Generational finances

[Mummyongin]

I don’t expect I can word this right/fairly but essentially, if retired grandparents have some wealth (e.g., 5 figure savings or assets) and their adult children are bringing up young children on barely enough to pay rent/mortgage, energy bills, childcare and food - is this okay? What are your thoughts and beliefs about how to balance wealth and finances more fairly? What role should grandparents play financially?

But I understand your comment about economic turmoil and sorry you had it tough.

It costs around £4 to visit council leisure centres. No I don’t think society should be paying for things like that. Farm parks are also not essential. It is our responsibility as parents to pay for things like those for our kids if we want them, not grandparents, not society.

I can't ever imagine having lots of money and watching my dc and gc struggle or just not have a great life. My parents have given us monetary gifts every few years which is much appreciated. We don't all need out but they're very fair so insist on it regardless. They also offer to take us out for meals and are generally very generous to their 6 dc and gc. I will always look after my dc financially if I'm in a position to do it.

My inlaws are millionaires, courtesy of money they inherited.

They watched us live without heating during the coldest winter in 100 years, with a toddler and a newborn after our heating blew up and we couldn't afford the £6k needed to replace it. It took us 2 years to sort.

We once borrowed £300 and were made to pay it back the next month when we were still struggling to put food on the table.

FIL would come and visit and make fun of our hallway carpet as it was ripped and threadbare and then show off about how much "spends" he had in his current account and expect me to provide a 3 course meal.

God, I hated them for it. But, we sorted our lives out and are now in a reasonable place. I mean, we can afford to live but not much else. We're happy though and we did it all without a dime from anyone. I'm bloody proud of us!

Not entitled to other people's wealth.

Here in Ireland in the 80's Irish working people were paying 65 per cent of their income in tax. Now these re the people who are retiring i dont begrudge them their money

Same. And as shitty as those times were, I feel lucky to have grown up in them, because I don't get despondent or worked up about economic downturns.

Nothing. I think a global economy is great. But people are going to have to accept that their "standard of living" is going to be different on a planet with 4.5 million humans (1980) and 8 billion humans (now). As natural resources dwindle, technology replaces the need for human labour and space is ever-shrinking, it's absurd to expect that one will be able to command ever-expanding amenities.

Not to mention, back in those days people like to hark to, those average people some think were so well of weren't awash in tech and gadgets, didn't travel internationally, most didn't go to uni, dining out and takeaway were very rare treats, and even things like eyeglasses were precious purchases that were carefully handled, repaired if broken and not taken for granted.

Expensive sports and extra curricular activities were not the norm for most families -- my parents WORKED from age 12 or 13 to augment their families' income, after school and on weekends. In the late 70s and 80s, I worked part-time from the age of 14, doing child sitting, cleaning and yard work, then office work after age 16. We got new clothing at Christmas and on birthdays, and that was that.

I remember asking my mom as an adult why she never let us get an ice cream from the neighbourhood vendor, it was a few pence, and she said "we simply couldn't afford it." A bag of crisps and a couple of cokes was a once-a-month treat.

Yes they could buy a house three tiny bedrooms, one bath in their late 20s/early 30s but they didn't do a heck of a lot else. And they were perfectly normal and not deprived; our entire extended friends and family circle was exactly the same.

To say families are "suffering" because they can't afford holidays, takeaway food, recreational shopping, cleaners and costly activities for kids is absurd.

Have I stepped into the last century? I'd never expect my parents wealth (or lack of in my case) to be handed over to raise my kids. It's my job.

£99,000 invested will only produce just under £7k if they get 7% return on their investments. Five figures might sound a lot to you in your current financial squeeze but they are not exactly rolling in it.

I have been broke, I mean really broke now we have a six figure sum invested and whilst we will gift DS a lump sum towards a deposit, the rest he can wait for.

What cruel people. I hope you had very little to do with them.

I do not expect a penny from my mum even though I know she would give it if it was needed. I wouldn’t dream of taking her hard earned cash from her, as I don’t know what she might need it for in future.

I would give my (almost adult) kids my last penny and the clothes off my back though 😂 but I am bringing them up to accept gifts graciously and demand nothing.

They can do what they like but 40% pretty much when they sue will go to the govt . Would they rather do that than passing some into kids / grandkids ? We have found too late some of the olds have more money than they can ever spend.

Sorry you are struggling but five figures isn’t much to retire on. You have the potential to increase your wealth they don’t.

Societally it's not ok to have UNEARNED wealth accumulated by people who have it just by benefiting from free property rises

I'm not suggesting it's given directly to their families but there are a dozen ways that structural inequality could be dismantled

It's appalling 🤷‍♀️

My parents have always taken the attitude that they’d rather have the pleasure of seeing the money benefit their kids/grandkids now, rather than wait until they die. And they’ve helped all of us out loads. As a consequence I very much see it as my duty to do the same for my kids, and I actively prioritise putting away money each month for each of my kids, with the aim that they will leave uni without debts and they will each get a reasonable house deposit. If I can do more than that for them, I will. I expect when my parents do pass on (hopefully not for a long while)
!) we will give whatever we might receive to the kids. I can’t imagine being comfortable and letting my kids/grandkids struggle. I’m fortunate that my DH is of the same mindset.

Just as youth is wasted on the young, wealth is wasted on the old.

Wow. Bugger retirement, eh. Just hand the lot over & reach for the cyanide.

@MooseAndSquirrelLoveFlannel that is shocking. So sorry they are like that. Well done on coming out the other side

I’ve thought about it and I don’t think I know anyone with what I’d consider ‘comfortable’ parents who isn’t pretty comfortable in their own right. Basically, our parents funded excellent education, lots of extracurriculars and essentially paid for shitloads of social capital. Then they sent us off into the world to make our fortunes, as it were. And make our fortunes we did.

It would be easy to say that DH and I haven’t had ‘help’ from our parents since uni. We don’t need it, it hasn’t occurred to us to ask for any and they’d probably be rather disgusted if we did. On the other hand, my father paid for our wedding and PIL gave us £15K as a wedding present. So, there’s help and there’s ‘help’.

We’re unlikely to ever be in the dire straits described by pp. I have no idea how our parents would react if we were. I imagine they’d be quite bitterly disappointed, but I honestly don’t know if it would even occur to them to give us any money.

You'll be told your grabby. But that is exactly how my family would operate. Some families look after each other.

I have massive sympathies for struggling families. As you say OP, you have done everything "right" in terms of getting an education and good jobs to support yourselves yet life is so expensive a trip to the local pool feels out of reach.

No, I don't think there should be an expectation. People who are comfortable in retirement likely made sacrifices yesterday for their lifestyle today.

But I would like to think I'd treat my grandkids once in a while.

Over the last year lots of investments have lost money, and that is not taking into account inflation.

If the grandparents only source of income is a state pension, or even if they have a small occupational pension £99,999 will not last many years for two people let alone one and could possibly be exhausted before they even get to the stage of needing care.

Whilst that amount of savings may seem a lot, if that has to last you for the rest of your life and you are not able to work to supplement savings and pensions, it really is not a lot of money. Given the current cost of living crisis those savings are likely to be dwindling far faster than anticipated.

I think before their inheritance they struggled financially, so they kind of saw it as our "turn" to understand and live through the kind of struggles they had. FIL would tell us about how he had to run to work as he couldn't afford transport for example.

Very much a "well, we had to live poor and so should you" forgetting that they also managed to buy a 4 bed detached house, on one public salary before they got their inheritance. Something incredibly out of the realms of possibility for your average public service worker these days.

Thanks to our hard work, we will be able to help our kidd and fully intend to. We've already decided that any money we do inherit from the inlaws, will go straight to the kids for housing deposits.

Exactly.

Those boomers people like to scorn so much weren't entertained every single minute of their lives, half-term or not. We borrowed books from the library at no charge, used cheap paper and glue to make crafts, etc. -- I still have the Christmas tree ornaments we made out of empty yoghurt pots.

It's far better to develop their ingenuity, creativity and ability to occupy themselves than it is to bundle them up for passive absorbtion of onepaid activity after another.

I remember my parents would pull to the side of the road next to a field and we'd watch horses or cows through the fence, and once or twice the curious animals came up to us. We were thrilled; I still remember it 50+ years later. That was our 'farm tour' experience.

Or let them help with running the household on half-term -- again we were taught to clean and do yard work at a young age, and developed an appreciation for tidy homes, gardening and nature. It's not necessary to spend money to raise intelligent, curious and competent children.

"5 figure savings" could be burned through very quickly. And once retired, you're not really in a position to replace those savings. So then something major goes wrong (e.g. boiler needs replaced) and the savings aren't there to make it happen. What are your thoughts on the retired grandparents looking to their adult children to pay for that? It wouldn't happen, since the adult children would still be barely getting by.

There are no easy answers here. I think we're all still reeling from the impact of the recent financial upheaval.

"We are the ones who travel to see them despite the petrol costs being a huge dent in our wallets."
Actually there is one easy answer - be upfront and tell them it's no longer possible to do the travelling to them, and why. Take that one pressure off yourselves at least. Also, as retired people they have more time to do the travelling than you do.

"I’m writing this because it feels upsetting that we struggle to put a healthy meal on the table. I can’t give my children anything like the childhood I had (music lessons and annual holidays)"
I genuinely mean this kindly, but that was a pretty privileged childhood. Using it as the yardstick to measure your own children's childhood - that's why you're "feeling guilty that I can’t take my kids to do “nice” things". And you have no reason to feel guilty, you're clearly trying to do your best by your children. But maybe your expectations are unrealistic? The society you were raised in (1990s?) is very different from our 2020s society. Different pressures, different expectations. They are not comparable. Not giving them everything that you had is not depriving them - I'd expect they have things now that you didn't. But you are comparing them and that's leading you to feel bad about yourself. Try to stop the guilt, and instead feel the pride of providing a roof over their heads and food on the table. Not so long ago (when I was a child) that was the yardstick parents used.

"It’s half term and I’m feeling guilty that I can’t take my kids to do “nice” things like swimming at the leisure centre, half-term activity sessions, visits to a farm etc."
I'll be blunt. My childhood involved none of these things. I was not deprived, it just wasn't how it was done then. My parents weren't under that pressure. Your children won't feel deprived either, although you are feeling under pressure to provide that, because our society has been pushing the Spend! Spend! Spend! line at us for so long that we think that's somehow 'normal'. It isn't, that's just recent. And may well prove to be an anomaly.

"It feels like they don’t care about our kids."
That's probably at the root of your worries. They gave me a pretty privileged childhood, why can't they give my children the same or make it so that I can? Again, these are not comparable. You were their child, and they parented you. They are only your children's grandparents, they have no right to parent your children and would probably feel intrusive if they did. They trust the child they raised to raise their own kids.