To ask if you or your spouse has Family Money?

[FrasierReboot]

And if so, what's it like and how have you benefitted financially?

Someone I know was saying that her husbands family are very rich and so their house was paid for by the in laws (2 million), there is a school fund for private schooling for their two children, and the in laws pay for their very expensive holidays to places like Mustique each year.

There is often a lot of talk on here about Family Money but I didn't realise it would literally mean for some people they have a life free of any financial burdens! Very lucky!

A bit of a mixture. Like one PP, I bought my house, car etc entirely by myself (quite differently from my younger half-sister who had them bought for her) and I am glad to have done that completely by myself, though my parents supported me in education til I was done with my first degree which obviously helped lots. But from 2 parental losses over the past 3 years, I've now inherited a flat and a house in London so I suppose I could probably retire when I want to. It makes me feel odd and unreasonably guilty and I'd rather have my mother and father but I also know that they really wanted me to be provided for after their deaths and would be very pleased that things have ended up like this (I wasn't necessarily expecting anything in case they needed their resources for a comfortable end of life for themselves.)

You’re talking about extreme wealth.

Most people won’t have that. They might get £20-£80K scattered in uni help/ wedding/ house deposit etc but nothing like the money you’re talking about.

But, they’ll probably get more when their grandparents/parents die, but again it’s not the extreme levels of wealth throughout their life that you’re referencing here - the money they get will come from estates etc.

My mother comes from money but my grandfather was a misogynistic asshole who gave all his money to his son, my bigamous uncle.

My husband does not come from money.

Yabu.

Have you seriously never heard of inherited wealth before? The Aristrocracy, the Royal Family, or just plain very very rich people? I can't believe you've had such a sheltered life.

@SwirlyWhirls I don’t know anyone who has got on the ladder without help in some form. Many of these people grew up without wealth but London property prices have meant a lot of money when someone dies or downsizes.

If only...................

To an extend, but not like described in the OP.
my parents were gifted their house deposit, and inherited nicely.
in turn, they have paid for university, including studying abroad, my first car, all the baby stuff for DC1 (travel system, cot, bedside cot, highchair etc), a number of holidays (usually skiing (as adults)). They pay for me and DC to fly out and join them in their holiday home (continental Europe) every summer. Once in a while they quietly deposit some money into my and my sibling’s accounts.
It is amazing to have a safety net even if we don’t need it.

Me ; absolutely not. I grew up on a council estate. Since I left home to go to university I have earned literally every single penny I ever had myself.

DP ; sort of. His parents didn’t come from money, but they built up a retail business which was successful enough to pay for private schools & provide him with an allowance through university. They didn’t buy him a house, though!

Eventually, they paid off their mortgage & owned the freehold of their main shop on a prime high street location in an affluent town in the South East. In the early 2000s, when retail was booming, a multinational made them an offer for the building which they couldn’t refuse so they sold up & became quite wealthy, bought a big house in the country & retired.

DH & I both do, very fortunately. It means there’s no mortgage and we both have private incomes that cover a fair bit of our household costs each month. At some point we will inherit significant amounts but we hope not for a very long time.

We both still work - in public sector jobs - but it means we can have a very nice standard of living significantly beyond what we would manage on just our salaries. Most of our friends have no idea though - I mean, they probably realise we have a bit more than might be expected but we don’t flash it around. My car is ancient for example because it still works perfectly well so I can’t be bothered to change it. And we choose to state educate our dc.

I’m certainly aware of the immense privilege in terms of security we have. It’s much easier to work when you know you could quit at any moment and it won’t matter at all!

Dh's parents are reasonably well off. They gave us roughly a 3rd of the cost of our 1st house in cash plus they paid for my £25000 new kitchen. When their kids went to University they bought them all a flat and a car.

They take us (and dh's siblings) on holiday every year and throw cash at us/the kids at every opportunity. In the past 3 months, they've probably given us close to £6000 in cash and plus a week's holiday. They will have done the same for their other children as well.

Why are you talking as if everyone here lives in London? 🧐

We don't have family money but we've been able to buy and expensive London house and put our 2 DCs through private school. Harder to do out of earned & investment income but still possible. Our 2 dc will have family money behind them due to our investments (saved for out of earnings then increased through calculated investment decisions). It gives me peace of.mind for the future. Financially it makes sense to gift the money while parents are younger and alive than wait for inheritance, so I see why parents do it.

DH's parents live overseas and usually pay for our accommodation when we visit them. But that's the most they've helped us out (but we also pay for their accommodation when they visit us here so it all evens out).

@SwirlyWhirls Im not, I was just giving one example of where money can come from…

I know 2 families who are very wealthy. The adult children have all had cars, large houses, holidays and weddings bought for them. In the case of the daughter I don't know how her husband feels about it as "daddy" provides everything still.

In the other case, they are old money so it's trust funds however the family have multiple holiday homes, in several locations, that they all use, which is amazing.

It must be fantastic to have that financial backing so that money in the event of I'll health isn't a worry.

OK… where I grew up it would be extremely rare to have large sums of money available to gift to your adult children.

OK… where I grew up it would be extremely rare to have large sums of money available to gift to your adult children.

Right but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. The bank of mum & dad is a thing particularly when helping FTBs onto the ladder

Where did I say it doesn’t happen?

I said I don’t think the main factor in whether you were gifted large sums of money is whether your parents were “generous” or not. I also said I’m not convinced that “most people” are given this.

Not at all, we’re pretty well off, but we earnt it all.

My family are wealthy. Been gifted around £600k. DH inherited £350k.

I work part time, my own buisness, DH works 3 days a week, we have two properties, both owned outright.

Very, very lucky financially. Never have to worry about bills or pensions etc.

But couldn't have children. I'd swap everything we own...

Money makes life much easier but it's not everything.

I have the family with money, though my parents made it clear to myself and DB and myself that if we weren’t self sufficient and able to achieve a good life for ourselves then we wouldn’t get a penny beyond what they did to set us up (property and some savings). Good news is my brother is pretty much already richer than them and whilst I am not, we have an extremely successful business that allows us to do public school fees for 2 and nice holidays.

We are at the stage where money is being siphoned off to DB and myself and DH knows that whilst I will put some of that towards ‘us’ a good chunk will always go into the money which if I die first would go straight to the kids. He also knows that is my decision. We also don’t talk to his family about it because his DM and DS have already indicated we should pay for school fees for her kids and things for her cos of what we have and that just won’t ever happen. God knows what they would say if they knew anything else.

In the future we should be okay as there is a 600k house in trust that will hopefully be a pension fund. Currently we get no help and fund our lives and I have zero complaints.

Not to the level you mention but my family have given large amounts of money through various means. We have used this money for buy cars and fund house deposits; but we also work hard and I am a big saver. I have just been given enough to pay off our mortgage but have decided to buy another property instead. We go on extended family trips very often. It does relieve some stress of daily life and gives you choices. Time off with young children and an easier lifestyle etc. My DH thinks I should spend more; I insist on doing the renovation of our house myself for example even when it’s difficult. But to me if I can do it myself I don’t see the point in paying someone else to do it even if the money is not an issue. It doesn’t create some issues amongst family members for example if someone higher up in the family doesn’t agree with someone younger downs’ choice of lifestyle. It has happened that money has been held back in a couple of instances which is difficult to navigate from all sides. I am grateful and feel lucky but equally I enjoy working on things and am careful with money. I suppose the luxury is that you can choose more so what you work on.

We receive a decent dividend each year from the family business (which would cover a nice long haul family holiday each year if we chose to spend it on that). The build up from that allowed us to get on the property ladder almost straight out of university.

We'll never be homeless as either our families would help us with our mortgage or we could move in with one of them in dire straits.

We don't have enough to give up work or send our kids to private school, but still feel very privileged, so try to give as much back to the community and charity as we can.

A friend has this but is also disabled with a condition that delivers chronic pain and it enables her to have a life. It shows the level of support that everyone with similar conditions actually needs and would have if they could. She spends her energy on the the important stuff like reading to the kids and gets all the small stuff e.g laundry done by outside help whenever it’s too much.

My dad grew up with a disabled father in a 1 bed council flat and switched to night school at 16 to be his carer full time during the day to enable his mum to switch from nights to days and earn more money. (I’ve had a charmed life - this is not my trauma.)

I often think of these situations when I see posts on here about people not working…

Mother was a single parent and we were brought up in Council flat ( WW2) so no money from her but she did encourage education and hard work.

Both sibling and I have worked full time for 40+ years and lived reasonably frugally in order to support our children through higher education and post graduate professional education. Downsized to give substantial deposits for houses and our children have no student debts.

We both (70s) give free childcare now we are retired.

My children have had innumerable friends living with them (while they looked for jobs, saved up for deposits etc.)

I think helping relations/friends depends on the culture in the family partly (obviously some means have to be there in the first place) as my childless aunts both supported their siblings - worked and helped siblings with housing, looked after children etc while living in very poor conditions themselves. I'm sure their abject poverty growing up meant that they were happy to help out as much as they could as they were fully aware of the threat of destitution. They seemed to play the game of 'how many relations can you live with'. No one ever thought there wasn't room for an unemployed brother or an elderly parent. You just budged up. Often the poorest are the most generous.