To resent my own family as they have more money than me?

[tacitonius]

AIBU? Ok maybe resent is not the correct word. I guess like everyone I just feel it’s unfair, that I have to work so hard for things given to others for nothing. I’m sure most people work hard.

My grandparents grew up in naice houses with domestic help. My dad too grew up with a stay at home mum and a dad who ran a family business, with cleaners and went to Eton but certainly not rich. upper middle class I suppose the pedants on mn would call it.

He was bought a very small house on a housing estate, where I was brought up. He worked around 30 hours a week and brought home a decent salary, we had holidays and I always had new school uniform. My mum worked very hard and did everything, absolutely everything around the house. He would always be abroad fishing or at the pub, where he would pretend to be from a normal working class background to fit in. Like the vast majority of the population, I went to a dire local comprehensive. We were always skint.

It seems he had everything and gave nothing.

Now working 50 hours a week and “highly educated” and making a good salary, I’ll still be unlikely to afford a decent lifestyle similar to his or be able to afford more than a tiny 2 bed flat here.

YABU. My upbringing has some parallels with yours, particularly private school to local comp and smaller accommodation than my father. Differences include that his parents would never have helped him (but left him money) and he didn't spend a lot - just totally lacked ambition, had poor luck and ended up low-paid.

I don't resent DFs life chances, although I feel sorry for him that he couldn't make more of them. He might well have done better starting from state school and a more modest background - as all his children did. My mum was SAHM by preference.

I help my children in small amounts but if they expected me to change my lifestyle to make them more money, that would stop. Once they are adults, they are on their own.

You don't say how many hours your DM worked, but between them perhaps DP worked more than 50 hours per week? GP were running a business which was more lucrative than employment, but spending less time with your DF, if he was a boarder. You aren't comparing like for like here.

DS looks at my sisters family (multiple houses and cars and renting yachts/planes) and is jealous.

But we aren't badly off, house, holidays, meals out compared to many contemporaries.

As I tell DS - you will always be able to find people better off and worse off than you, you need to take responsibility for your own life as an adult.

Comparison is the thief of joy.

Wise man, Roosevelt

You've been "highly educated" presumably at his expense

Gosh, really? Why say that? Sounds a bit off to my ears. I am highly educated and it was at my expense, I can assure you! My DF didn't contribute one penny. I assume the OP had a grant or loan and worked in a coffee shop like everyone else!

How much we owe our children is an interesting subject.

DH and I have worked hard at our own business. We were poor when our older kids were small, but in recent years, times have been very good. We have a nice house and have been able to be generous with our kids: driving lessons, cars, decent allowances for uni, funding opportunities for them etc.

However, we have made enough to live comfortably, but not extravagantly, for the rest of our lives, so we have retired mid fifties. There is still money in the pot to see the youngest two through uni, and a sum ring fenced for house deposits, and if the worst comes to the worst we'll downsize.

But I've been slightly surprised by the jokey-but-not-really-jokey comments from the kids, particularly the younger ones, that we should carry on working and make as much money as we can, basically for them. And the slight resentment that we are a bit more careful about our spending now.

I have good kids; they have always worked part time jobs at college and uni and the older ones work hard in their grad jobs; they know working is a drag, so this is not what I was expecting from them really.

At what point are parents allowed to put themselves first?

If one is an NHS consultant and the other a corporate lawyer on £100k, they have a combined income of more than £200k. If they can't save a deposit on that they must be beyond profligate. No sympathy whatsoever.

Haven't rtft not sure if you've mentioned your age or if any of your parents are still alive? Either way try to see the positives in your life and try to improve things if you can. It would be better if you don't let it eat away at you. If you do eventually you would still 'get over it' but in the meantime would have wasted alot of time and energy. Try to see the good in your upbringing and father. I know it's easy to forget it when you're caught up in your own situation, but there really are people much worse off.

Your father may have been able to do more to help you when you got older but he didn't. You may never understand fully why but I think you have to let it go.

He may well have been miserable at Eton away from his parents and resented being sent away. Maybe he looked at the working class lifestyle and decided they seemed happier so decided to go for that.

It does seem to have been unfair on your mother picking up the slack. What type of background did she come from ? If she was working class maybe her life was normal for her.

You seem to have done well for yourself and I think you should concentrate on that, maybe look into reducing hours, improving your quality of life and find poorer friends.

" tacitonius Tue 22-Jan-19 09:28:17

Xenia, what if I am one and dh is the other?wink"
You might be and then because of making a wise career choise you could be buying a house. People in our position in 1984 when I bought my first house in London zone 5 can buy the same house. The house costs £400k and if you are that corporate lawyer and in our case (my husband) head of department teacher you can still buy that house today and your interest rate will be closer to 3% not the over 15% we were paying at times.

I have not had this reader's problem as just about all our family a generaion or two ago were renting houses in Sunderland, down mines, in ship yards, in work houses, in boarding houses etc.... However one great uncle did qualify as a solicitor, did an LLB externally in the 1890s and he did better and his oldest sister qualified as a nurse (women were prohibited by law from being doctors I think in those days). The family in 1930s letters were very envious of the nurse's pension by the 1930s (they had no private pensions).

So I amn ot sure things are too different in 2019 from the 1890s. If yo pick well paid work you do well. I f you decide to become an actress or work in a shop you won'ton the whole.

So the next queston is what happened in your teens? Did you jlook as I did at what jobs wuold pay you a lot of money to achieve your aim of earning what grandparenst did? If not why not? It sounds like you got good qualification eg you might have a top 5 university degree 2/1 but after that chose low paid work. In which case you probably should be kicking yourself now for your bad choices and encouraging your daughters into high paid jobs rather than blaming it on your poor father.

Gosh, just when you think people can't get any more entitled. You had everything you needed as a child. As long as your parents agreed their lifestyles then this is totally fine. You're an adult. It's on you to create the lifestyle you wish, not to sit fuming no one is giving you hand outs.

I mean seriously, get a grip.

If one is an NHS consultant and the other a corporate lawyer on £100k, they have a combined income of more than £200k. If they can't save a deposit on that they must be beyond profligate.

That is interesting, who are you talking about here?

OP, who has intimated this is the case. Perhaps RTFT?

OP, who has intimated this is the case. Perhaps RTFT?

No she hasn't. She responsed to someone else's hypothetical pairing with "perhaps we are" and a wink.

I suggest you take your own advice.

I tihnk it helps people to take personal responsibility for things in life. It is very easy to say oh woe is me, nothing is my fault, nothing is caused by me, I am flotsom and jetsum floating around and have to take what life gives me. I have no agency, no control. Someone else is to blame for everything.

In my case I have strings of failures in all kinds of areas but I just keep on keeping on and it seems to come out okay as I don't give up. No point in blaming others.

Also some of the things society thinks are great like owning a house or a high paid job are not actually essentials for personal happiness. The generations of my family who never owned a property were perfectly happy renting - no oblgiation to fix the boiler if it breaks, able to move away on short notice. I know there are lots of downsides too but you can be happy even as in 1901 my grandfather was when sharing a boarding house with 26 other young men, presumably in many bedded rooms in Newcastle. He left school at 12 and was very proud to get his membership of the institute of estate agents in due course.

*Shambu
*
You can choose your own attitude but you can't dictate how other people might feel.

not everyone has to think and feel the same way

I think the issue is that your Dad benefitted from his parents sharing but he didn't pay forward the sharing gene.

That's hard that he was able to take but not give the same support (not in a financially equal way but of himself).

That's why I said intimated. Who's pissed on your chips this morning?

Names that’s a bit of a general statement.
I’m an in London and was raised in London

• parents were split up, mum worked 2 minimum wage jobs.
• dad gambled
• grew up on a council estate

I went to uni and got in to a great career that I love and have survived in London ever since I had enough savings that when DD was born and she became very sick I had enough for 3 years of survival money.
Nothing was ever handed to me and we survive ok.

If one is an NHS consultant and the other a corporate lawyer on £100k, they have a combined income of more than £200k. If they can't save a deposit on that they must be beyond profligate. No sympathy whatsoever.

This

And don't knock Xenia - she is a great advocate on here of women raising their aspirations beyond low paid work.

OP - my family had wealth - it was used to pay to educate the boys - and only the boys. My parents worked hard to be able to pay for me to have the same level of education as my deadbeat brother who messed around and dropped out of school 16. I followed in the footsteps of 4 of my female cousins in going on to university and then got myself a good job in the city. I earned my own money and am now the most materially successful of all of the cousins. OK I'm older than you and don't have student debt but if you have the earnings you say you have then you are perfectly capable of getting on the housing ladder - just maybe not in the area your trust fund buddies are buying. And I imagine that your grandparents "staff" were nearly all women who worked 15+ hour days for next to nothing, got an afternoon off a week and were not allowed "callers" or any other form of personal life. Not really a state of affairs we want to go back to even if it does mean you have to load your own washing machine and clean your own loo.

My grandparents went to boarding school at age 7, my dad went to boarding school aged 7, I was sent to board age 7... We all were damaged in some way by our childhoods. My grandad was an emotional void. My dad was regularly caned by sadistic monks, thankfully caning was banned in my school by the 1980s so I never experienced that.

Yes I had an amazing education but it came at great cost (both financially and psychologically).

Hopefully in later years my DC won't resent me for breaking the cycle and sending them to the local state primary school. We could in theory afford private fees but we prioritise spending money on things we enjoy and saving for our retirement.

For my entire childhood I was repeatedly told how lucky I was, how privileged I was to receive this education and all the opportunities I had. However when my 9 year old daughter climbs into our bed after she's had a nightmare and comes in for a cuddle I think she's the lucky one as I never had that opportunity for parental comfort.

Its so easy to think what if my childhood had been different and blame my family for the way my life has turned out but you can't guarantee that your life would be better now if you had the same childhood your parents experienced.

That's why I said intimated

She hasn't intimated any such thing.

Personally what I find most annoying with rich family members is how petrified they are you might want something despite never asking, hinting and always paying your share.

How terribly sad, that you’re letting your envy for your families financial circumstances impact on your happiness, OP. That’s not healthy and since you can do nothing about it, you really should try to be grateful for the childhood you had.

My parents both died in recent years and left no will. They left behind a very large house, farmland and successful business. There’s enough money for me to live in comfort for the rest of my life. I imagine that my four siblings are now fighting tooth and nail over who gets what, but I’ll leave them to it and not even show an interest in it. I’ll continue working on my own small business, seven days a week and looking after my youngest, who has SN. The reason I’m not interested, is because of the horribly abusive childhood, that resulted in me having no contact for over 30yrs. My siblings stayed under the same roof because, as my ‘d’s told me, they were going to make sure they got ‘their share’.

Imagine that. Staying in contact with that kind of parent for money! It’s like making a pact with the devil. Move on, OP. Be grateful for your good education and do the best you can with what you’ve been given.

I myself have had the problem of being surrounded mainly by people who are far better off than I am, and it's not a nice feeling. In my case it's not really about the money as such it's the security of having their own property. The difference is I have little chance of making money. I'm not young enough to start doing what I should have done years ago. As you work with people that seem to agitate you it won't be easy to avoid them I suppose. It's how I now cope. I avoid people as much as I can that make me feel salt is being rubbed in the (my) wounds. I know none of them mean it but I also mentally detach myself from them. I don't think that's the answer to your problems long term because I'm guessing you're young enough to get to where you want to be, and you don't want to have a life cutting people out that you would probably otherwise get on with. Hope that make sense and sorry to have slightly derailed!

You had a reasonably good life, op. Do you not love your parents? There's no such person as a perfect parent, they can't win a lot of the time. Maybe your dad was a bit selfish at times but if he and your mum got on quite well and managed to bring you up without great hardship, they didn't do a bad job.

As for earlier remark from a poster about you being brought up in poverty, the op certainly was not! She was no different to the vast majority of people in this country and has actually done quite well for herself. What's more, things will get better for her, they inevitably do as time goes on.

Stop contrasting your life against other people's, op, it never works. Even very rich people have problems, they have accidents, illnesses, die, are bereaved, have their hearts broken just like anyone else. They might consider you to be lucky!

Your father was an idle narc. Etonians can be odd little things, and not odd in a good way.

Acknowledge his deficiencies. It will be very sad.

On the upside, be more than grateful you've got out. At least you don't have to look after him in old age - you can't be grateful for what you haven't got.