To think it’s selfish for parents to retire early when their kids are renting?

[Lesbeavinu]

Dh has decided he is going to retire at 59. He has a great government pension and private pension/savings. He earns a decent £50k a year (same as me) and we have no mortgage.

I said that dh should continue working for another year or 18 months and gift the money to dd for a flat deposit.

How very passive aggressive of you to sigh at me @Holluschickie.

Sigh back at you too.

Personally neither I nor my DH want grandchildren, given the way climate change is going. Does that mean I have less of an obligation to help DC?

Okey dokey and thanks. Still, I don’t think OP should expect her husband to continue labouring for a house deposit for the kids. They need to get their house themselves! I say this as someone who did not buy her first house until she was 45…American student loans ate most of what I made. When those were paid off, then I saved for a deposit, and then was able to have a mortgage with DH, which we overpaid and paid off in 7 years by living like students. I never would have dreamed of asking my parents or Dh’s mum for money though she is quite wealthy.

Surely if you think this is a good idea, there is nothing stopping you gifting your next 18 months wages to DD? It seems odd that you think he should do it.

True, 59 is very young. I’d just be worried dh would be bored and get depressed

Why would he get bored and depressed . There's a life to live outside work?
My dad and my two uncles retired at 55. One has since died but they are in their 80s now. They are definitely not bored!.
They cycle , go to the gym, go hiking, swim, go camping virtually every week in the summer, go to art galleries etc. In fact do all tbe things I want to do at the age of 59 but no retirement in sight for me.

I think it depends if someone enjoys their work.
Some people aren't that committed to work and want to retire early. Others enjoy work and want to keep going sometimes to 70.

It's also mainly people in the public sector who are able to retire early with their generous pensions. (Obviously not people who own their businesses and have made their own money.)

Why didn't they buy a home already? Are they quite young?

God, the more I think about this, what an absolute cow the daughter is to try to to steal something that can never be returned - time - from her own father to make her own life easier.

Not for anything she needs or has a right to. Renting is fine if you cannot afford to buy.

From 60 plus life becomes ever more precious. 60-70 is the last decade many enjoy hearty good health. And from 70 plus most will get more and more frail.

Every single healthy day is a blessing, and particularly so after middle age.

To have made it to the end of a working life and have the money and time to enjoy retirement is a combination of amazing forward planning, hard work and great good fortune.

How dreadful that a daughter would care so little about her father she wants to force him out to work to make her own life easier knowing that he will soon be 60 and the end of his life is far closer than the beginning.

How horrible to think of your parents as a perpetual money tree and not people you love and wish well in their own choices.

Just an awful, appalling attitude. So greedy and uncaring.

My DC and all of their friends (30s) own property. They worked and saved, DS worked abroad for several years to save a deposit. It’s hard but mot impossible. I think many young people expect to maintain a lifestyle of eating out, holidays, expensive hobbies.. and still somehow amass a deposit. I appreciate this doesn’t apply to all but many low earners would never have owned property , whatever the financial situation of the country.

My dad retired at 55, while I was a student. The only negative was that my landlord wouldn’t allow them to be guarantors as pensioners, so I had to use my uncle. I’d much rather my dad retired and enjoyed his life than working longer for me to get on the property ladder. As it is, I had no issues with that after graduating and finding a good job anyway - I’d bought my first flat by the time I was 25.

It's you, OP, who is being unbelievably selfish.

I retired at 60 - burned out teacher. Not all jobs can be continued for years. I do sometimes get bored but no more bored than marking books every night, attending parents’ evenings, listening to the same no homework excuses, picking up the same uniform infringments. Bits of boredom are part of life How have we become convinced that work is the only way of living?

If he wants to retire, good for him. Every time I meet up with friends now, the first ten mins is a ‘health’ conversation. So many people have issues - heart, strokes, joints and that’s without the sudden deaths. In your 60s you become very aware that you are in the endgame.

If your DD really needs help, you need to get around the table and talk. What are the numbers involved? Could you gift something from a future inheritance? Can she move home? Can you tighten your belts and you save some of your salary? But unilaterally declaring he needs to give up a year of his life is not proportionate.

Well, I would in his shoes. But most people see this differently.

I feel sometimes the older generation don’t understand, or choose not to see, that the younger generation is living in a completely different social and economic landscape to the one they grew up in. Just look at the changed ratio of income to house prices for a start.

Your DC may end up helping with your care in your infirmity for 15 + years (or they may not - you can’t know. But some of the threads in the Elderly topic here are heartbreaking). To give them a big boost when you are still in your prime is a huge and potentially life-changing gift.

you don't make gifts on behalf of someone else

If you want to give her money , you do the work

Clearly he sees it differently, which is why the daughter is on here trying to drum up sympathy for treating her dad like a money tree.

He's not in his prime. He's nearly 60.

Economic landscapes are irrelevant. She doesn't need to buy a house. Nobody does. And there are millions of people who are managing to buy a house without any support from their parents at all. If she can't afford a mortgage, she can rent or figure it out some other way.

The father's opinion is the only one that matters, and he has chosen to retire after working his whole life and using his own money to do that.

It's also a pretty safe bet that a daughter who's willing to steal a year or more of her father's life to make hers easier will not be doing any caregiving later in life.

Fortunately, sounds like her parents have sorted their own lives out. Now she can do the same.

So if this isn't a wind up

Oh, I don't think there's any risk of that

Op also works I believe as she said in her op that they earn the same amount of money.

I'm talking about the actuarial reduction that is applied to the civil service or local government pension (ie 'occupational') that is applied if taken before a set age.

Yes, you can take it at 55, but a huge reduction faction is applied if taken earlier. State pension is irrelevant here.

I know, I've done it, jumped through all the hoops and did all the calculations.

🤣🤣🤣

Oh well, he's chosen to do it anyway. I dare say he knows his own finances and capacity and has worked it out to suit him.

Good luck to him.

I agree with you OP. Life is going to get a lot harder for youngsters. It would be a no brainer for me

Just the initial posts from the OP then pooof - gone in a puff of smoke.

It’s not for you to bark your orders at him and expect him to comply. It’s also not his responsibility to ensure his daughter’s future solvency. @BeaRF75 hit the nail on the head with the stop the infantilisation of adults comment.

It was almost definitely the daughter. I hope she's read the vast majority of the replies and taken the hint.

She said they earn the same, so presumably yes.

@greedisunappealing HA! I'd not thought of that, you could be right.

Given your user name, you're not the DH are you?😂