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?

SoyDora

That is another modern thing boomers didn't have. Maybe to make it so Millennials have it as fair as boomers Divorce should be made illegal.

Their perspective will be entirely different. A house that they own would probably have been a normal family house when they bought it but due to house price rises it is now considered an extravagant and unaffordable house for many.

so do what my child did and stay at your parental home while you save

My parents had plenty of room but there are not many jobs for scientists in the Highlands and Islands. Or quite a few other graduate careers that are big business as opposed to working for the state. Funnily enough the majority of my classmates who left to go to Uni never went back.

CountFosco
So they should sell up a place they love so you can buy a house in an expensive city?

I'd love to move somewhere smaller but then it would be awkward doing all the childcare we do with half a dozen GC. Somehow can't see me having them all to stay in the school holidays if I was in a one bedroom flat.

I'm in my 60's, live in a lovely 4 bedroomed house in the SE and DH and I keep talking about downsizing as our pensions are not sufficient to live on,
But I have grown up DC's living here (with their partners) as they cannot afford to buy/rent locally. Its a bit of a chicken and egg situation if we sell up we will have to move miles away from family and friends in order to release funds to give to the dc's and have something left to live on.
Retirement is supposed to be a time when you are winding down, not stressing about moving miles away, to live in a shoebox.

Hazel are your adult children contributing towards the household running costs?

@Hazel, why would you have to move away? Couldn’t you stay in the same area?

Presumably the issue she has is that her 4 bed isn't a mansion so if she downsized to a 2 bed bungalow in the same area the price difference wouldn't be enough. It's a common issue.

Ah, OK. Not suggesting she move, just curious as to the logic, but that makes sense.

My parents bought their first house for 2k but we weren’t well off during my childhood. Yes we had one week away camping or in a holiday camp, but it was a pretty average 70’s childhood. They really made sacrifices to send us to university as we only had half a grant (Both parents worked but in average jobs) They helped pay the fees when I took a 100% mortgage in the early 90’s. They are generous contributing to joint holidays etc now. They have quite a nice life now they are retired but their savings and value of their house won’t last for more than a few years if they are paying £1000 per week x2 in carehome fees. They are probably in the middle of the B.B. spectrum. Some bbs will be better off, some worse.
Their attitude was to help us as much as they could but continuing help isn’t expected. I would rather they spend their money on enjoying themselves now but they say it’s difficult to get out of the mindset of being frugal with their money because they had to be for most of their lives. They wouldn’t want to sell their house though, as that it the result of their hard work.
I very much want to pay their generosity forward to my own kids. I am where I am now because of the sacrifices they made. I want my kids to have the same benefits. I know they won’t have the same opportunities we had because it is so much harder for todays generation. Whilst we are in a better position than my parents were, we’ve made financial decisions and sacrifices that include making sure there will be a deposit for our kids. We could have been more selfish in our lifestyle choices.
I think people’s personalities, attitude to live now or plan for tomorrow and family relationships have a lot to do with whether people share their wealth or not. It’s not a matter of being entitled or whether people should downsize or not. It’s very much within the family culture and people’s self awareness that luck, sacrifice, prudent financial planning and hard work play a part. And it all does. They are all inter joined for every single generation. Blaming whole generations for individual choices and lumping everyone into one homogenous group with equal opportunities, is silly. But yes there is and was unfairness in life and opportunities.

Er, Kopa, exactly where did CountFosco state that she thinks her parents should sell up a place they love so she could buy in an expensive city? Nowhere. She simply said that staying living with her parents until she bought a house wasn't an option as there were no job opportunities in her chosen field where her parents live.

You seem to be wilfully misinterpreting posts in order to try and argue with people. Why?

I agree it is a culture thing once people have money (most of my family in the past did not have a bean and always rented (we are talking 10 children in one small rented house kind of thing). Once they have a bit of money then there will be what that particular family tinks is right. Most veyr rich people know it is very damaging to give Bill Gates Junior £10m on his 18th birthday as he will never then work so people like that and to an extent me too avoid that. My parents and my view was that we pay for your education including university and then you make what you can of your life with may be a bit of help towards property if needed.

I do think currently because wages have not risen for many people for 10 years whilst rents and house prices in cities with jobs have people with children are in a difficult current position. no worse of course than generaitons with the father sent to fight abroad and probably die for 5 years or the years I was just reading in my grandparents' letters from 1916 when bombs were falling on the UK, even the NE during WWI.

I think we should allow people (and I mean individuals not big house building companies_) to buy unused state land in cities for build a home on. We should help women reaslise that working full time although very difficult is one reason some of us are a bit better off and perhaps don't take too long off work when babies come howeve rnice that feels and go back full time. we should also merge tax and NI so that richer pensioners pay say 33% tax/NI combined rather than just 20% tax. We should remove a lot of the very expensive benefits for the old or make them only apply to those over 85.
perhaps we should give parents a right to set against their tax all their payments to children for university and all their payments to children for housing including when parents cash in pensions to pay for childrenm's housing (as I did and paid 45% of 75% of it to the state - lucky state).
We should make people realise living alone can be rather selfish and is one reason we are short of housing. May be give a tax break to those who keep their older parents in their house. Perhaps abolish inheritance tax entirely and ideally stamp duty land tax.

i think there comes a time when you say your dc are grown ups and responsible for themselves, although some people enjoy infantilizing their grown up dc.
We are downsizing as soon as ds2 is gone, hopefully that will be soon as he is 23.
We'll move from 4 bed to 2 bed bungalow, so room for dd 14 and when she leaves we'll have a spare room for visitors.
We'll spend what we gain, as our pension pot isn't too great, and we believe in children standing on their own two feet.

This is slightly cultural
Am from a S European background and parents don’t consider their job is done until the kid is housed. Sometimes at the expense of the parents, or via education into a well paid job.
At least this was the case for me and my relatives

My DH is from a culture where this is the norm, and I struggle with it at times. He wants to scrimp and save every penny 'for the children' and sees any inheritance that I may receive as the dc's money rather than mine. When my MIL died all of her possessions fitted into a carrier bag as she sold everything (including wedding jewellery) to pay for the dc's education, weddings and building houses. It does sort of go about circle then as the children are expected to care for the elderly, it would be very shameful to put your DP's into a home.

BiologiFemini 10.52, but that's what most of us are doing anyway? What we don't like is when we've finally got to the stage where we have our own lives back, young relatives are now discussing/deciding what we should do with our money, time, property! Is this what you do with your older relatives or do you feel grateful for everything they've done and leave them to get on with their lives?

So they should sell up a place they love so you can buy a house in an expensive city?

Not just a place they love, a place that has been in the family for 200 years. No, I never thought that they should sell it for me because I knew DB would inherited it along with the family business, but in fact my parents did downsize and build a 3 bed house for themselves when in their 60s. They had a lot of fun doing that and have an amazing architect designed house with wonderful views.

When DH and I bought our first house we got no help from either set of parents and didn't expect it. As I said much earlier in the thread we are now dealing with the consequences of PIL not downsizing in their 60s and that has reinforced my intention to downsize from our 4 bed when we retire to avoid that issue for our children (and indeed ourselves).

Can someone explain to me aren't prices relative?

So df brought firstly house for 3000 but surely its a ll relative and his wages would have been lower and a pound would stretch a very very long way?

Well, if it does cost one that much in petrol etc to run a car then surely you're using it to commute, which is how you pay rent or mortgage and council tax and all the unavoidables, yes? I don't think arguing with me about how much it costs supports the point I was arguing against, which was "Just give up your car and you can afford a house deposit".

In my case, road tax is £20, the car was £4k, insurance is £200, and it's never yet cost me anything in repairs. Giving it up and getting public transport would cost more, and I can't cycle because it's restricted 70mph dual carriageways.

quitw simply a single damillybearner couls provide a home - usually a standard semi and the expectation was you stayed for life.

Now the government are building starter homes, pods, flats, which you are meant to set up home and then move as and when children appear. For these starter homes you need two decent salaries and a huge deposit.

So yes it makes a big difference!

I think for prices being relative you have to go a way back, so it depends when these properties were bought. My dad was earning about £30k in the late 1980s, when they paid £90k for a house that's worth £350k now. Someone who is now the age he was in a similar job wouldn't get much more than £35k.

However in the 70s I think they paid £8k for a bungalow which was a financial stretch at the time.

It isn't entirely relative no. However, there is an argument that says that if you factor in interest rates it's more so. So right now they are relatively high but with low interest rates. This gives 2 challenges for house buyers: firstly raising a higher deposit and secondly concern that rates will go up.

The other challenge though is the cost of renting and living in general - which comes back to the deposit. Raising 20k + if you are renting is not an easy thing to do at all.

Yes it is hard to compare with the past. When my parents bought only my father was on the mortgage - even though my mother had worked as a teacher for 13 years supporting his studies. She made it go into joint names by about 1970. It was hard for women to get loans. When we bought we had to buy before babies on two full time salaries and were paying 12% interest and the deposit was hard to save up for (as we moved from the North to outer London - so massive difference in prices). If you currently pay say 2% that is a lot cheaper but it is 2% of a much bigger amount and your repayment mortgage part of it is repaym ent of a very large sum borrowed.

A dd recently paid £305k for a house that had last sold in 1971 - for £3100. OK, it's in a relatively expensive area, though not London.

If salaries have increased by anything like the same multiple in that period, it's news to me.
It wasn't as if the house was done up, either. Clean and liveable - but needing a great deal of updating.

Point being, I really don't understand parents who fail to grasp that even with the difference in IRs, then unless you live in a comparatively cheap part of the UK, getting on the housing ladder is a lot harder now.

The situation with my PIL is a bit strange. They are in a 5 bedroom house with a large garden. They moved there after two of their children had left home (previously in a 3 bedroom house with 3 children). So had 3 spare bedrooms from the day they moved in. I can see why they liked the area and the house at the time but 20 years later all they do is complain. MIL complains it’s too far to walk to the local shops and train station. She complains her house is too big to keep on top of the cleaning. She complains her walk to church is too far and up hill. (She can drive but chooses not to as she doesn’t like it). FIL can no longer manage the garden which was once his pride and joy. His health has deteriorated and he struggles to help out with most household tasks.

DH and SIL are expected to come over and do House maintenance. DH has spent countless hours replacing roof tiles, replacing garden fences, trimming really high trees. In the summer he is expected over once a week (but must be mid week only) to cut the grass. We do visit as a family every Sunday but he’s not allowed to do it on Sunday as his mother is very religious and it’s a sin to do garden work them apparently.

SIL goes over once a week to clean for them and does the food shopping as MIL refuses to go with her or do an online food shop as the internet is evil. PIL expect them to do this and any refusal is met with huffs and tantrums from PIL.

PIL Won’t downsize as other son (aka golden child) visits once every year or so (no longer in UK) with his 3 kids, wife and their live in maid. MIL says she needs all the space in the off chance they can be arsed to visit. Mind you when they do visit all PIL do is complain about them for weeks in end afterwards.

So yeah. I don’t understand this situation. They feel the house and garden is too big for them to manage. They feel like it’s too far away from shops etc. but they don’t want to move. They won’t pay for help or repairs (they can easily afford it) and expect DH and SIL to do the work for them. In this situation a smaller, more manageable house closer to shops would be better for them (and the sanity of everyone else). We are not interested in their money. We do not expect them to finance a house for us, just to make their own lives easier (and by default our lives easier as DH wouldn’t have so much extra House maintenance to do).