my baby boomer parents are selfish and ungrateful

[yoofoftoday]

Had lunch with parents yesterday and left so fuming.

Mother complains about not being able to get a new car on finance and that her retirement income is only 28k after she retired early. Her current car is only 4 years old and she often uses her free bus pass (only free to her take payers have to pay for it along with the rising bus fares) as she doesn't was the BMW to get scratched in town. I barely can afford the bus and can't even afford a car.

Dad who gets his state pension but still works was complaining that he has to pay Ni and then wait till the end of the year to claim it back. Also complqains that now he gets his state pension has to up the amount in his private pension to avoid 40% tax. He only keeps doing this job as its easy and he works from home not doing much.

Uncle who sold a building plot to developers for a fortune ages ago and hasn't worked since said "oh your poor dad still working". When my dad is in perfect health and works from home paid a lot for easy work, basically on call 9-5.

Then my parents say they are putting their winter fuel allowance towards a 3d DVD player while I go home to my cold house where I only put the heating on if it goes below 16.

Nc but regular.

I've just spent ages staring at particularly trying to work out what was wrong with it!

I don't think you're being particularly unreasonable but at the same time I would say that if you're bothered by their attitude tell them. It may be that they don't fully appreciate how tough a situation you are in and once they do they'll stop talking about their relatively trivial issues. At the same time you should maybe think that, although their issues seem stupid to you, they may be real causes of concern for them.

I've developed a nasty habit of touch typing phonetically recently.

Exactly jammytoast.

Truly because 16 degrees is cold! Comfortable room temp is 21 degrees.

YANBU about the moaning but if they are anything like my parents they will have had their share of hardship in their younger days ( or maybe they didn't and that's my they don't appreciate what they have now)

My parents are very well off now - lovely mortgage free home, brand new cars, going off on cruises and weekend breaks all the time and meals out a few times a week.

But I remember when I was a child in the 70's that they worked two ( sometimes three!) jobs each to make ends meet. I remember my mum crying about having to pawn her jewellery to pay bills, my dad being under constant threat of redundancy. No holidays unless we camped and my Dad's cars were always old bangers that he had to constantly work on to keep them on the road.

I love the fact that they are now living a life of luxury. They deserve it in my opinion.

Actually 21-23 degrees

I don't think you are being unreasonable.

On the whole, the baby boomers have been a very lucky generation and subsequent generations will be less well off. I appreciate many of them don't live the high life, but the ones that have a good standard of living should stop whinging.

We will all have to work till we die!

YANBU. My DM has just had 2 weeks in Montenegro on the back of with her heating allowance

Both my parents and DHs did struggle in their early days. And I don't begrudge them their comfort now, but why can't they have a bit of empathy for us and realise we are going through the same thing they did?

If they were always comfortable I could maybe understand that they just don't get it, but they have been there, they should know what its like.

Agree with Angels - yes, my parents are incredibly well off now but it wasn't long ago that they really struggled, Mum did a cleaning job to help make ends meet, we never had two cars in the family, or a tv, holidays were camping (if we were lucky) - this is growing up in the 1970s. By comparison, even though DH and I earn under the 'average' wage, our current lifestyle is more comfortable than my parents was when they had a youngish family.

But unlike the OP's parents mine are very, very generous - they appreciate they are lucky now, give loads to charity (time and money) - always donate their heating allowance to Age UK, even in their 80s they organise the old folks lunches and take people to hospital/appointments etc. My DF even got into a row at the doctors as he wanted to pay for his prescription but wasn't allowed to - in the end he put the equivalent money in the 'Friends of the Surgery collecting box' .

And they give my siblings and I very generous hand outs .

It's worth mentioning that a lot of the money which baby boomers have is due to a combination of large inheritances from their parents and huge house price inflation which they can access when they downsize. So in essence they actually haven't worked for that money just been in right place at the right time.

In the 70's when my parents bought their house they managed a much larger house than we have on 3 times my fathers sole income, big enough to never have to move and comfortably bring up two kids with plenty of space. Due to both dh and I having been made redundant we have a much much smaller house which is 3.5 times our combined salary and which we are bursting out of now.

I can see things from both sides, but I think things are much tougher these days, I work full time so have childcare costs on top which my in laws didn't and fully expect that I will have to go part time later in life to look after both my parents and inlaws, thereby reducing my potential pension income to help maintain their quality of life again something they didn't have to do for their own parents.

YABU. From what you've written, they don't sound like people who think they're hard done by, they were just getting a few gripes off their chest.

As a generation, they were lucky. Well, good for them. In the overall scheme of things, our generation is incredibly lucky too, having a much higher standard of life than the vast, vast majority of those who went before us.

Chances are they made sacrifices for you when you were a child. Chances are they'd help you out if you found yourself in serious financial trouble now. Chances are they'll leave some of their assets to you when they die.

Don't begrudge them their good fortune..

I mean being made redundant in the past, so we are a bit more cautious with our borrowing than we might otherwise be.

I do get it. A few years ago I was having a really difficult time, four young kids and just struggling in general. I mentioned it to my mum (not expecting anything at all, just sounding off a bit) genuinely down and not just having a trivial moan. She smugly chuckled and said "ha, well me and your dad are off on a last minute Greek holiday next week!". It was just SO upsetting that in response to me admitting I'm struggling in a thousand different way, she as good as took the piss out of me. It's thoughtless.

Oh I am on a roll now you have got me with childcare costs my parents hardly paid any, I have very few memories on having to go to paid childcare at all.
My Mother was lucky in having grandparents who willingly and often came to look after us.

If I so much as ask her to look after my children for an hour to go to the Dr (across town takes ages) the fuss she makes, boy do I know about it for months and how she loves to tell her friends what a grandmother of the year she is I'm surprised they don't think she is raising them as a single parent when she tells them about it

Sorry I had forgotten all about that until you mentioned it, it bugs me because she recently told me how tough she had it when we were young because she had to have people to stay, I had real trouble not howling with laughter

Laurie we are lucky just because of where and when we live as well as the fact that Polio is no longer around and we have anaesthetics and clean water etc etc etc.

Doesn't change the fact that a generation is systematically setting up things to their benefit and the detriment of ones to come which is a significant departure from previous and as such is worthy of comment.

Are we happy with this? shall we do the same when we are the power generation? where does that leave the UK as a society in the future?

I agree with you OP.

A lot of the baby boomers have done very well financially without having to do very much and now have nice pensions and capital investments. I think a lot of them made lots of money from house sales - my own parents included.

I don't think the OP is being bitter or judgemental as has been implied. A lot of retired people now seem to have an I'm alright Jack mentality.

Certainly my generation and others younger than me will be well and truly screwed when it comes to our retirement.

I think you might get a flaming here, but I agree with you. It's not just individual people from that generation, the political system panders to the older generation because they vote. That generation really got a lot that young people now will never have access too.

we experienced this first hand when we bought our place, which is ex council, from former right to buy people of the older generation. The entitlement talk in every conversation was almost comical. I almost thought they were doing it on purpose.

And the funny thing is that young people today are seen as lazy, feckless and entitled.

My in laws are like this. They are very well off and yet all they do is moan about having no money. I have no interest how they spend their money but it is the moaning and the lies that get me. They never help us with anything financially, they spend next to nothing on birthday and Christmas presents, and these things in themselves don't concern me. But don't tell me you have no money to buy Christmas presents - I'd prefer honesty, sorry we are spending a lot on an expensive holiday and a new car this year so we don't have much left for Christmas, rather than whinging on about how the government has screwed them over with their pensions so they are "living on a shoestring" when they have more disposable income in a month than we probably have in a year...

YANBU but why don't you ask them for some money to help you out?

Clarinet, I'd have more sympathy with the OPs point if it wasn't for the fact that:

a) The baby boomers haven't had it easy their whole lives. When their children were young their standard of living and expectations around holidays, nights out etc would have been lower than our generation.

b) Our generation will benefit from their good fortune eventually as most of their assets will eventually go to their children.

I think it's easy to feel annoyed and short changed compared to previous generations. We (and younger generations) are the first generation where it isn't guaranteed we will be better off than our parents. Social mobility has all but stopped thanks to tuitions fees, low employment rates, rising house prices and perhaps the benefits trap where you are worse off working/working full time. Both my parents grew up in council houses, they and their siblings mostly did very well, non going to university but all but one owning their own homes and being comfortable.

My ILs and my Dad (my mum is ill, on benefits forever and spends like there's no tomorrow) are very risk adverse, they are well off relatively, have low outgoings and live in family homes (while we live in a two bed flat with two kids). They save a lot of money and would worry if they didn't have it. They rarely take out loans or use credit cards without paying it off immediately. They were so worried about interest rate rises that we ended up buying a much cheaper house with a teeny mortgage so we could afford rates of 12%. It's a different attitude from having different experiences. But it's still no reason not to be understanding and sensitive with how they talk about their situation.

My mum is the butt of the family jokes re: money. We are very mean, but the serious moaning and whinging we endure about the measly interest she earns on her massive banked capital, the paltry 100k+ her property has grown in value in the last 5 years.

A generation of whingers. (not all, just some, my mother)

The baby boomers haven't had it easy their whole lives. When their children were young their standard of living and expectations around holidays, nights out etc would have been lower than our generation.

that's a general cultural shift in many countries. Eating out is far more common place now than it was in the previous generation, but that's not because of government handouts. And of course flying is cheaper, but again that's an economic shift rather than a government handout. While those things shouldn't be forgotten, it's not the end all be all. When it comes down to things that actually matter, not smartphones or xboxes, but education and housing and pensions, I think it's quite clear who is getting the short end of the stick.