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AIBU?

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Original poster

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

740 replies

Dojos · 12/04/2018 21:20

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?

OP posts:
Bumper1969 · 12/04/2018 23:39

It's hardly elderly parents jobs to provide for adult children? What warped sense of entitlement is this? I find it morally abhorrent to expect this.

mancmummy1414 · 12/04/2018 23:39

My parents are very rich, all self made and when they were my age with a young family they were poor, making ends meet.
As we are now.
I would never ever dream of wanting them to to provide for me or acting like some sort of entitled trustee!
They help us out (lending money, treating my DC, babysitting) whenever we ask for it or need it but we are adults and it is our job to provide for our own families / selves.

Housesforkids · 12/04/2018 23:40

Bluelady
But that's what it was like for us lucky boomers, you want the same situtation as us or want a progressive expensive society?

CherryChasingDotMuncher
You Millennials had your chance to buy cheap homes in the 2008 crash house prices in 2010 to about 2014 dropped to late 90's prices, if you bought you are laughing now.

Did you not buy a house in your generations luck of draw time is not why not?

GreenTulips · 12/04/2018 23:42

If you removed all immigrants there would be plenty of housing stock for Britains and house prices would be lower

Except the job market would crash, thousands out of work unable to afford and type of housing!

The NHS would be crippled - no more doctors or dentists not to mention the businesses they own and employee thousands of people
Their children were wouldnt need an education so that's the teachers sacked
Whole areas would no longer need shops, offices, schools, doctors dentists, buses, services like electricity/gas, hairdressers, groceries -

How would we even begin to plug the gaps??

Intheblackhole · 12/04/2018 23:43

Tammy - houses were not cheap when I bought. We bought in the boom. Then interest prices went up and we sold at negative equity. The reason it's more difficult to buy now is because the banks request larger deposits to be laid down as in the past many people got repossessed as they couldn't pay the mortgage.

I think it's a bit greedy to want other people's money and belongings.

Needmoresleep · 12/04/2018 23:44

My parents were loaded as was my brother. We were ok except that
I was working two jobs to make ends meet and had no money to spare. Yet I was the one expected to drive 300 mile round trips each weekend when my father became ill, and for the past decade has been responsible for overseeing my mothers care. She may live another decade with no memory at all.

Was I resentful when I sorted out her finances and realised how much there was. Yes. She never managed to give me a birthday or Christmas present, they did not pay for my wedding, nor would they look after DC. Not even for an hour.

She can’t take it with her, and it’s far to late to earn my respect or to build a relationship with her grandchildren. I am absolutely not going to be like this to my children.

Rant over! Feel better for it.

echt · 12/04/2018 23:44

Here's an angle on immigration and housing:

www.theguardian.com/housing-network/2016/jan/25/is-immigration-causing-the-uk-housing-crisis

Housesforkids · 12/04/2018 23:45

GreenTulips

Plenty of job as only the man will be working like during our generation, sure interest rates will be high and very hard to get a loan from the bank but that is the same as our generation.

Education standards dropping to what it was like in our generation who cares, you think us boomers had it so easy you can have it too.

CherryChasingDotMuncher · 12/04/2018 23:45

Houses

Are you on glue?

I'm not a millennial, and the luck of the draw had me buy my first property in November 2007 before the crash, so it's worth a lot less than what I bought it for. Not so much laughing as tutting in a very British manner (you'll like that you old racist) but hey it is what it is.

Did you not buy a house in your generations luck of draw time is not why not?

Because my crystal ball broke in 2006. It'll be the fault of those pesky immigrants

Bluelady · 12/04/2018 23:46

Once again where were all these cheap houses in 2008-13? I've just checked the stats and house prices show a rise in those years. Can we have some proof, Houses?

Intheblackhole · 12/04/2018 23:46

And actually, traditionally, it's the children who should be helping and looking out for their elderly parents !
Not behaving like overgrown children in their thirties and forties never taking responsibility or growing up.

CherryChasingDotMuncher · 12/04/2018 23:47

Plenty of job as only the man will be working like during our generation

So in your Utopia are women just not allowed to work? What about single women? Or lesbians? How will they survive?

echt · 12/04/2018 23:48

So in your Utopia are women just not allowed to work? What about single women? Or lesbians? How will they survive?

CherryChasingDotMuncher · 12/04/2018 23:49

Once again where were all these cheap houses in 2008-13? I've just checked the stats and house prices show a rise in those years. Can we have some proof, Houses?

YY, and it's not like banks were chucking money out to people to borrow. Even those with substantial down payments and a good credit history.

Housesforkids · 12/04/2018 23:49

CherryChasingDotMuncher
We didn't have a crystal ball when we bought either but now you are all complaining because we got a house through hard work to raise our family.

Women will do like we did in our generation Millennials claim was so good and easy.

Bluelady · 12/04/2018 23:50

What's "our generation"? I'm 64 and have worked all my life, like most women my age. Are you really harkung back to the 1950s?

CherryChasingDotMuncher · 12/04/2018 23:51

Who's complaining?!

Women will do like we did in our generation

Can't wait - nowhere to work, no career progression, fewer female doctors and teachers, enormous pay gap and workplaces rife with sexual harassment. Everyone wins

quizqueen · 12/04/2018 23:52

Some ( not all, thankfully) of the younger generation, let's say those in their early 30s, seem to think they are owed something. They should not be comparing their present housing situation to someone who is retired now but instead should look at how that retired person lived when they themselves were in their 30s. They would find that, in a lot of instances, things would be very similar to their own personal circumstances.

If Dojos was my relative I would seriously consider writing her out of my will altogether with that entitled attitude. I worked, paid taxes all my life and budgeted carefully so I could look forward to a comfortable retirement, NOT so that I could sell up, give all my wealth to my kids and move to a small flat where I would be very unhappy with no extra space for grandchildren etc. to come and stay or have no garden for them to play in.

The housing situation as it is today has not been caused by little old ladies living in large 3 bed detached houses but it is because there are too many people in this country for the system to work as comfortably as it did in the past. Also, when I was younger the interest rates on savings were quite high but the mortgage rate shot up as high as 15% at one time. Now that situation is completely reversed and my savings bring in practically nothing at all. While I appreciate houses are very expensive to buy that is not the fault of the elderly. It is the high UK population which has caused the supply and demand for housing to push the system out of kilter.

My husband and I came from a council estate background so everything we have now has been through our own endeavours. When I had a young family, we didn't run two cars, have sky tv or go on many foreign holidays. We didn't smoke, eat out much or have similar luxuries which seem so common place now and we only had children when we could afford to do so and that is why, Dojos, in my mid sixties, I now live in a large house with no mortgage by myself and have never felt the need to be jealous of what other people have.

Housesforkids · 12/04/2018 23:54

CherryChasingDotMuncher
But that what all the Millennials say is so unfair that us boomers had so great.

Millennials want societies progress but not the cost that it brings and want take what we worked hard for.

HolyShmoly · 12/04/2018 23:55

Wait, houses is actually the man on Twitter who told me that women should be forced to leave the workforce when they get pregnant and stay at home till the families are raised. Apparently that would solve any unemployment as it would free up all the jobs for the mens. He couldn't see why there would be any issue with that at all.

still not relevant to OPs parents

Housesforkids · 12/04/2018 23:55

quizqueen

Housesforkids · 12/04/2018 23:56

quizqueen
Too true, Millennials don't know how hard it was for us boomers

TheMythicalChicken · 12/04/2018 23:57

It's hardly elderly parents jobs to provide for adult children? What warped sense of entitlement is this? I find it morally abhorrent to expect this.

Yet we’re expected to provide for them, in the form of pensions, despite us being far poorer and most of us with no hope of ever owning our own home.

THAT is morally abhorrent.

CherryChasingDotMuncher · 12/04/2018 23:58

Who gives a shit what millennials say. Let them have a whinge.

echt · 12/04/2018 23:58

Not sure quizqueen has described any kind of hardship.