To Think My Parents Have No Idea What Life Is Really Like?

[GreenlandTheMovie]

for most people?

DM was a teacher, DF some kind of computer repair engineer but took early retirement at 50. Yes, 50. Never worked again. Both on final salary pension schemes.

They were moaning this week about how "poor" they are, because their pensions don't entitle them to more than index-linked increases to keep up with inflation, unlike people in salaried jobs who can get actual pay rises (I haven't had much of a pay rise in the last decade but theres no telling them). Apparently, they don't have enough money to "do the things they want" without using their savings.

The "things they want to do" include having a large holiday home in France where they normally decamp 6 months of the year, having a Carribbean cruise and a holiday to China last year, similar holidays in previous years, and running their 5 bedroom house. They have a nearly new luxury motorhome and 2 cars. They have also benefitted from 2 large inheritances from relatives dying.

Theres no telling them - apparently, life is very unfair and hard on pensioners like them and retiring at 50 is not at all unreasonable because of the way the company was run.

but the difference I see is that renters in the 40s/50s/60s would tend to be lifelong renters vs today’s 27 year old renters are likely to become homeowners at some point, just a bit later than people 20-30 years older.

I'm not sure that's the case, I think as you say it makes sense they become owners a bit later but I'm not sure if they will become owners as wages don't keep up with house prices.

In 1995–96, 65% of those aged 25–34 with incomes in the middle 20% for their age owned their own home. Twenty years later, that figure was just 27%.

And I found this

Distribution of home owners in England (United Kingdom) between 2018/2019, by age

Age group
Share of respondents
16-24
0.4%
25-34
9.1%
35-44
14.8%
45-54
20%
55-64
19.5%
65 or over
36.1%

@Zilla1 I would agree.

Needing a degree or a postgraduate degree for a decent job, which you pay a fortune for at uni

@Plussizejumpsuit

Except you don't pay a fortune. You get a loan which the majority of students won't ever repay. But at least you can go to university whereas only a small % of "boomers" had that opportunity.

And if your work in the cultural sector is so unpredictable that you can't envisage buying a home, maybe you should get a, y'know, proper job like "boomers" had to.

I used to think my mum really grafted away as a teacher, and I guess she did..40 years of work ! that's what I used to think and was happy for her when she took early retirement at 62 and lived comfortably on savings and a teachers pension.

Now I'm approaching my 35th year of working life, and looking like another 20 to go at least, and when I do retire it will state pension, a very meagre work pension and probably some inheritance.

I will be too old and knackered to enjoy it I would imagine as well.

It was the norm 40-50 years ago for women to not work. They were housewives

Not the working classes. Women always worked. Often same jobs as men but for less pay.

maybe you should get a, y'know, proper job like "boomers" had to.

What's a proper job?

What's an improper job and where are they advertised? Sound more fun.

My dm is an. NHS nurse in her 60s and won't be able to afford to retire for a few more years yet. My df is an industrial chemist (lots of quality type work), is older again than my mum, still rents a little two bed terrace in a frankly shit part of the city (lots of deprivation, crime, drug use, poverty etc).

They are both boomers and have both been properly poor when they started out, they know full well how difficult it is.

My dgm on the other hand...

Please don't assume all pensioners are this fortunate! I lost a lot of pensions through the old 'non-contributory pension' rip-off that you lost if you left somewhere before 5 years, and got royally ripped off with annuities last/this year. And I worked until I was almost 66 years. As did (does) my DH.

@Bathroom12345 my relative would like to downsize but begrudges stamp duty on her next home & says she can't afford it. She will make 1.5m on a bad day, I don't get it!!!

I do want to address the interest rate thing. I remember my heart sinking on Black Wednesday 1992, when the interest rate briefly rose to 15%. It went down to 12% (same day or next day I think).
But as PPs mention, our house - bought in 1990 - cost £28k. So our mortgage was still less than one fifth of our joint income, which wasn't uncommon back then. A lot of people still lost their homes though.
Of course interest rates work both ways. When my eldest was born in '97, I put half of my maternity pay into a 10 year fixed bank bond for him, which doubled in value in those 10 years, and I was able to give this to him when he went to university. I'm not trying to stealth boast, just point out that returns on cash like that are the stuff of dreams these days.
So basic needs such as a home of your own were definitely more within reach 30 years ago.
'Luxuries' less so. I didn't get a washing machine until I married in 1996, as even a fairly basic one was over £500. Although thinking about it, I miss the cheap service washes you could get at the launderette (everything washed, dried and folded).
I'm probably being rose-coloured in my optics towards the past. But all things considered, I think young people have a harder time getting 'launched' today.

It was the norm 40-50 years ago for women to not work. They were housewives
40 years ago was the 1970s not the 1870s.

As to home ownership, MN is very London focussed. Where I live houses are cheaper and my eldest at 24, a teacher, is by no means the first of her friends to buy their own home.

And they need to pay for a bloody gardener instead of expecting DB (who has a full time job and 3 young children) to do it all, if they insyst on living in a house with elaborate half acre gardens.

Maybe your DB just needs to learn to say no? It's not like they can actually make him do it.

One thing most posters haven't mentioned is the high unemployment that was in the 80s and a lot of people lost their houses because they couldn't pay their mortgages. London seemed to be full of people on mega salaries whilst the rest of the country scraped by ,if that. We do have a nice house but we have no savings to help our children.

Do you challenge them on the things they say?

My mum and stepdad are like this, but I don't think it's because of their age. It's because they're just generally privileged and out of touch with reality. Stepdad loudly complains to everyone who will listen how hard it is to afford taxes when you have a salary over £200K a year, while at the same time, ranting about how unreasonable and unsustainable it is to raise the NMW.

I am NC with them now (for reasons more serious than the fact they are out of touch with reality), but when I wasn't, I used to get a mouthful about how hard it is to try to plan trips to visit (they are now a flight away), how expensive the flights are, how many changes they need to make to get a good deal. Yet they get paid at least £6000 a month in pension. Which no doubt they have worked hard for, but they are clueless that this is significantly more than 99% of working people's monthly incomes.

Galling though it may be, my 70 something year old mum is impoverished, homeless and in our spare room, so thank your lucky stars yours are self-funding! You don’t know how lucky you are!!!

I wouldn’t mind but my parents behave as if they are fabulous property developers. No, your house just happened to quadruple in value (I expect it all to go on care home fees). That’s good luck, not genius!

Oh and my stepgrandmother got a pension of £25,000 a year from the company my stepgrandfather worked for until she died at 95. She never worked in a job in her life!

And their mortgage was subsidised by the taxpayer via 'mortgage interest tax relief'. The deal was the more interest you paid, the more tax relief you got (as I did). But, it's funny how boomers seem to have total memory loss when it comes to 'mortgage interest tax relief'. Not a subsidy available today, of course.

I won’t retire until I’m 70 but try and tell that to a WASPI and they will tell you that their pension age shouldn’t be increased because “they have worked all their life”. What do you think I’m doing? Paying taxes to pay for them to retire earlier than I will.

I wish I could buy a house for 2 buttons and a piece of string like they did.

I think a lot of people struggle to understand other people's situations, we all tend to think of our experiences as being the norm.

For example, a lot of people on MN are based in the South and don't get that you can buy a lovely 4 bedroom house in a nice area for £200,000 in some part of the country.

Or another thread that's been running has people saying it's better to live some life before having kids and it's fine to start a family in your 40s while others are saying that you should be done have kids by 35.

All different experiences, all equally valid and people should really stop bemoaning other people's lives.

I'm going to go down in flames because of this. It's not the boomers fault. The interest rates were horrendous, houses were being repossessed everywhere. Then the banks increased their lending to encourage people to borrow more, which in turn drove the property prices up.

Strangertimes Do you challenge them on the things they say?

Good question. Not really, for 3 reasons:

1. I don't see them that often, perhaps once every 3 months - the main reason I don't see them that often is because they start doing this competitive money talk, and I figure that for the short time I have to see them, I can keep stum.

1. When I have tried to say something DF gets aggressively angry and accusative and critical of other people in a really nasty way. Its not something I care to listen to. If you make a general, low key remark on how difficult it is for example for young people to get on the property ladder now, it will start them off on a double rant of how they never had the chance to go to university (they did; DF wasn't clever enough and DM dropped out but still managed to become a teacher as that was possible then), they had to deal with a short period of high interest rates and how much they "struggle" on their pensions.

1. Even if you make a good point, DF will later get you back for it by making some passive aggressive remark about how "older" cars are'nt any good (they change their car every 2 years and motorhome every 3) or how DB's wife should work harder (she is part-time having 3 children under 7).

I am sure that, deep down, they know all of the latter is nonsense but they seem to be in deep denial that they worked for all their good fortune (rather than benefitting hugely from relatives dying young) and this sort of rather brash talk is some attempt by them to gloss over it. Or something like that.

Its honestly like dealing with a pair of particularly spoilt, indulged children at times, and they are becoming more demanding of time and effort provided from us 3 as time goes on (they are early seventies and in good health too!)

Their talk of poverty was actually quite convincing for a while, if you could overlook the large (and it is large) French holiday home but then they started taking all these exotic holidays - in the last few years, they've been to India (didn't like it and couldn't wait to get home), China, Brazil, Turkey, and 2 cruises so therefore the Caribbean and the US. It was quite a surprise to us kids, and yes, DB is expected to mow their lawn while they're away.

I honestly don't think theres anything I could do to make them aware of how lucky they are or to think of people less fortunate. They just say they've worked hard all their lives and intend to enjoy their retirement because they deserve it.

My parents are pretty good about realising it's different, they worked past retirement too. They pay my kids hall fees thankfully