Retired parents UPSIZING house

[toastlover100]

I’m pretty sure IABU.

My parter and I are late 20s, renting, good careers but still waiting for salaries to increase much.

We are engaged and trying to save for a very small wedding, we know we could just go the registry office but that’s not what we want.

We are also trying to save a house deposit, but it’ll take a long time on current earnings. Hoping to maybe get there by mid thirties.

We would love to have children in the next couple of years but the likelihood is we will still be in our rented flat.

My parents are retired from reasonable jobs but never high earning at all. Through some luck, paying off their mortgage, house price rises, they are about to buy a house worth around a million. This is a huge upsizing.

AIBU to begrudge them this?
We are struggling to make any headway financially, spending thousands a year on rent, wanting a family but not being in the right position etc, whilst my parents are about to spend a huge amount of savings I didn’t know they had to upsize to a large family home they really don’t need.

It's not only Karma that's a bitch.

I'm approaching 50 and never been in a financial position to buy a house. I've spent most of my adult life as a single parent and will always have to rent. It isn't just this younger generation unable to buy although it seems to have become even more of an aspiration - not that I blame anyone now private rentals are so expensive.

My youngest will be out of education in the next few years and I'm looking at that time as the next stage of my life. Time to do what I want with my life free from responsibility. Maybe that's how your parents are viewing this part of their lives too.

Spot on @JudgeJ

It absolutely is entitled for an adult to believe their parents have financial responsibility for them. They don’t. It’s one thing to accept a gift readily given, and another to expect it.

They’re fully allowed to spend their money enjoying their lives as they wish to.

A million would get you a decent 7 bed house in many regions of the UK.

Fixed that for you.

Just google 7 bed house ANYWHERE that is not the south east... Staffordshire, Shropshire, West Midlands, Leeds, Bristol, Lincolnshire, Glasgow, Cardiff, Manchester, the list goes on....

It's an utter crock that you couldn't get a 7 bed house for a million £££ or less anywhere in the UK! Yes there are plenty that cost MORE than a million, before people waste their time telling me that, but there are plenty 7 bed houses that DON'T.

Some people are living in a wealthy south east bubble on here, (and some are living on another planet.) The comment 'wouldn't get a 2 bed house for a million' from someone further back on the thread made me PMSL. LOL, yeah right! What planet do some people live on?! 😂

I know it was still hard back in the 80s and 90s, I remember the repossessions. Basics like housing are much more expensive now. Because luxuries are cheaper now, it's easy to overlook this. It is harder now as although rates are lower, the amount borrowed is much higher due to the rise in house prices.

This illustrates how it is cheaper to have a higher rate on a lower amount:
£50,000 at 13% is £563 a month
£200,000 at 5% is £1,169 a month

I've bought in the last 15 years and the difference even from 15 years ago to now is large, if you consider the gap from 20/30/40 years ago, house prices are much higher.

Well, of course you can live without a car or the internet if you don't have to get kids to school or nursery, get yourself to work, help children with online schoolwork and so on, for goodness' sake. If you have to do any of the above, cars and internet are often essential.

As already explained, soaring house prices now make buying a home impossible without two incomes, and it is often impossible to earn an income in the UK without a car for each adult expected to earn, because the UK has become designed around car dependency. In large part because of urban development decisions made in the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s.

Reversing the UK's car dependency will require changing tack and shifting UK cities' structure to be more like a Dutch or Japanese city, by tightly restricting car use and parking, using money from things like congestion charges/road charges to fund public transit, and then developing a lot more dense housing cluster around public transit hubs.

I don't want to generalize, because opposition to this kind of shift does come from all generations, but the strongest opposition does tend to come from over-60s. My parent's city is currently trying to engage in some of the above changes, including proposals for building lots of much-needed flats on car parks in the city center. Generally, the loudest moaning is from retired residents - how dare you take away our car parking spaces, how dare you tell me I'll have to pay to drive into the city center, don't you know it's all these horrible cyclists and bus lanes that are the real problem here? And so on.

This is completely misleading. Because affordability of housing has gone through the roof in that time frame. It used to be possible to buy a small property on one salary now it is impossible for many people to buy a small property with two salaries in certain parts of the country.

Sure OP could have a baby when renting. But when she comes to get a mortgage, affordability will be even harder than it is now because she will have to factor in child care costs, or the possibility that she might want to work PT to care for her baby, or because, you know, the patriarchy, her salary might stagnate because she has been on mat leave/taking more of the parenting load etc etc.

I can see why the OP is finding this hard.

My point really was, if someone wants all these luxury things, such as big weddings and buying a house then instead of relying on parents money, perhaps they need to cut back on things they don't need, such as running a car or other unnecessary things.

Do I have to repeat the whole boring post about cars, work, nursery, car dependence of UK cities, all over again?

Sorry but it is possible to get kids to school either by walking or using public transport, I did it for years and my DH currently does it with his son. Unless you live in the middle of nowhere where no buses run. I think society has been conditioned to think they need these things when most of the time, it is possible to get by without.

For many people in the UK, there is absolutely no way they could walk children to school, then get to work, by public transport, and still be on time for work. Do you really not get this?

and multiple cars per household has become essential because of the car dependent society developed by previous generations

I love the way everything that is wrong with the world is because previous generations apparently designed it to suit their own needs, but the people complaining of this never thing of maybe designing the world to suit their own generation's needs.

Unfortunately it is not that easy. The reason cars are king in the UK, to the detriment of public transport, is because the car and insurance industries have amazing lobbying power, the government sees it as saving money and people are too apathetic nowadays to demand a better standard of living.

And rising house prices has nothing to do with old Mr. Smith living the high life. There are far more truly wealthy people benefiting from all this.

Well plenty of people do it. Anyway we will have to agree to disagree.

It would take 1.5hrs and there are no pavements here. I'm not that rural, can be in London Bridge in 45 mins after a 2min drive to a train station.
My work I couldn't get to until lunchtime as not all train lines are connected.
Sounds like you live in a city. I'm southeast too.

@Boomboom22 I'm on the edge of the countryside and buses are a pain but we have no choice. A car would definitely be much more convenient but I don't want to spend my money on a car.

Well exactly. If you both work your childcare cost is going to be £1000 upwards a month. That is like a second rent or mortgage.

I'm my mums day lots of mums had the option of being a sahm because wage to rent / mortgage was better. Plus if you owned your modest house, like my mum, your costs went down mostly over time ( except for the 15% interest) back in my grans day it wasn't the done thing for a mum with young kids to work.

It's not directly comparable looking back at say the 80's and today. The relative cost to income has gone up.

Plus in my mums childhood ( maybe this is unique to us?) My parent grew up and had babies in council flats in Central London. So back then socail housing which was cheaper and easier to obtain in good areas to access work.

Material items do not equal success in life. I don't want to own a house, the thought of being in that much debt would make me have sleepless nights. I have security in my home, no car as I don't want one. I have internet, sky etc and a smartphone. Some people are genuinely content in their life without having all the latest and expensive goods.

@laclochette I'm only 40 so no pension income for another 20+ years

I kind of get how you feel.

My FIL is a multi millionaire and never helps his children. His daughter is struggling financially, as she is in a minimum wage job with small children. She lives in a tiny house and can't afford to put the heating on. He could easily buy her a nice house, but instead he takes several long haul holidays a year and spends money on his girlfriend. He won't even pick up the tab if we meet for dinner. It astounds me. I have grown DC of my own, and I treat them to stuff all the time, and they aren't short of money, it's just that I have more and I love them, so I like to spoil them.

@toastlover100 Why are you talking about a wedding when according to previous threads you started, you have been married for a few years now?

But if you can't see why others might want more from life than that, I wonder if you might actually just be a troll.

That's rich considering the whole premise of this thread is that the OP's parents should not upgrade their house.

@StopTheQtipWhenTheresResistance I didn't imagine you were retired, I was wondering how you would pay rent when you were retired. The fact is that what is considered to be adequate retirement income is generally based on the assumption that people won't have mortgage or rental costs into retirement. Some people - you perhaps? - will have enough money in retirement to keep paying rent, but most won't, hence the pressure to buy and be mortgage free by retirement.

@Coyoacan Sorry - how has the idea that people should be happy to live with no car and no internet access got much to do with the idea that another person might long to be able to afford to buy a house, while their parents still live in their own, comfortable house?