AIBU to wonder why retired parents live in big houses and don't help family?

[Dojos]

Not judging the choice but i can't help finding it odd that you can have two sets off grandparents living in and owning several properties and adult children both in full
Time work struggling to make ends meet.

Bright enough and big hearted enough to know inheritance is a gift not a right, and rightly so. I'm just curious how parents can sleep In 5 bedroom homes they don't need at night whilst their good steady grown up kids struggle a whole Gang into a 2 or 3 bed semi.

I guess that applies further - why do the elderly generation not downside and keep the lifecycle of a family home going?

TheNoseyProject makes a very good point.

If your folks sell their house to get you on the property ladder will you remortgage to pay for their care? Hmmmm?

For me, it’s not so much the money, it’s the attitude of Baby Boomers that pisses me off. They just don’t get that they had it easy.

If your folks sell their house to get you on the property ladder will you remortgage to pay for their care?

Workers have paid the system.
Will the elderly in benefits with working children also expect them to remortgage to pay for their care?

No? Thought not.

One way system.

TheMythicalChicken
No Boomers did not, did you not read the post where a boomers mortgage was 70% of the average income, while modern families it's only 13% all the while they had higher costs of living.

You just don't know how to save and not blow you montley check on useless crap like sky tv, load of clothes, holidays outside the UK and takeway food and coffee.

if your folks sell their house to get you on the property ladder will you remortgage to pay for their care?

We have not spent all our working lives heaping up a little pile of money ( paying tax on it all the way) to have the Gov take it back.
I am giving it to my kids over these coming years so that by our 80s we will have very little. At that stage, it’s my observation that people travel and socialise less so we will need less money.

As far as care goes we have discussed this with our dc. They will between the 6 of them share/ subsidise the cost of live in care if we need it. I don’t want to go in to a nursing home but neither do I want to be a burden to them. We are thinking hard about putting in place an advance directive about this

The proposal for a dementia tax horrified me. I think I’ll just take a walk up the hill on a cold January night rather than see our hard earned family weath dribble away on this. Hope I have a nice quick heart attack whilst dancing the night away on my 80th Birthday. DNR.

kopa you don’t know anything about the poster to say that kind of stuff. We save as much as we can, we don’t go on holiday and we pack our lunch every day. Get a takeaway once a week, that’s our main treat. Stop making assumptions.

No Boomers did not, did you not read the post where a boomers mortgage was 70% of the average income, while modern families it's only 13% all the while they had higher costs of living

Those figures do not ring true to me Kopa.
When I first got a mortgage in the 1970s You could borrow 3.5 Times the husbands wage ( wives wage was not counted). You had to prove to the building society that you had saved with them for a year before you could apply for a mortgage. The 1980s were different in that those rules went.
My two dd and their partners mortgages cost far more than 13%

Totally agree with the mythical chicken. My parents paid 3k for their first home. OK, felt like a lot ta the time - 1960s. But no recogniton that nowadays costs many ££££s more... If I'm being honest, am appalled at parents' selfishness

Thinking about it in 1979 first house cost £11,OO0 husband at that time earned £6,000 or thereabouts. His wage went up quickly. I remember the conversation where we said if he earned £7,000 I could give up work and have a baby. I earned about £5,000 We were rich!!

bellabelly
1960 3K house average wage £500 a year and one income family, mortgage is 6x the wage

Modern 150000K house average wage 26500 a year two income family, mortgage is 2.8x the wage.

Interest was also way higher back then making payments higher per payment too.

You look at a 3k for a house and think oh my so cheap but don't factor in the other costs of the time.

Kopa, I don’t have any of those things. And even with the best will in the world, I would never be able to save enough.

My first job I earned £5,500 per year and the average house price was £115,000. Considering half my wages went on rent and another £25 on childcare, how do you propose I could have bought a house?

TheMythicalChicken
5K a year and you had a child, how much did your husband take in?

You should have planned better, no way would we have a kid before making sure we had our home and wage sorted.

Kopa, I was engaged and planning our wedding when my fiancé died. I did not plan that.

... but to answer your question, before he died he was a labourer earning £20 a day. However, it was casual work and there were often periods of time where he had no work at all.

Still in the past, you would have been married and had the house bought before even thinking of having that first kid.

TheMythicalChicken
£20 a day casual work, not married, no way would you have had a kid if it was the 60's

You’re missing the point Kopa. I would never have been able to afford a house, kids or no kids.

So to address your last post Kopa, you are saying that only wealthy people with property should be allowed to have a family?

TheMythicalChicken
Your missing the point if you where in the same situation in the 60's you wouldn't have been able to buy a house either.

It would be like trying to get a mortage on your husbands wage of 40p a day and not a fixed job with a pregnant unwed woman. In 1960 you would been seen as just and awful financial position.

TheMythicalChicken
No but they should expect if they have a child before they can afford it then they will never be financially secure.

It's easier to get qualified get a good job, married and house if you do it before getting pregnant. You bad choices is not the boomer generations fault, they wouldn't have made those choices as it was not the done thing to have sex before marriage.

Kopa. Peoples situations change as chickens story shows. Death, divorce unplanned pregnancy can all effect your carefully laid plans.

People who were 20 in 1960 and buying their first house are only the very first wave of the demographic of the baby boomers.

The real beneficiaries of the housing boom were buying houses in the 1980s when the impact of the deregulation of the financial markets made big mortgages easy to get and house prices soared. We honestly used to laugh about it. You could go on holiday for a fortnight and your house had gone up enough whilst you were away to pay for the holiday. It was and is mad!

nursy1
Sure prices went up but she is angry at boomers for no reason, they had it just as hard to get a house. I don't remember most 80's kids going on holiday for a fortnight and having branded clothes. If I remember right the 80's was a huge market and financial black spot.

kopa so why is it that my parents, both working class jobs, could buy a house and support two kids, whereas we both have middle class jobs and will never be able to buy a house? Our kids are dressed in head to toe Primani, we don’t go on holiday outside the country and we don’t even have a telly, we have the cheapest phone contracts available.

How old are you Kopa? Did you live through the 80s?

You don’t remember the Yuppies, the Loadsamoney sketch with Harry Enfield.
1980s kids ( mine included) lived in branded shell suits, had puffalumps, cabbage patch dolls, preppy brands like Lacoste and Alley Cappelino. Mum in her Dash tracksuit.

ThisIsTheFirstStep
Why did you have the kids before sorting the house? Your parents generation would never do that.