How much £ would you give DM in these circumstances?

[StereoTie]

Have NC this but regular poster. Would appreciate opinions on this situation.

If adult daughter in 40s who was financially comfortable with two DC and a DH who was a high earner had a windfall of £20,000 (not as a result of work or anything related, some good fortune) would you expect that daughter to give her only remaining living parent (70) any of the money?

Background is the daughter and mother are very close, the DM is struggling financially and hasn't worked much since covid and now lives on her pension. The daughter and her husband have a large mortgage but can afford to pay for it plus other luxuries. They have two DC who have everything they need.

No other siblings involved.

"I've told them for ages I'm worried about money"
Could you get a part time job?

@Starseeking If someone can't live to a budget for some reason, they'll just run through any sum of money and then be moaning again.

And I say that as someone who can't earn. I just pay my fairly few outgoings using my ESA etc and then try not to spend more than what's left. It's ok.

I'd give my mum anything she needed if I was able to, she did it for us when we were young and also until I was financially secure in my adulthood. Everyone's circumstances are different though and due to that there are going to be lots of different replies

I think most people would prioritize their kids because we don't know the nature of this 'struggling' when someone is seemingly secure.

@StereoTie What's actually going on?

Money should flow down the family tree, not up. I'd be embarrassed asking kids for money, they've had a 50 year working career to build something and only have themselves to blame if not well off by then.

It depends. My mum thinks she is entitled to my money - she doesn't see it herself. From never paying for a coffee or a meal, never seeming to have her purse when shopping, asking for expensive presents /holidays etc. Oh and paying off her mortgage deficit. After the latter it dawned on me that she expected this off me- she had made no plans to pay it off otherwise.
She retired earlier than I will be able to, she gives to other family members and she has never babysat for me once.
Why do you need money? when did you stop working?

The OP hasn’t asked for money. You also seem pretty far removed from the reality of a significant percentage of the UK female population of retirement age, many of whom were prevented from developing their careers or indeed having one due to the sexist attitudes and laws of the day. Further people can work hard all their lives in low income jobs, many of whom you will no doubt rely on for the services that support your life, we all rely on them to get society going. A sexist, classist, ahistorical load of nonsense.

Exactly, if you're an OAP you're entitled to all sorts of money from the government if you're cash poor.

The only way you can be struggling to afford to live at 70 is if you don't have a mortgage free home or pay rent, you have other family members leaching off you (e.g. adult kids who don't have their lives together yet in their 30s/40s), you have some sort of problem which absorbs a lot of money (e.g. drugs, alcohol), or you have unsecured debt built up which you haven't paid off.

If you're debt free and dependent free, you can afford to live very easily. I manage my mothers money (she's in her 90s), she doesn't have lots of savings or live an extravagant lifestyle, earns about £15k a year in pensions and allowances which is more than enough to cover food, bills and a few modest treats here and there.

I don’t agree that money should always flow forward. Sometimes it’s entirely appropriate to help your parent if you can. It doesn’t really sound appropriate in this scenario though.

Im in a similar boat to the OP’s daughter. A lifetime of bad decisions has caught up with my parents and they are still working in their 70’s. They advised me the other day they “can’t possibly live on less than $5k a month”. I’m Australian. The aged pension here is about $1450 per month. We are not remotely in a position to make up that shortfall and I didn’t offer. I just told them very few retirees live on $5k per month. I know they buy their meat from the butchers rather than the supermarket, and a bunch of other things we don’t do because we can’t afford it!

It makes me very cranky. I’ve helped them before.

If we had a windfall of that size we wouldn’t tell them.

If I won millions I’d pay them a salary. History has shown bulk amounts don’t work.

What money bar the state pension(lowest in Europe) do you think elderly people are entitled to? Please elucidate. Shame on you for making your mother in her nineties have a very low standard of living if you can afford to subsidise that.

Can you explain why you are struggling and why you are unable to downsize?

If I was close to my mother, she was struggling, and my family had enough to be comfortable, I'd want to give her a portion of the money, yes.

However, I would feel uncomfortable if my mum had any expectation that she was owed anything - I'd want to make the suggestion myself.

You can just leach off the state at that age if you're skint, its very easy to do.

I don't buy into all of this nonsense around there having been no opportunity for women to do well. I'm a 62 year old woman and have been working since the mid 70s, there's been plenty of time to save for retirement. We've also benefited from rising house and asset prices like never before, and consumer goods and food have never been cheaper (albeit we've had the recent bout of inflation).

Where it gets expensive to live is housing, but again it was easy to get a mortgage back in the 80s/90s and prices were much lower. The stats show that most of the wealth is held by my generation (baby boomers). Its much harder now for younger people than it was for us.

Thats why its so cheeky to expect kids who have been forced to take out huge mortgages and who will have to pay a fortune for their own kids to go to uni, have a house deposit, to pass their money upwards. Just because someone seems quite well off it doesn't mean they have cash to burn, theres many competing demands for your money now.

I can't think of an actual amount as it would depend on the circumstances, but I would certainly give either of my parents a large sum of money if they were struggling and I didn't need it. I know they would do the same for me.

As a parent of adult children, it would be a cold day in Hell before I took any money from them and it was the same for my parents. They still insist on paying for dinner even though they’re retired and we collectively earn more than they ever did. This thread is a bit strange because I honestly don’t know anyone who thinks differently.

FFS, £15k a year is not a small amount of money to live off for a single person with a limited social life. Thats my point. You need to live in the real world rather than being one of those deluded Internet socialists.

The average worker in this country earns £32k, they pay tax/NI on that, then they have to pay housing costs, pay for kids, pay student loan and pensions contributions... once you've taken all that off they're probably living off less than the state pension and they're sacrificing 40 hours a week for it.

As I said, if you're elderly and have no debt, a mortgage free house and no dependents you can live comfortably on what you can claim.

You should check out help for households and go on the gov.uk website to see what you can claim beyond the state pension as there are quite a few things.

As a parent in my 40s working on raising a child to launch into the world, my primary fiscal responsibility is to think about her financial needs. Making sure that my retirement is well funded and that she has money for university are my biggest priorities. I want her to go into the world free of debt and free of worry about me

your daughter is in a difficult position. I’m sure she worries about your financial position, but she also likely worries about one day repeating this pattern with her own child.

if I were giving significant money to my parent, I wouldn’t want it to be a simple cash transfer. I would want it to be for something specific that would be discussed and planned and that I could know would have long term impact on improving the financial situation.

Yes I would give her money. I'd give her probably 3k - 5k with the hope her debt could be paid off.

If she's been a great Mum and you're close, then that amount is reasonable.

The woman literally gave birth to you.

How do you think you can ‘leach off the state’? What money do you think people are entitled to? Are you are aware of how little money you have to have coming in before you are entitled to any state assistance in retirement? I suspect not.
‘I don't buy into all of this nonsense around there having been no opportunity for women to do well.’ I haven’t said that have I? But take for instance a woman of my mother’s vintage now in her late 70s. She had to resign from the civil service because she got married. She has always worked in low paid jobs thereafter but had to work around children. She worked until she was 72 in a full time job. She has the benefit of her own occupational pension, the remainder of my father’s and her state pension and as a result of her income being slightly over the allowance limit is subject to tax. She is pretty fortunate as she owns her own home. It is a nonsense to say that ‘you don’t buy’ that women of that age were disadvantaged in the workplace as there are thousands of sources which demonstrate in figures that it is the case.
No one is ‘forced’ to take out a mortgage huge or otherwise.
Again the OP hasn’t asked for money. Her daughter came in to a significant amount of money and offered her a derisory gift.

I'd give her all of it if she really needed it.

15k is a very low income to live on, especially as an older person. Heat particularly is very expensive. Good nutrition is increasingly expensive. Sad that your mother is only permitted ‘modest’ treats every now and then after presumably a life time of contributing to society.
As I understand it you have to be in receipt of the state pension only to receive any other help from the government as a pensioner and if you have any savings above 6k that help is tapered or non existent. That’s a very precarious life in one’s dotage when you have likely no other means of earning money.

It wouldn't occur to me to give significant money to my parents just because I had some.

If they had a specific expense they needed and could not afford then I would try to help.

You would not expect them to take on more debt to give you some money even if they could afford the repayments, so why expect them to decide against paying off existing debt to give you some money?

Same.

@SueG60 pension credit is naff all 😂

I’ve made my peace with probably never retiring fully as I don’t want to live a limited social life until I physically can’t. I am however fortunate to be in a profession that whilst mentally draining is not physically so, so this will be possible for me. For my dear parents who used to have very manual working class jobs… not so much. Which is why when I can I help.