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.

It sounds depressing to me having no friends and no interests and spending all your time thinking you're hard done by rather than enjoying what you have. Your DPs sound very odd ppl OP. They don't sound very happy.

Both my DM and DF worked full time all their lives - mum only stopped to have 5 children 😂 - they had to pay for a lady to come in and help with childcare as there weren’t any other sorts of childcare- by the time we were a bit older we were latch key kids. We had a large house but only because parents worked full time. We didn’t have holidays- both parents commuted to London daily so left at 6am and home at 7pm. Dm did all cooking in advance- and we all learned to cook early in and have their tea ready. Both retired at state pension age.only heist cleared mortgage by then.they always were able to see how life had changed and were highly intelligent and able to see for themselves how others struggled. They didn’t complain.please don’t generalise

Btw ‘heist’ should be just 😂😂 my parents didn’t hold up any banks to clear the mortgage 😂

@PamDemic

'm sorry, I think it's judgmental to say "boomers, oh they have no idea". Just because some babyboomers have a nice pension and a house, many don't, and all have gone through different challenges to us. My mum who has a lovely final salary pension scheme certainly has lots of ideas about what life is really like, some of which I have no clue about. Life was bloody hard for her bringing up her family in the 70s and 80s, and opportunities for her when she was young were non existent.

This is the first post in the thread that mentions boomers as a generation, all the comments before this are talking about the PPs own parents.

It's easy enough to find the data that show that the silent generation spent the smallest percentage of their income on their mortgage, then the boomers, the GenX and the millenials pay the most, even with the low interest rates we now have. It's also been heavily reported that the millenials will be the first generation to be poorer than their parents, with the boomers being the generation that saw the biggest jump in lifestyle.

As a general comment I think every generation sees their parent's world contracting after retirement and so they start obsessing about things that are less important, and obviously for some people this is worse than others. I'm not actually convinced early retirement is all that good for people who are in good health. It's seen as some kind of ideal but I'd rather reduce my hours and go down a grade or two to a less stressful job than stop altogether, at least before ill health kicks in. I think not working isn't great for your mental health, even if the not working is a fairly luxurious lifestyle.