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.

The thing is that in this situation the parents could eg buy a house for £50k less and give that to their child, which would make almost no difference to them, and a HUGE difference to her.

How do you know it wouldn't make almost no difference to them?

@DontSetYourselfOnFireToKeepOthersWarm whilst I agree with your 'cappuccino' argument in that it's certainly not as easy as that, the fact is we really don't consider, when we talk about how 'easy' it was for previous generations, how much the expected standard of living has changed.

I mentioned upthread that yeah, great, you could buy your house for 2k, but it didn't come with double glazing and central heating, never mind every household owning at least one TV. People want the 'lifestyle' previous generations had, because they were so 'lucky'. I don't. Sure, what my 75 year old parents have now is a nice bit of security, but I don't envy them having small children in the 70s with no internet, a rented TV with 2 channels, Terry towelling nappies that had to be soaked because washing machines of the day wouldn't get them clean without it, no internet shopping options, a freezing house with single-glazed windows, appliances made to low safety standards that cost two month's wages (and that was cheap), none of the cheap supermarket clothing brands so everything had to last.
Not to mention none of the flexible working options many have. Despite popular belief, many women DID have to work, but we're given no support whatsoever. My mother had to lie when we were sick and say she was ill. Most women were paid less than men were in the same jobs and were openly discriminated against so struggled to even get jobs in the first place.
They were NOT all able to live on one income, many just had no choice BUT to live on one income at a time when career options for women were still so much more limited by gender and class. If, like my mother, you didn't live near family, childcare provision wasn't just expensive, it was practically non-existent in more rural areas. That's why so many gen X like me talk about being home alone or looked after by siblings.
It's like there is this massive gap in understanding on both sides of this argument. I can totally see the hardship of not being able to afford a home, and how not going to Starbucks won't make that problem go away. But I also think there's a level of rose-tinted spectacles based on what our parents/grandparents have now as opposed to what, in reality, they had when they were raising families and how 'easy' we might think it was just because ONE aspect of it meant they benefitted down the line.

So I'm not quite sure - you would throw yourself in front of a car for your children regardless of age or you wouldn't?

Because if you would, then it would seem that we both agree on the main point - that we wouldn't want our children to suffer - but simply differ on the details - namely the amount of suffering we're prepared to watch happen.

It's not "suffering" to rent a home with a partner and work full time, ffs.

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

I'm not sure if you think I'm responsible for that entire post, but up to the karma is a bitch part was a quote from a PP (for some reason bold doesn't seem to consistently work on the app today)

@catelynjane Fair enough - I don't know their exact situation. But I think the relative differences are dramatic.

For the parents, it's the difference between owning a £950k house and a £1m house.

For their daughter, it's the difference between owning a house in the foreseeable future, and renting.

To my mind, the former is a reasonable compromise to achieve the latter.

Their might not be any houses for 950k where they want to live, or if there are, they may be ones that need more than 50k worth of work doing to them to make them habitable.

I just can't imagine begrudging my parents a nice home in their sixties. It just smacks of entitlement to me.

OK, so you've clearly set your level, so good for you. My level would be watching my children struggle to afford a house or children when I could do something about it. Horses for courses I guess.

@catelynjane She's hardly expecting them to move into a shed! Of course there's always a house nicer than the one you're looking at if you spend a bit more... but it doesn't seem unreasonable to at least consider whether they could balance their needs AND help their daughter. If the housing market where they are really doesn't permit a compromise, fine, but it seems unlikely to me.

Is it really considered 'suffering' to not be able to buy a house?

I just think that at some point, you have to stand on your own two feet and stop depending on the bank of mum and dad to support your lifestyle.

It's normal to rent in your twenties and to go without luxuries to save up for a deposit or a wedding or to have children. I really don't consider people in that situation to be "struggling" - it's just part of growing up and getting your independence.

I barely know anyone in their late twenties who owns a home, has children and had an expensive wedding. It's one out of three, and then you do the others as and when you can afford them (if you do them at all).

Maybe they feel that, in their sixties, they're done compromising and want to do something for themselves for once?

@Utterbunkum You're absolutely right to flag that it wasn't all rosy for our parents' generation.

However, the economic consensus is clear: those under 40 will, in general, be the first generation in modern history to be materially worse off than their parents, over the course of their whole lives. That sense of relative progress is really important: surely everyone wants their children to have at least as much as they've had in life, and ideally more. And yet that won't happen now for younger generations, in the main.

No one family can turn around the macroeconomic factors that have created this trend. But if they do have the capacity to at least take the edge off it, why wouldn't they?!

People bought houses in the past and it was marketed as an investment. People who want to buy a house now are not hooked on the idea of ownership so much as future security, that they not have to pay rent when they retire, that’s basically why people want to own a house rather than rent. Perhaps years ago a couple in their twenties could have a cheap wedding and move into a council house, or cheap rented flat and or save a couple of years for a deposit, that is no longer an option. Monthly rent on a modest flat is higher than monthly mortgage payments, and requires two incomes to cover it. Council housing is pretty much non existent where I live, you have to have extremely vulnerable to get housed, a young married couple would go on the list now and never get housed. As for giving up cars, the cheaper housing is in the less connected areas, with little or no public transport, and what public transport there is is expensive. A small old car that’s cheap to insure would save you the cost of cabs, buses, trains and the time walking to stations and bus stops.
When did we stop wanting our children to have a better life than us? Do we really just want them to work themselves to exhaustion, never have a home they can call their own, never retire, and begrudge them the smallest of luxuries? I don’t want that for my children.

I don't think it has to be depending - clearly OP is surviving OK without any help. But at the same time I would think less of anyone living a much higher standard of living than their children, being in a position to do something about it, but then choosing not to and then using the 'well they have to stand on their own two feet' thing to justify that choice.

Why do they? Independence is nice, but a stable housing and financial situation is nicer if you ask me. So are grandkids.

I agree that it was normal to rent in your twenties and buy as you turn 30, but that was 20 years ago. Now it's normal to rent til your mid to late thirties and by the time my children get to that age, god knows what will be normal.

I had kids with the hope the aim that they would have at least as nice a life as me, and hopefully better. If they don't achieve that, it's just as much my failure as theirs.

@catelynjane Presumably that's exactly how they feel. All I know is that I don't think living in a mortgage free home that costs just shy of a million is a very bad place to be, and having that lovely situation while also knowing I had provided my beloved child and potential future grandchildren with housing security would help me sleep even easier in my lovely new home.

Obviously others think differently.

@laclochette yes, I do take that point.

I had kids with the hope the aim that they would have at least as nice a life as me, and hopefully better. If they don't achieve that, it's just as much my failure as theirs.

Success isn't just measured by material things.

Of course it's not a bad place to be. I just can't imagine being a grown woman in my twenties and resenting my parents owning a lovely house in a nice area.

DH and I own a home in one of the towns that often come up on the "shit towns in the UK" threads on here. Our house cost less than 60k. My parents own an expensive house in a nice "chocolate box" village.

But I have never once resented them for what they have. In fact, I know damn well how hard they've worked and think they bloody well deserve a lovely retirement in the house of their dreams.

@catelynjane Then your argument is incoherent. In that case her parents may as well move into a shed, since material things aren't important!

It also shows the middle class culture that is dominant on MN. Where I grew up hardly anyone owned their own homes. Last of us grew up in rentals. My sister and I were the first of our family to ever own a home and also go to university.

It was dire in the 80's where I came from. Mass unemployment, mass poverty and a total,lack of opportunity for kids like my siblings and me. Only two of us went to uni and although we didn't have to pay tuition fees, we only had a minimum amount for a grant and had to take out a loan each year. My degree course was pretty high intensity (medicine) but I still had to work nights and weekends as a healthcare assistant and a cleaner to be able to eat and pay the rent. My parents had no extra money to help.

When I graduated I had to shell out a fortune in rent because for the few years as a doctor you have to go where you are sent. It was only when I was a registrar that I was able to get a mortgage and only then because I was married and so had two incomes. We paid the deposit on our flat by maxing out all of our credit cards. Over £20K. The flat was a one bed and in a shitty part of London because that was where our jobs were and we couldn't afford to not work. We couldn't afford furniture in one go so bought one but from a second hand place each month. After two years we still had no dining table, the bed was 20 years old, no armchairs and just a two seater sofa and a beam bag that my in laws had given my then husband from his old bedroom. Out TV was portable and we didn't have any sky or anything like that.

This was late 90's btw.

When I divorced it was back into rented flats for 10 years until I was finally able to buy a house with my now partner.

Luckily I didn't want children because fuck knows how we could have supported them.

I hear all the arguments about what's happening today and I get it. But what annoys me, and people my age, is that young people think we had it easy. We didn't. Our parents didn't. We may not have have had the same problems as young people today, but by god we struggled financially too. What young people are experiencing now is just what poor working class people like me have been experiencing for generations.

It's a good thing I didn't say they weren't important then

I said they weren't the only way to measure success - which was in a response to another posting saying they'd feel like they'd failed if their children didn't have more than they did.

@catelynjane Fair enough, but a secure housing situation has been shown to be a huge factor in mental wellbeing, so I think it's both a pretty big material factor AND plays a big part in the less obviously material matter of happiness.

No they didn't.
Check out the house price to income ratios. For people who could not afford to buy, social housing was available. You really need to understand the changes that have taken place in the last generation or two before posting things like this which simply aren't true.

The ratio of salary to house costs even 30 years ago was much less.