Not to take the money my parents have offered?

[ChristmasPudding83]

This revolves around a big house/ area move (sorry it’s a long one). I do realise we are in a good position in lots of ways and this is probably a low ranking problem on a world scale, but it’s doing my head in!

I’ve pretty much always lived in the same area, where my parents are about half an hour away and we see them a lot, and many friends from school plus others made along the way. My OH has lived around here for 30 years but didn’t grow up here. It’s a famously expensive and unaffordable town for buying houses but because we have both been on the property ladder for years and had some help from parents do own a house which is worth quite a lot though it is a fairly small terraced house with a small garden (it’s a nice looking house in a nice area). We have two children who go to a really good local primary school, though secondary school options are iffy but we’re not there yet.

About a decade ago, my husband and I started a quite unusual ‘rural’ business. It was hard work and is never going to be massively lucrative but we have been successful and enjoy what we do, and now do earn enough for things not to feel really tight. However we need a very specific kind of premises to run the business - most people who have this kind of business live there. We started ours by renting somewhere else to run it at, which is 20 minutes drive away, but we have really outgrown the place we rent and for other reasons too it increasingly feels like time to move on from there. However because of the area we’re living in, buying or even renting somewhere else to do the business is proving totally unviable (believe me we have looked!) - there aren’t many properties that would work and when there are they go for way way over our budget.

For the amount we have in our current house and savings plus what we can get for a mortgage we COULD completely relocate and buy a bigger house/ property where we could live and run the business, but it would mean moving far away: realistically Wales or Scotland (which would be 4-6+ hours from where we are now and my parents) to get the size of house we’d want to be able to have people to stay.

However my parents came into some money a few years ago and have offered to give us quite a large sum out of that to help us make this move possible. If we accepted this money, our budget still wouldn’t be enough to stay in the area we live now but would mean we could probably be more like an hour or two away. They have said this would be effectively me getting my inheritance early (and in fact they will change their will if we do it). They want to be supportive of our business which we’ve worked hard to get where it is now and say they’d like to see us enjoy the money while they’re still around.

However I feel very uncomfortable about taking the money. I have three siblings and while they have all had help in the past to buy houses etc I know my parents couldn’t afford to give us all the same amount of money they are talking about giving me before they die. My siblings seem fine with the idea of us getting the money now but I worry about what might happen in a few years time if something changed (and are they REALLY fine with it deep down? I’m not sure I would be). My dad has also alluded in passing to other projects/ charity contributions they won’t be able to do if they give us this money . I also think it just ‘feels wrong’ and would make me feel like I should get them to approve wherever it is we choose or want to move to and that we owed them too much, and really I’d much rather feel like we’d done the move standing on our own two feet.

I feel quite torn though. Moving that far away when my parents are getting older feels a bit wrong and while a big part of me feels it would be a really exciting adventure to start a new life somewhere else (I never thought I’d be the kind of person to live all my life where I grew up!), part of me also worries about things like making new friends and what impact this might have on the children.

The third option is to stay put but then we couldn’t carry on with the business long term so it would mean dreaming up a new career for both of us. I’ve put a lot into studying and building up networks etc for the job I’m doing now and it is something I’m passionate about. Plus I love the flexibility of having our own business. But maybe the sacrifice of moving far away is too much for a job, however much you like it!

So did the OP. Says so in the first post.

I think moving to an hour or two away could be a yoke around your necks. It might seem fine now when you're doing "nice" visits but it's enough to be a real slog on top of a FT day job if they start needing help to hospital visits, daily care needs etc. No one starts out planning to impose but there's a sort of scope creep as people get older, and if they have given you that money to keep you "in the area" you are likely to feel an obligation to help much more so than if it had been your own decision and money. It could turn into the worst of both worlds.

As a PP said if this is building on a successful business, shouldn't business loans be the first port of call rather than bank of mum and dad? Is there another option, could you keep house and business separate and rent the land?

I'd be really torn. It's not just the money, because I think there are ways to do this fairly, it's the moving.

A big move, feels like an adventure for the whole family, a more local move may end up being not far enough. You may all feel too close to make local connections and end up doing lots of travelling back and forth because it's expected as they paid to keep you close.

I really don’t understand why you need to move four hours away if your parents don’t loan you money and it does feel like you are hanging it over them as a threat, but dong a fair job of convincing yourself you aren’t.

If your business is viable then you should be looking into business loans not parents. If you need your parents to support your business and housing needs, then yes you probably should be looking for new careers as this isn’t genuinely viable.

You sound really lovely OP. Lots of people wouldn't have given this, this much thought. Good luck whatever you decide.

It’s just about affordability really…the closer we stay to where we are now the more expensive it’ll be so the less our money can buy. You’re right it isn’t binary and there are ways we can compromise to potentially stay nearer but our budget will go furthest if we’re prepared to move at least 4 hours away….

Haha very true!

Yes the idea of a big adventure does actually appeal to me. I wonder if we would be considering a move even we weren’t at this point with the business to be honest - I still go to the same pubs I did when I was 16 and sometimes I just feel quite bored by the area (and annoyed by how expensive and oversubscribed everything in the SE is).

just wanted to say thank you so much for all the comments, it’s been a bit like reading the inside of my head written down in front of me LOL!! What I didn’t say before also is that I do have some close family elsewhere in the UK (ditto my OH’s parents) so we could potentially end up closer or close to them.

what I am coming away thinking is that it isn’t all or nothing whatever we do. So yes getting a business loan/ grant to help with some costs is something we should look into again (I’m wary of taking on too much debt in the business and making life stressful but I guess it is all a matter of how much). Plus maybe we could consider a much smaller amount from my parents and make that a loan instead.

And I think people who have said about what if the business fails? make a good point, it needs to be a move we’d be happy to make anyway and I think that needs to be higher on the priority list than whether the new place is perfect for the business.

and yes, to think more about different ways we could achieve the same outcome. And to think better about what alternative work I could do if the move doesn’t prove doable on a budget we can afford, so we are prepared.

really, really appreciate your comments and thoughts, thanks so much xxx

You need some specialist advice. I would talk to an agricultural business advisor on this, it may be advantageous to set up a business partnership with your parents as investors. There are certain advantages in inheriting an agricultural business as some agricultural assets can benefit from relief from Inheritance Tax, eg land that is used for growing crops. or for intensive animal rearing. This might benefit your siblings in the long term too if they can inherit a proportion w/o inheritance tax. Definitely worth investigating, but you need specialist advice on how to go about it.
(I also think that it might be a good argument that it's not deprivation of assets (for care home fee purposes) eg if they are investing in the business and can be shown to make share of the profit. Again that might benefit your siblings too)

Definitely seek proper specialist advice on this.