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 don't agree with this at all. I think, as a society in general, we have regressed in many ways. Look at the levels of mental health problems nowadays, extreme poverty has increased too, the inequality gap is so high.

It's not impossible to get on the housing ladder - DS lived with us for a year and saved a deposit. You can help your kids without necessarily giving them lots of money directly.

And while it might be the case that the house prices are the prices and there's not much which can be done (bar buying a smaller house in a cheaper area), no one needs a big wedding or is entitled to one at their parents' expense

People in my family and those around me were not spending £10k on weddings. £10k was a shit load of money then, as it is now.

Every family wedding i went to (in the 90s) was church or registry office followed by a knees up at the social. Cost a few hundred quid. Gifts were toasters and ironing boards (because people didn't have the option to go and buy that stuff for £20 like we do now) and not requests for money towards long haul honeymoons.

A wedding like that costs maybe £1-2k these days. So there's still an option to get married without spending £10k.

That is the point. Op said she didn't want a cheap registry office do. Maybe lots of "boomers" didn't want one either, but that's what they could afford, so that's what they did.

Although seems from other people's posts that op is already married so i don't know what her game is.

These things have always existed and will always continue to exist.

I would rather be broke and mentally ill in 2024 than at any other point in the past, that's for sure.

Well that's definitely true the older you get.

And I guess if you think that having an iphone and the internet while growing up is equalled out by not being able to afford your own house, have children or having to retire at 75 (if retirement even exists in 50 years time) then yes, no doubt younger people do have it better too.

There has been a very recent increase in poor mental health, it is far worse now than the last generation or the one before that, for example. Frankly, the levels are extremely concerning. Benefits have also worsened during this time. Previously, people on v low incomes or unwell would have had the benefit of social housing which they often do not now. I think we have taken many backwards steps as a society and not just in a financial sense.

You don't seem to have understood the point I am making. I don't know why you keep talking about 10k weddings.
Again, the point I am making is that house prices are unaffordable now for most relative to incomes when they were previously far more affordable.

I just think that, overall, life is much better for most people these days. That doesn't mean poverty or MH issues don't exist, but I know I would much rather live in 2024 than in pretty much any other period in history.

Exactly.
How anyone can think that life is grand because people have iPhones and package deals despite not being able to afford basic essentials such as secure housing or even a family is beyond me.

I didn't say that having an iPhone and the internet was equalled out by not being able to afford a house

I said that I would much rather be growing up today than in my parents' generation (or in pretty much any other generation) Yes, some things are tougher now but mostly life is a hell of a lot better than it ever was.

Their money, their lives, their choice. They are not responsible for your life.

Fair enough if that is your preference. I just disagree that life is, in general, much better now than 20/30/40/50 years ago. In addition, life for young people is likely to get worse as they get older rather than better, the very opposite of what has happened to previous generations in recent history.

Lots of people in previous generations didn't have secure housing either, though.

I have relatives in their sixties who are still in rented accommodation because they didn't manage to get on the housing ladder for various reasons.

Not everyone, no, but it was much easier to buy or rent securely. There are no absolutes. I'm talking in general.

Well then that is what you are saying then, just not directly.

If you say you would prefer to be growing up now than back then, then that has to mean that you think that a having a better standard of living as a child is more important than being able to afford fundamentals like housing, decent retirement and the chance to have children as an adult.

But you have no idea what life will be like in 20/30 years time, just as previous generations could never have imagined life being what it is today.

I studied modern history at school/university and remember being absolutely shocked at how much society has changed in such a short space of time. We now have central heating, double glazing, indoor bathrooms and hot water as standard. Those kinds of things would have been completely unimaginable to many people just a few generations ago.

Nobody knows what adulthood will be like for the current generation of children, though - it's all guesswork and assumptions.

Of course I don't know exactly but the trends are not looking good if you look at debt, demographics, energy, resources, etc

i know that, I'm not talking about that. I'm specifically talking about people who feel they're hard done by because they want to spend huge amounts of money on a wedding, have babies and buy a house (like the op) and they're pointing at how unfair it is that older people had cheaper housing - but this expectation of having a big wedding, babies and owning a house before you are 30 is a very new phenomenon.

Boomers had cheaper houses but they also had more realistic expectations about what they could afford.

Not for sure, but it's easy enough to see the patterns and the direction of travel. It's been obvious for the last 20 years and you won't find many people predicting things are going to get better (other than the head in the sand, blind optimists).

Personally I try not to worry too much about things I have no control over.

How far back are we going when we talk about things getting better/worse compared to previous generations?

Owning and house and having a family in your 20s was commonplace going back a generation or two. The huge wedding, maybe not but that is not something that makes a significant difference, as I have tried to explain. The OP wants to spend 5K which is much below the average figure, according to google.
I'm not sure that younger people have that expectation. I think they are disappointed that they have a lower quality of life/ standard of living than their parents/ grandparents. This is a new thing, for previous generations, standard of living improved!

I'd say maybe the year 2000 was the high point for Western civilization, just before the towers fell in 2001. It's been downhill fairly much since then, though it took a few years for it to become obvious.

The concept of retiring in your early sixties and living for 30+years off a pension is an incredibly new (and frankly unrealistic) idea anyway, imo. It was never something that was going to be sustainable for decades to come.