To want to do the things I've always wanted to do now I'm retired and not give DC house deposit money

[Mumcouchtotri]

I've worked for over 35 years. I've recently retired and finally I have a reasonable income (34kk - I still have to pay income tax on that and have a few btl that give no income now but should do in 3-5 years when mortgages are paid off) considering I have no mortgage or debt outstanding. I have two DC (23 and 26) who both live in the south east. Iknow theybwould like s house, but I've said I won't be able to help them st all. I think all help ends at 18, now I want to enjoy my life - go on cruises , have a new CSR etc. Just simple stuff like that that I've never done.

It does seem most of their friends are getting help from parents. But surely not all? Your responsibility with a child ends financially once they are an adult working full time?

So op, in spite of displaying a very shaky grasp of pension rules, you've still managed to stir up another inter generational shit storm

Very well done.

A pity because, as MrsTerry said, there's a serious conversation about social mobility to be had.

collaborate but opportunities are different for different generations.

DH: working class lad, clever boy, free uni, remembers being hungry as a child (uber, uber clever btw). Went to Oxford in spite of it not because of it. Only about 34% went into HE in 1979.

Me: Naice schools, quite bright, not university material and didn't go. But actually did OK because I was extremely well educated.

We had 15% interest rates and 60% marginal tax rates. DH didn't go abroad until he was 21.

Our DC: Best schools, university (we are funding) along with what, about 25% of the population. Not many people now have never been abroad, the standard of living has much improved for the majority of people. The welfare state is extraordinary. I imagine the property bubble will burst or at least there will not be much growth over the next five to ten years as incomes increase.

What we don't know are the OP's circumstances. £34,000k pa isn't that much if there are other expenses involved and it is probably not all pension, some of it will be investment income/rents. I don't remember the OP telling us how old she was either.

I remember the struggles of them paying their mortgage, and no I wouldn't take any money off them as I think they have earned the ability to spoil themselves. My pIL started married life in a caravan. Others I know started married life living with relatives.

As for free education, well the pre was no tuition fees I will agree, although there were fewer places. That's the trade off I think. Also parents had to pay the living costs for many students. So no loan for many.

You've worked hard and planned for your retirement now is the time to enjoy it. There is no obligation to give money to your children. They are still relatively young to be thinking of buying property.

If you (or any other reader) do give/ lend money to your children do ensure that is legally tied up for their benefit only, not a current or future partner. You'd be gutted if you helped them only to see them lose 50% or more in a divorce/separation.

I have two adult dd's, I supported the youngest through Uni and paid her first terms accommodation costs for three years as well as helping out with other matters financially. She is about to start saving for a deposit for a house and me and dh are willing to assist in a small way so long as she makes the effort to save some herself. That's fine.

You may well think me harsh, but I wont assist my eldest dd as her two eldest ds's live with me through the courts. I have been doing school runs for twenty five years with no gap and am about to go through the teenage years again. I also remortgaged my home to pay the legal fees.

Dont get me wrong,I buy them both little items for their homes and I enjoy doing so but I think everyone has a right to make their own decisions about finances and op you should not be criticised for any decisions you make about your own money. They will benefit when you die won't they, so enjoy yourself, life is too short.

Generational comparisons never really get us far because our children now have to live in the times they are and with the comforts and things they take for granted such as new not second hand clothes. I was telling my son about 10 minutes ago that when I started work no way could I go to a sandwich bar for lunch (too expensive) so you brought lunch in from home . Most of the boys in his sixth form now don't got o the school canteen but go out - I funded one £8 pizza and said I was not going to pay that every day.

Yes, times were hard in the past and they can be in some ways hard today.

On universities only 15% went when I did (very end of 70s) so most people had no chance to go. It was only in 1970 that we got the equal pay act and plenty of women could only borrow if they had a male income too. It was not an easy golden age. We sold a house in the 1990s for less than we paid for it. Life was tough. Moving to a bit of outer London most mumsnetters are even today not prepared to live in (they are so entitled and snobby some of them) 30 years ago the house prices were ridiculous compared with the North where we can from and you needed two full time earnings and of course you couldn't afford to take a maternity leave. You just got on with your work and paid the 12% interest rate.

We have had in London (but not the NE where I am from ) big rises in property since my second daughter bought in late 2012 and I am glad she took the big risk to buy but the owners of her flat made £5k over 5 years (very little for London) on that flat in the 5 years before that. It is not always a one way bet to buy.

Elsie, you don't sound harsh at all but seem as if you have done more than enough for your kids and have done so willingly while drawing a line when necessary. All perfectly reasonable. I don't, however, think the OP -purely from her one(?) post - is being at all reasonable.

I disagree with some of that- I think many more of us have to buy stuff second hand and live in much smaller houses than our parents did. I agree we all consume more, however. Housing is the thing that makes the biggest difference and it really is an inter-generational issue whether we like it or not.

I thought it wouldn't be long until people started yarning on about cheap trips abroad and takeaways, as though those are somehow compensation for the vast intergenerational wealth transfer that property has become. Generational comparisons get us a very long way indeed when there aren't people trying hard to muddy the waters.

But while we're talking about university attendance, let's also point out that it wasn't necessary to have a degree for most decent job opportunities a couple of decades back, as it is now. The entry requirements have increased and so much more of the cost of upskilling has now been passed on to the individual not employer.

My children wear second hand clothes.

reasonable". You must be deluded. Your children could never dream of having anywhere near half that.

How do you know this?

If you look at the sums done by whirly above, someone would need to put around 2k per month into a pension these days to retire on that amount. Presumably if the OPs fictional children have that sort of money to put into their pensions, they wouldn't need help with a deposit.

I sam not sure you can have it both ways - if you are saying the older ones of us have made an undeserved profit on increases in house prices (which we haven't really as we still need to live in the house so until we die it doesn't feel like a real profit anyway) then our children benefit - they will get a vast transfer of wealth which we never got from our parents in those few areas of the UK where house prices have gone up a bit (not places like the NE - the house my mother's mother rented in the 1930s sells today for £50k by way).

My generation - the 15% who went to university - a whole load of them could not get any jobs . I applied to 115 places even though I was top of my year as we were in the middle of a massive early 80s recession.

But yes I agree some people today still wear second hand clothes. My older children had all their school uniform second hand and no one is harmed by that.

So I suppose the moral issue is 1. should a parent help a child or does that make them lazy and not stand on their own two feet because they live off parental hand outs 2. should parents sell the family home and move into a flat so their chidlren are able to buy a house 3. should chidlren move in with parents which is historically what most cultures do including many of my Indian neighbours - I live with an adult child so the young can care for the old and grandparents live with grand chidlren because that enables more love and less burden on the state.

Well there's the benefit of living in a sizeable house while many young families squeeze into a small home. I know many OAPs living alone in a large property and many families who can't afford the space they need and had growing up. As for inheriting and therefore passing on the benefit, to be frank, after care home bills for many years and tax, not likely to be much left!

Sometimes stepping onto MN is like stepping into a parallel dimension. How exactly do some of you imagine those of us whose parents can't afford to pay for uni/cars/houses for us get by?

I love the idea that there's an undeserved profit on houses. Firstly I bought a house when interest rates were fifteen percent as a single parent it was hard, really hard. Secondly my 'profit' only appears if I sell and give up the home I've worked twenty five years for and move somewhere else/far far smaller (and this is a small house) It's not a profit it's a price rise that applies to me should I wish to buy again same as anyone else. My dc value how hard I worked and how much I sacrificed and would be astounded at the idea that I owe it to them to give them a deposit as I've been 'lucky'.

That's not true at all lighteningirl. If you have a lot of equity in your home, your profit (note no inverted commas) can appear if you decide to engage in equity release. Plenty of people who own their homes have effectively used them as cashpoints. I am not suggesting this is a particularly good idea, personally I wouldn't do it if it could be avoided. But it may well be a choice you have, regardless of whether you choose to take it or not.

Also, the fact that you had a hard time when you bought your house doesn't mean the raise in value isn't undeserved. It just means you had a hard time. If you buy a home and it increases in value more than inflation plus the cost of any work you've done to it, that's undeserved. You don't suddenly merit a huge increase in equity simply because you worked hard and were on your own. It's not a reward for struggle.

And we were talking about the younger generation who can't even afford to get on the property ladder for any profit, paper or otherwise, in the first place. That is the real issue and there really is no justice in it. The historic rise in equity has nothing to do with how hard people have worked. You can be 20-something, working very hard, paying a 10% increase in rent every year all because you can't afford to buy and nothing to show for it a few years later. The average age of a first time buyer, I believe, is now in their late 30s. That would have been astonishing for my parents' generation!

I am not sure if deserved is relevant. Is it fair someone is born pretty or sexy or clever? Life is just full of differences for all of us and the one certainly is thinking about what others have tends t make you just feel unhappy.

it is also not true that you can get equity release in many cases. Mortgage rules have changed and one reason I paid my mortgage off after 30 years was because being self employed and my age I was no sure I would get another one on this house. (I could off course render the 3 children who live here homeless and move to a studio flat and then have some capital of course which I have spent 30 years of full time work earning) Secondly old people can sometimes get equity release which is different from a remortgage and tends to be a very very bad idea particularly if you want to provide for old age care in due course.

It certainly always pays off if people can buy though in just about all generations so eve if it means slumming it in my bit of outer London or living at South End on Sea or wherever in a crummy studio flat buy that property as early as you can and always before you breed and you tend to be wise to do so.

(None of my equity is untaxed by the way ( as my chidlren's father got the equity on our divorce) so I am unusual in having owned a property for 30 years and had no gains but that's a separate issue)

Of course there's inherent inequity in life. But this is'a generational issue whereby one generation has been disproportionately advantaged financially through property and then gets further advantaged through government policy. I would far rather my tax was spent on free bus passes for younger people to become more mobile to get more job/study opportunities, to have better help buying their first home than pay universally for free bus passes for OAPs, winter fuel allowance, free to licence etc. It OAPs are in need, then of course they should get help, but just as child benefit has been cut, such benefits for OAPs should not be universal and are utterly unaffordable into the long term. All governments know this, but they also know which way their bread is buttered and as older people are much more likely to vote, they're going to look after their core electorate.

I think that's fair enough. My parents stopped supporting me the day I started my first job and have never given me a penny since then. They still work, my dad earns a couple of hundred thousand a year despite being in his mid 60's, they have a large mortgage free house worth about £1.3M and at least half a dozen BTL's. Apparently we will be well off when they're gone and it's all tied up in various trusts for tax raisins. But at the moment, nothing, not a penny. And that's fine, they earned it, they should enjoy it. So no, YANBU.

It's generational theft on a large scale- don't kid yourself that sum how this is deserved and all down to 'your' hardwork. You along with many other boomers are Saga's greatest customers due to your generations voting dominance and the self serving policies in place that we are impoverished by. Thankfully, some of our parents understand this fully and aren't allowing this to happen to their children. My DH is an Architect. I'm a professional but we live in a 2 bedroom flat with our two DC, no pension, no savings, no holidays. We only own the flat because our parents did help with a deposit.

Some not 'sum'

But this is'a generational issue whereby one generation has been disproportionately advantaged financially through property and then gets further advantaged through government policy

This sounds a little like politics based on envy. I don't begrudge people that were fortunate enough to buy a property that increased in value. I wish them well and if the choose to rattle about in huge house they bought and paid for, so be it. The property challenges people face now are not of their making. Successive governments have failed to deal with this particular issue properly. It's unfair to bash people that were lucky enough to benefit from the property market.

Not bashing, but commenting on what is a societal, generational issue which needs to be addressed.

I'm coming up to retirement after working for almost 50 years. Whilst I have a private pension and state retirement pension to look forward to, I can see that younger generations will, in all probability, work for longer than that and will have a harder time accruing their pensions. A previous poster mentioned that life for us in the 1970s was difficult (strikes, very high interest rates etc) and it was too. But what we didn't have to contend with was the fragility of jobs; zero hours contracts; hefty student loans to pay back and lower wages for unskilled workers. It was with that in mind, that led me to give (not lend) an amount of money to my children when they needed a helping hand for house deposits. I suppose I could have kept the money for a cruise or bigger faster car. But would it have given me the same pleasure as seeing my kids, and their families, on the road to a secure future, with decent homes and a little less worry? Never.