt mum. Your PIL gave you a very expensive top of the range 2 year old kitchen when they had to move to adapted accommodation, it didnt cost you a penny!

The selective memory is quite annoying too!

Bogeyface - I don't know what job your father did that your mother was "working part time in a low status position" - and yet they're now in a position where "they are living mortgage free in a house worth many many times what they paid for it, with substantial savings and a lifestyle that the rest of us could never realistically achieve no matter how hard we work."

The problem is that we're all discussing the situations we know. Maybe I'm just lucky to be living in a place where families do look out for each other, where friends my age understand the difficulties their families face, and where those younger people appreciate the help we give, even though they - and we - would prefer that they didn't need our help.

One day your own children may need your help - whether through child care, donations of money or whatever. If your own parents have been stingy, that will be your opportunity make things better for the next generation. It's a shame your parents are so self-centred, but I wouldn't waste energy getting bitter now.

I assume that if your parents are sitting on substantial savings and have a mortgage-free property that you'll inherit at some point? That may take the edge off your pain.

I think I may be living in an alternative universe, though. I've never been in a position where the sale of a house has made huge profits (rural Scotland) so I probably don't understand. Each time we've sold a house, we've had to pay the equivalent elsewhere.

Finally, I don't understand individual parents being mean with their money, but that's surely more to do with their personalities and not because it's a whole generation's ethos?

My dad worked in a factory and then became a factory security guard, so not highly paid positions. My mum worked 2 days a week in a job similar to say working in a shop on the till, so basic pay and no responsibility.

We live in the Midlands which makes a difference, but they have done very well. Dad did over time, they bought their house for £7000 and it is now worth £200,000, mum saved her wages and we had a couple of weeks UK holiday every year.

It can be done, as they insist on telling me. As I keep telling them, holidays in the UK are not the cheap option anymore, there are no jobs never mind no overtime and I will not get inflation linked pay rises every year as my mum did and a nice fat final salary pension.

Dont get me wrong, I am not bitter about the lack of help. I would rather do it alone and struggle. What I am fed up with is the moaning that somehow they have it so bad when I know for a fact that they dont. I helped them sort out some finances a couple of years ago and believe me, they are not short! But to hear them talk you would think that they are on the breadline some days, despite the holidays, house improvements etc. To me, being on the breadline is struggling to afford food, not moaning about the cost of Italian holidays and then going anyway!

I agree with everything youve written baby boomersrock.
There are so many aspects to this whole issue and its impossible to make black and white blanket comparisons between generations.
I also think there are still some inconsistencies in what people are saying : eg we've seen posts enviously talking about the fact that many of the female BBs never worked, or only ever worked very part time, yet at the same time they apparently have wonderful gold plated pensions. Er- nope, that doesn't add up, you don't get a good pension without a full working life. We're also seeing people who say their parents did very modest jobs but have houses worth a fortune, stacks of savings - oh and good pensions too. Honestly, most pensions, even public sector ones are very modest, averaging about 7k. I don't know how all these people manage to save either. I can see that they may end up with a house worth a lot, but frankly, a house but not a lot of cash is not the best position to be in, and anyway they may end up having to sell for care home fees

Another BB here. Although we were probably a little bit better off than BabyBoomersRock, our situation was very similar. We had to put down a deposit of 10% when we bought our first house, and the building society would only lend us 2 and a half times my DH's salary, and half of mine (and we had to take out an indemnity to borrow on my wages). Oh, and we had to save with the building society for two years before they would lend us any money. DH also says that if you were buying an older property, ie pre 1916, you had to put down 15% deposit.

I went back to work part-time when the children went to school, low paid job, and now I just have my state pension, although DH has a works pension and has just started receiving his state pension.

All of my friends help out their children, usually both financially and with child care - the only people I know who don't help out with child care are those whose GC live hundreds of miles away - although I do have one friend who decamped eighty miles away on a Sunday night, to help out, coming home four days later - she did that every week for several years.

I think things went badly wrong in this country when money and credit became so cheap and easily accessible. One of DS's friends took on a mortgage 7 times his annual salary - insanity. This fuelled the rise in house prices, and yes, theoretically we will benefit from this, but the reality is that the money will probably go to pay for our care homes.

I do know that when we moved to the north east we became better off - the cost of living is not so high up here and housing is, still, relatively cheap. When we moved here thirty years ago I remember being amazed that people could actually afford to go out in the evening! This was something we had hardly ever done in the south east. Even now, when we are comfortable, stopping at a cafe for a drink is a luxury, because it was something we have rarely done.

I wouldn't, for one minute, belittle the efforts people have to make in order to live; however these days people on low incomes do get help with WTC which were non-existent up to fairly recently. I didn't get CB for my first child until the rules were changed (and I am ashamed to say that I can remember saving what I did get in order to buy a bottle of sherrry!). In the 50s evidently food costs were 33% of average wages, now they are 18%, I think (certainly under 20%). We have all had different lives with different challenges to cope with - my DM died when I was 24, she wouldn't believe the kind of life me and my generation, and my children's generation have. Everyone's expectations are totally different now.

Thanks babyboomersrock ( and others) who have tried to paint a more realistic picture of life for those of us who are now in our 60's. I have found the negative, hostile comments about older people rather shocking and very unpleasant. Every generation has it tough and it isn't unusual for generations to blame those older or younger than them for the end of civilisation as we know it. My own parents were working in the mills by the age of 14. My mother was carer to her 3 younger siblings from the age of 6, so her mum and dad could both work the mill to keep enough food on the table, and a roof over their head. I could go on like the 3 yorkshire men sketch, though we are from the north west (luxury). My parents wanted us to have more than they had had, and my experience is that goes for everyone I'm close to. We certainly recognise how hard it is to buy/rent somewhere to live. That's why everyone I know has handed over a chunk of their hard earned savings to their own kids, to ease the burden on them. The idea of naming a whole generation as selfish is astounding. I dislike it when older people generalise negatively about younger people, and do wish people would stop doing this about any group of people. Others have said make these comments in the context of race or gender and that would be unacceptable. so are negative, hostile generalisations about an entire generation of people.

BBs, elderly, young adults, etc. you will find freeloading pisstakers in every walk of life.

What they all need is an enabler.

Nothing to do with age at all.

Bogeyface - are we related?! It seems so hard to convey that it's not the relative wealth itself that's an issue, rather the constantly being told, 'Well, if you'd worked harder...'

Exactly Wibbly. There seems to be an almost deliberate lack of understanding by certain people of the BB generation that we could do it too, despite the economy etc clearly meaning that we can't. That is my only bug bear with my parents attitudes.

Well, Bogeyface and Wibbly, I think you're just unlucky, and I hope you'll be kinder to your own adult children.

As several of us have said, most of the older generation know only too well how hard it is for you - that's why I, and countless others of my generation, are sharing what we have with our own children, and with other people who need help. We know it shouldn't be like that; you should be able to manage without our help, but we accept that things have changed.

I don't think the babyboomers on here are too self-centred or stupid to understand what you're saying - I think you have problems with your own parents' attititudes. It doesn't mean you can condemn a whole generation.

I don't quite see, at this juncture, what else we babyboomers can do. I can hardly apologise for having been conceived when my father got back from the war. It isn't my fault that jobs are scarce now - I still take political action, I still vote for parties I think will help all of us (not just me) and I believe passionately that we need the NHS, a decent benefit system, an education system open to all - instead of the shambles we have now.

We're not all dottery old biddies whiling away our time until the next cruise, lunching out and bad-mouthing the younger generation. Please believe that.

I have lost count of friends who are now in some form or another subsiding their retired parents - parents who have "blown" life savings

this surprises me because I don't know anyone like this, but lots whose baby boomer parents are helping their adult children out financially and with childcare