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.

I just cannot understand your attitude , begrudging your parents what they have worked for and earned! Jealousy is a nasty thing!

It sounds like they moan a lot when you visit them. Just limit the visits to a few times a year and suck it up. That's life. It is never easy.

At least you can be happier than they are and not moan at all (and if you do moan try to find ways to look on the bright side instead).

My daughter just got engaged and will get married next year. There is some happy news for all of us.

@GreenlandTheMovie I can guarantee if you had said your friend was behaving like this most posters accusing you of jealously or bitterness would have a different reaction.

I think it's because the news and charities etc always talk about struggling pensioners (which many are struggling on tiny state pensions etc) and they just lump themselves in with that.

Owl55 they didn't work for it. They've had 2 substantial inheritancies, but lie and say they received nothing. In no way do their pensions support the lifestyle they have and in no way have they worked for what they now have. Even final salary pension schemes have their limits.

I also suspect their friends have quietly dropped them too because of their incessant one-upmanship. It's not great to listen to.

Xenia I love your attitude. Looking forward to family events is great. We don't have that in my family, but it's a far more healthy attitude.

@Rhayader

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 am WASPI age and to be honest I knew in the 90s that my pension age would go up a lot of us did, HOWEVER why do you assume you will be working more years then they will even if you cant retire until you are 70, that's because a lot of them started work earlier, I left school at age 15 and reach pension age next March , I will have worked for a few months shy of 51 years, if you retire at age 70 and left school 16 yes you will work 4 more years then me, but if you left school later and went to uni you will not have worked as long as I and 1000s of WASPI age women did.

TBH your comment about paying tax for other people to retire is one of the reasons why 2 days ago I applied online for mine, I wasn't going to, I was going to defer it seeing as how I am going to keep working and take out my private pension, I would have been happy delaying taking from the public purse that I am paying into but the urging of my DS who kept telling me to take it and comments like yours and others on other discussion boards has persuaded me to go for it, of course when I do get it it will be added to my wages and private pension and I will be paying more tax, tax that pays for everything yours does including other peoples pensions and working age peoples benefits, tax that unlike you I don't begrudge paying.

BTW I didn't buy a house for 2 buttons and a piece of string it look me and DH 10 years to save up for a deposit while paying rent, and even then we couldn't afford much

Older people will always tell younger people how much harder they had it and still have it

SOME older people will. Can't generalise! I know many "older people" including myself, who would never say that!!

Yes, I had some hard times when I was young, but NOTHING like the situation younger people are in these days!1 I struggled to save for a mortgage but the proportion I needed in proportion to my salary was miniscule compared to the equivalent for people these days. I had a full student grant, NOT a loan! I worked very hard all my life in an environment that meant I ended up with a final salary pension which keeps me comfortable at the very least. I am not rolling in money but I am certainly ok! I have just been given my Old age pension and Freedom Pass.... and received a £10.00 Xmas bonus (ridiculous!)

So ...I have absolutely NO idea how any older person in my position or better (I couldn't afford a second home in France or anywhere else!) can possibly claim that things are hard for them compared to the younger generations!!

There are of course many OAPs not so fortunate but when one is fortunate then there is no excuse for ANY moaning at all about one's financial situation¬!

Also just wanted to say OP that I think you have every right to be annoyed with your parents. I cant believe they complain about money and have absolutely no insight or care for others!

As mentioned, my parents are baby boomers (generation born between 1946-1964) and they are concerned for my siblings and I as they fully realise that our generation (millennials born between 1981 and 1996) are much worse of generally. That has been proven and not something that millennials say just for the fun of it.

My parents could both rent a 1-2 bedroom on their one salary in their twenties in an expensive capital city. Both also owned their own car when they were single. My siblings and I have no hope of that. Non of us own our own car (I've had my license for 10 years). All of us also have rented for years in a flat share with strangers, no hope of renting a flat alone or buy a property. One of my siblings is also a scientist on a good income, shes saving as much as she can to hopefully buy a small 1 bedroom flat in 2 years time.
I live with my partner in a house he owns. He managed to buy it because he got a small inheritance when younger and used it as a deposit on a £100k house 15 years ago. I'm putting myself on the mortgage of this house, I wouldn't be able to get the deposit for even a cheap house anytime soon so feel very very lucky that I have this option (I'm not married)

I'm saving in an investing ISA monthly for my toddler as I want to make sure she has money for either a house deposit or university. I also dont expect to have a state pension when I get to pension age which sucks as if I hadn't moved from my home country I would benefitted from the best state pension in the world

I think it depends where you come from. If you come from poverty (on both sides my family had coal miners etc) then you are comparing with different things from other people making comparisons and every family differs. Without doubt certain things are very hard in particular generations specific to them. I graduated in 1982 ., We had worse unemployed at 3m than even today and on a smaller population and it was the worst for 50 years. Also 85% could not go to university.

if people can just pay it forward to their children either by love, care or if they have it spare money then that's fine but it's their choice. If parents are moaners and awful their children won't want to see them. That tends to be more off putting than whether or not parents have given particular sums to children. Eg I chose to ensure my 5 had no student loans and I have worked full time without even a break for babies since 1983. Other women work an awful lot less and their children have student loans or other women cannot get jobs ever and others are rich but know that most people don't pay back the student loan so it can be foolish to do what I did and fund it instead.

I deliberately chose to have a lot of children and a full time career rather than go after loads of money as money once you have a reasonable amount is not really something that makes you very happy although it is nicer to have it than not.

I have been doing a lot of work on our faimly tree on all sides back to the 1700s so thinking about our ancestors. There are so many of them once you get back that far but other than one who was a freeman (he owned a few houses he let out in the 1700s) none of them seem to have had much at all.

My parents have always been very aware of the huge stroke of luck they had being able to retire in their early fifties with over a million pounds worth of assets plus a final salary pension which would be the equivalent of about £60k a year gross if it was paid out and taxed in the UK. All from one income, from a guy who left school a week after his 16th birthday with a couple of O-levels. Oh, and they privately educated two DC at boarding school. They have helped DSis and I hugely on the housing ladder, and of course by letting us stay in the family home in southern Europe for cheap holidays. They genuinely knew full well we'd never get close to what they had without extraordinary slices of luck which just haven't materialised.

But the boasting! I sooooo feel your pain, OP. DF (widowed now) lives by choice in one of the poorest parts of Europe - a place where minimum wage comes in at under €400 a month for a full time worker. Prices reflect this, so his massive pension income goes even further.

Every time he comes to visit us he complains about the cost of absolutely everything in Britain and reminds us that he would only have to pay X for the same thing back home. Every time we serve him a tuna steak from Aldi - a real luxury for us - he'll tell us how little it would have cost him to buy one three times the size, and how he could eat tuna steaks in a restaurant every day if he wanted. If we open a bottle of wine, it's a case of pantomine wonderment at the price. Then he makes fun of the fact that when he's not staying with us we'll eat rice and beans a couple of times a week to save money because in reality, despite four degrees between us, my DP's solicitor's salary (15 years experience) which is just about keeping us afloat is less than two thirds of his retirement income and he's not servicing a £200k mortgage out of that.

He lives in a world where you can get any job you want, for life, by walking up to the employer of your choice and asking for it. He just doesn't believe me when I tell him I've applied for 79 jobs this year and have had the grand total of one reply. As he reminds me, he's only ever applied for three jobs in his life and got offered all three of them.

It's exhausting.

@GreenlandTheMovie

The only people I've ever known who have lied about inheritances have been Executors who opted out of distributing Estates as per the Will's instructions, and kept the money for themselves.

My dps can be a bit out of touch with money sometimes and the value of things. They don't complain they are poor because they have been poorer in the past when they had children and phases of unemployment. But they just don't have a clue on my expenses yet still try to offer advice which is so out of touch with reality.

For example, I live in a very expensive city in a small apartment with my dh and child. Ideally we would have another bedroom but start looking for apartments any bigger than ours and we would need another 250k at least. Plus there are very few for sale and they are snapped up immediately. Considering my dps 3 bed detached house is worth around 150k (northern, rural area) they find this unfathomable.

So when I explain for the thousandth time we just can't afford a bigger place, I get advice like "well you subscribe to that bottled water service. Couldn't you save some money there?" Because to them bottled water delivered to your door is a luxury that only the very rich could afford.

However i could unsubscribe from bottled water for a decade and still not have enough money to buy a bigger place. I could unsubscribe from EVERYTHING and still not have enough. I have disposable income, but I don't have 250k a year disposable income.

There is this idea that if you can afford anything you don't need, then you must be able to afford to "better" yourself. They don't realize the cost of "bettering" yourself (further education, homes, etc.) are at much further goal posts than they were before. It's not just a case of save for a few years and you will get there. Some things are simply unattainable. So just let me sip away on my fizzy water and watching Netflix in peace thanks.

Cat bear, I think it's a strange mentality re the water.

Perhaps it's because they budget for everything? But even then, dh and I do and if I wanted delivery water it would come from the budget?

I know very wealthy people who panic about spending small sums as if it bankrupt them? Eg sweating over not getting the cheap car parking space and having to pay 50p (as a one off)!!

Or panicking over spending 5 pounds on a gift!!
AS if that's it.. Their every penny will be drained and they will be shackled into a life of punery.

I agree little savings mount up, but the budget should allow for savings so other money can be spent guilt free.

Otherpeoplesteens He lives in a world where you can get any job you want, for life, by walking up to the employer of your choice and asking for it.*

I hear you. And no quarterly reviews either. It resonated when a previous poster said that even setting up as a childminder was much easier then and now you need to jump through hoops to register.

The only people I've ever known who have lied about inheritances have been Executors who opted out of distributing Estates as per the Will's instructions, and kept the money for themselves.

They're definately lying about something and they keep talking about money so much that, in the way that people talk about the thing they're lying about ... well you get my drift. GF's family home didn't disappear into thin air, it was worth around 600k and he died in it, not in a nursing home. And DF's DB ran a successful business and had a house and DF was his only relative. Could have remortgaged I suppose but the spending definatley went up since he passed away. They swear point blank that they didn't inherit anything from either but under Scots law they would have automatically been entitled to a certain amount anyway as the only living relatives (and so would I and my 2 DBs I believe although its a smaller proportion).

So why would they lie? Possibly because they've kept the money for themselves, possibly because they've given one DB a whack load of money for a house but don't them to keep stum because the other two of us haven't got anything (DB2 and I both think its DB1). This sort of thing is horrible, really. But in conclusion, I've sadly come to realise that my DPs are not nice enough people who get their children wanting to spend a lot of time with them. They don't deserve it.

I just love my mum who is 82 she owns a large 4 bed house in London with a nice pension. I don’t get anything from my mum, I don’t want anything from my mum - I just want HER - the realisation of my mum getting older that’s what I’m sad about. I know realistically she hasn’t many years left on this earth with me that’s what I worry about. Therefore I cherish the days with my mum rather than watching what she has, how she got it and what she does with it. Have you ever thought why, as parents get older, their children feel they know better. Have you ever thought you will soon be that senior parent with a middle aged adult child who you will hope won’t be begrudging what you have, how you got it and what you do with it. It’s so sad OP and others with similar views I will enjoy reading the backlash and then sign out of Mumsnet singing, oh you can join in with me OP, let’s all join in:-

There's a sad sort of clanking
From the clock in the hall
And the bells in the steeple too.
And up in the nursery an absurd little bird
Is popping up to say cukoo!
Cukoo! Cukoo!
Regretfully they tell us
But firmly they compel us
To say goodbye to you.
So long
Farewell
Aufwiedersehn
Goodnight
I hate to go and leave this pretty sight
So long
Farewell
Aufwiedersehn
Adeiu
Adeiu Adeiu
To yieu and yieu and yieu
So long
Farewell
Au 'voire
Aufwiedersehn
I'd like to stay and taste my first champagne
So long
Farewell
Aufwiedersehn
Goodbye
I leave and heave a sigh and say goodbye
Goodbye!
I'm glad to go I cannot tell a lie
I flit I float
I fleetly flee I fly
The sun has gone to bed and so must I
So long Farewell
Aufwiedersehn
Goodbye--
Goodbye...
Goodbye...
Goodbye...
Goodbye...

@TheRubyRedshoes it's about two things I think:

• the disagreement with spending money on luxuries because it is frivolous

Combined with

• the naivety that going without a few luxuries will financially enable you to buy a house

When in reality those luxuries are now basics (think internet, Netflix, phone) because other parts of society have fallen away or these luxuries have just replaced other habits (my water is refilled bottles provided by a company, replacing their habit of drinking water only with Robinson's squash back in the day)

And in reality, unless your relatives donate or leave you behind a 50k deposit, you are not going to make it on the property ladder. If you save 5k a year for ten years you will finally have your 50k, by then prices have increased and the goal post is just as far if not further as it was in the first place. Meanwhile you have been paying off student loan payments only to realize you have hardly made any dent in your debt because it was all interest.

honeyqueen just because you enjoy you DM company doesn't mean everyone else does. What a load...

of toot!

@Insanelysilver

Very curious about your parents past careers. Your mum having been a teacher and your Dad some sort of computer engineer. Neither of those jobs sound like they’d usually command income and then pensions that would allow them to retire at 50 with the lifestyle you’ve described. Do you think maybe your parents were actually Russian spies or manufactured drugs in their basement? Or maybe they won the lottery a few years ago and didn’t which allowed them to retire so comfortably lol

They're was a period in the late 1990s where a load of headteachers jumped ship in their 50s - I think before new rules surrounding pensions came into play. That, plus a combination of careful tax efficient savings/investments (I think they bought a couple of 2nd hand insurance policies or something dodgy sounding like that), a small inheritance from my mother's father and being incredibly tight for many years, meant that my father was able to retire. They had already bought their retirement home in another part of the country (probably on an interest only mortgage) plus an investment flat and had been renting them out for years. So yes, it was possible for those on teaching incomes in the South East to do this.

I really feel for you, you DP sound awful. How can anyone live that way... actually wanting to spend every penny and live in a nursing home when the time comes. I feel they are missing out in the joy they could be having spending time with their children and grandkids. Good luck with them... and you know karma has a way of greeting them

''another mans sees trash and another man see trusure .''
my great grandmother was the back bone of my family , she worked full time on low salary . looked after nine kids in total . lived to see three generations . she kept working in till she had stroke in her late sixties but she was always happy . she did not see her live as hardship , it was her normal . my grandmother always inspired me , I have always looked up to her and I always hope I am doing her proud . I don't compere my life with my grandmother because I don't think its not fair . my cousin husband salary 80k a year she don't work , they live extremely comftable live, nice house , nice cars , nice holidays abroad , nanny around the clock to look after the one child and cleaner and house sitter to look after two pedigree cats while they away . my cousins moans and whinges just hard her life is . I don't never ever envy my cousins life and think she a pain in the ass . life is never perfect but if its not picture perfect my cousin not happy . having lots of money turned her into spoilt snowflake princess that nobody likes , she has no friends . my grandmother was loved by everyone and had lots of friends . she was always smiling and having the time of her life . my great grandmother had no money to pass on but passed on her wisdom and her strength straight down to me which is priceless . my wisdom tells me hardship is not generation thing its how you choose to see life . I have grown up appreciating things in life I have and ability to chase my dreams and make them work , I don't earn 80k a year . my income is a lot less but my heart is full of love and happiness and my live is meaningful and I got plenty of food and roof over head that keeps me warm and clean clothes on my back and friends that sick by me , anything else is an added bonus or luxury that shouldn't be taken for granted , but always appreciated and thankful for. my great grandma generation lived through war and the great depression so her live can't been easy at times .

That was a bit of weird post HoneyQueen.

As mentioned, my parents are baby boomers (generation born between 1946-1964)
A bit off topic, but the boomer generation span is ludicrous. There is very little life similarities with a 56 year old and a 74 year old. There was rationing until 1952, women could not get a mortgage in their own name until the '70s, the comprehensive school system became the norm for those in state schools now in their 50's etc. etc.
I would argue a 56 year old has more common life experience with a 40 year old than a 70 year old- women certainly.

@grifffendor
So true ! There is a saying that people are as happy as they choose to be . I think there is a lot of truth in that.
I agree that attitude of mind ( and heart ) is more important to happiness than any amount of wealth.
Some people will always moan and be unhappy no matter what !