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.

I have no idea how their house purchase even has anything to do with you. They should give up on their dreams and give you some of their hard-earned cash to give you a leg up the ladder? I’m surprised so many people agree with you, actually.

The vast majority of young adults don't have secure housing. It's normal for people in their twenties (or even thirties) to rent or live in house-shares while they save up for deposits and it certainly doesn't mean you're some kind of failure because you don't have a mortgage at 25.

I sound like my dad but I do think there's an expectation that people will be able to move out into a fully furnished house straight from university and that's never been the reality for any generation I know of.

I house-shared a shitty rental flat above a funeral parlour in order to save money at OP's age. I certainly didn't expect my parents to contribute to my housing costs at 25+ years of age - that's genuinely bonkers to me.

YANBU it is selfish to see your children struggle and not help imo.

Mine don't have much but they're helping me. It is a difficult time to buy. Salaries and mortgage payments don't add up.

My partners mum has £££££ and his dad (separate) but unless he asks them we're stuck.

We have saved money and the goal posts have moved and we need even more. It's a rubbish time to be under 40!

Before all these mortgage rate increases.

So it's not true that people made do with what they had, cut their cloth and just got on with things instead of waiting until they had had a big white £10k wedding and bought a nice 3 bed semi in the suburbs before they'd consider having a baby?

Okey dokey. Not in the working class town where my family is from. It's so weird how some people on Mumsnet seem to think they're owed a certain standard of living and they look around at other people (in this case parents) to provide it. Even when they're able bodied and well able to support themselves.

@catelynjane But you're older than the OP and the point is that achieving what you've achieved has got MUCH harder even in the last 5 years!

Average rents have increased by 25% since 2020, which means a hell of a lot less money to save for a deposit.

Interest rates have rocketed which means houses at the same price on paper cost much more as a monthly mortgage.

Your situation isn't a useful comparison because things are getting so much harder, so much faster.

I bought 3 years ago when my rent was £1300 and my new mortgage repayments £950. Now that rent would be £1700 (I checked the recent listing) and the mortgage repayments, £1200. I just wouldn't have managed to save and pay.

Agreed. At one point we didn’t have enough money for new clothes so my mum made them for us, despite not being a seamstress and working FT. There just wasn’t cheap clothing available like Primark.

The idea of wearing something only a few times and then binning it was totally alien - as was a tshirt costing £2.

Life before the Internet and phones was also quite shit and difficult in many ways!

Has anyone mentioned having a washing machine in your house yet, that usually comes up in these threads.
I think an acknowledgment that whilst it was hard at the time; the older generation have had it easier that the younger ones now.
I know in my own family that those of the boomer generation had it better than me with houses paid off. I accept I will never own but I’m paying off someone’s BTL.
Thats before you get into the finishing at lunch on a Friday etc

Oh god yes furniture! That people expect new these days beggars belief. You can pick up solid oak at an auction for pennies but no - people have to have new costing £££.

I had my parents shitty old sofa with its exposed springs for 4 years and all my other furniture was old from auctions as it was cheaper. It wasn’t what I’d have chosen if I’d had ££££ but it worked.

My posts are specifically about people like the op moaning about not being able to have a big wedding and have children until they've bought a house, by the way, not the cost of housing then vs now. You can get married very cheaply, and you can have a baby in rented. If you decide to save up for a deposit then that's a conscious decision. You don't have to.

Childcare costs are ridiculous of course, but that's not what the discussion is about.

I haven't actually mentioned my age.

I know things are hard but that still doesn't mean you should be expecting your parents to fund you into adulthood. Each generation has its' own challenges.

I know I'd much rather live in rented accommodation with internet, phones and central heating in 2024 than live in an owned house with no indoor bathroom, no central heating and no TV back in the 70's or 80's.

YABU.

This is absolutely bollocks btw and the kind of crap that older people love to go on about all the time. I'm 43 but all the youngsters I know have no new furniture. They get stuff off Facebook free recycling groups.

lol @ older people

all the late 20s pp I know want and get new

@catelynjane You said "when you were the OP's age" (paraphrasing) so I think it's fair to assume you are older than they are.

Same here. I wouldn't want to live as a woman in the 70s-80s trying to raise children and having very few options, thanks. For a lot of women, even the question of whether to have children or not wasn't really a choice. You just did.

Maybe things were different up there in the middle classes, maybe life was peachy for middle class women, but i see how my grans and my mum had to raise their families and how hard it was and I think .. No thanks.

I didn't mean that people didn't 'cut their cloth'. I totally agree that they did this much more than people do today, although the reasons are complex. What I disagree with is the suggestion that people (in general- don't know about your working class town in particular) stayed in tiny houses and just made do. This isn't correct; in fact the boomer generation is the best off generation that has or will live. House prices were affordable relative to incomes going back to say 1990 or 1970 (often only one income vs two today). They are much higher now. So are rents. Rentals are also insecure so people may be kicked out at any point. This is happening at a frightening rate.
I see it as gaslighting to say things like 'well, if you didn't spend £5000 on your wedding, you could afford a house' or 'stop eating avocado toast then and takeaway lattes'. It's nonsensical and unfair.

Anyway it’s a hate anyone over 50 thread obvs.

Culture and age wars. Just what this gvmt thrives on.

I am older than her, but only by a few years. My twenties were very recent and I remember exactly what it was like.

We didn’t do it in the end, because our own house sale fell through. But we were about to upsize not that long ago when I was about 50. I thought I would still have plenty of years left to enjoy my new larger house, I didn’t realise I was expected to want a bungalow or retirement flat by then.

YABU.

There were plenty of troubled economic times through the 70s, 80s and 90s too.

Exactly this. Yes, some aspects of life are harder these days but as a society in general we've never had it better.

Was going to say the same, also their relationship is rocky so maybe the parents don’t want to hand over a load of cash for the husband to get half, we are certainly only getting half a story from the OP.

see it as gaslighting to say things like 'well, if you didn't spend £5000 on your wedding, you could afford a house' or 'stop eating avocado toast then and takeaway lattes'. It's nonsensical and unfair.

Personally i haven't said any such thing. I said if marriage is important to you, you can get married very cheaply. People in the old days simply didn't spend £10k on a wedding, that would have been completely unheard of. It's not as if in the 70s and 80s people were spending £10k on a wedding, AND buying a big house, AND having babies by the age of 25 like some people seem to think they are owed now.

I'm not sure what avocados have to do with anything.

Plenty of people do say these things all the time. Plenty of people have said or implied that, if it wasn't for spending money on a wedding, young people would be able to afford a home.
I don't know what you mean by 'old days' 1930s? 1970s? 1990s?
10k in 1930 or 1970 is clearly not the same thing as 10K in 2024 because of inflation.
In the 1970s, many people were having babies at 25 and buying family homes because house prices were affordable then relative to incomes. Now, most 25 year olds are living in their parent's attic because rents and mortgages are unaffordable and most do not have babies until their 30s, if at all.

@NewKingontheBlock Very true, although there are legal mechanisms they could make use of to protect the gift.

Ultimately, if I was sitting at a table with a whole cake, and my child was sitting opposite with an empty plate, and cake was getting more expensive by the month, I like to think I would give them a slice of cake.