We’re spending the kids inheritance

[Tuppenceabaggy]

Does anyone find it weird when parents/older people say this and so proudly?

Ive heard a few times people saying they sacrificed everything for their kids, now it’s their time…is this a bit selfish/odd? Children don’t ask to be born, do they.

Now i’m a parent, I just find my parents and some others way of doing things quite odd.

My dad worked in a good job and Dm was a sahm. I had a part time job since I was 14, if I wanted something, I had to pay for it (except clothes treats out of Christmas and birthday money) I paid for all my own driving lessons (I had a lot and it cost a fortune) I bought my own car and paid insurance etc, Dh and I got our mortgage ourselves with no help.

Now I have Dd, there’s not a lot of spare cash to go around, but I will have a savings account in the event of going to uni (if she chooses to) helping with driving lessons and first car and hopefully a little help with a first home (provided we can try our best to save for this)

I don’t want my parents money, i’m
happy to see them spend it on themselves and enjoy it a bit, but it’s just not how I see my life, everything I think about is for Dd first.

Is this just a generational thing?

Wow this is still going and in a pathetic way

It really is about attitude and not broad generations

Some people, of all generations, are really just blind to the privileges they have had.

Entitlement and blame all round.

Take responsibility for your own futures and educate your children to appreciate what they have. Morale support is worth so much more than financial

I think there is a difference between feeling entitled to something and just acknowledging that you have very different mind sets on something as a parent and the generational trends that go with that. I don't think anyone is saying that older generations have to do xyz with their money- it's their money. Just moreso that it's a different approach than current generations may take with their children and wealth and wondering why is that.

Yes. I'm gen X so not young but even I have already resigned to the simple fact that I won't have a pension and probably die in the gutter. My children won't be able to help me in my old age as the economy will be even worse by then.

Also I think for those saying that work ethic etc is more important- it is absolutely incredibly important to instil in children but let's not pretend that generational wealth doesn't have a huge role in people leading a good quality of life... the playing field is not even and its unfair to many people to say that because it suggests that we'd all be millionaires if we just worked harder. When the reality is that the majority of the world's most wealthy and influential people are coming from highly privileged backgrounds in the first instance. An easy example is looking at the health outcomes by postcode. People living in wealthier communities are more likely to live significantly longer than those living in poorer communities. Children are more likely to have poorer educational outcomes, more likely to be engaged in anti social activity when they grow up in socio economically deprived areas. Generational wealth matters.

I don't think this is a generational divide. My parents are baby boomers (although it's an expression and entity imported from America, relatively recently, and doesn't translate perfectly as their boomer generation from 1945 to 1965 wasn't the same demographic pattern as here). Born at the end of the 1940s. First generation to go to uni, they helped support their own mothers in old age.
They have four children, and gave us all a wonderful childhood. They paid for all of us to do such undergrad and post-grad education as we wanted to do, and paid for all of us to learn to drive. The four of us fell either side of the introduction of uni fees, but all left higher education without any debt.
They don't support us financially as adults - why should they? They prepared us for independent adulthood in the different ways we each wanted. They are generous in terms of Christmas presents, hosting us when we stay, etc. But they don't fling cash at us (now all in our 30s and 40s) and I don't see for a second why they should do.

Correlation can't be assumed to be causation.....

It's widely accepted in this instance that it is though. From access to resources, education, information, receiving appropriate healthcare , being able to purchase better quality food, being able to heat your home, access to affordable transport, being able to commute to a better paid job, being able to manage issues in your home like damp, being able to outsource things to give you more time to destress, being able to afford private healthcare to avoid waiting lists, exposure to trauma ... it's very consistent across the research and the majority of community based responses will be built around that research which has been carried out by the public health authority. The difference in a single bus line can be as much as 10 years discrepancy in life expectancy. Which is also interesting given that the wealthier communities with the longer life expectancies also have older communities.

Like you, I was encouraged to earn my own money from a young age and not rely on my DPs for financial help - however, this was to teach me the value of money. Since then they have been really generous with help for house deposits and I know they have set up bank accounts for all the DGC. Feel very fortunate and hope to do the same for my DC.

For some it would not be enough that parents gave them a good quality life and funded their education. It seems that some feel that the fruit unfairly acquired from living in an era of low house prices, cost of living etc should be significantly shared and distributed to their struggling offspring.

Many of that generation do try to help I’m sure but we are being told that overwhelmingly they’re a selfish bunch.

Yes, I've read some things about the research. The extent to which it is inter-generational wealth is less clear, however. Parental education, background, interest in education, family culture and habits, all of these are important. They can well be correlated with wealth or income, but they aren't quite the same thing.
My SIL is a GP, and she was saying one of the issues about universal screening programmes which are a good thing on a population level (smears, prostate, breast, etc) is that they can increase health inequality - takeup is higher in higher-income and socioeconomic groups than in more deprived ones. It's a tricky area.

I don't.

My parents money is for them. I'd happily not receive a penny

You're kidding right?

How is this disgusting?

Your entitlement is beyond.

Generational wealth matters.

yep

@Toddlerhelpplease123 I don't think it's driven by envy as I said but anger & on an individual level hurt. Many young people think why am I not able to afford a house or why I am saving so much for a pension etc. We never recovered from the 08 crash and haven't invested in anything bar housing & particularly not the young for decades. I'm surprised the young aren't angrier.

I just cannot fathom being upset with the spendy ones because they aren’t giving it to us. I do think gosh that’s wasteful when they are renovating the kitchen for the 3rd time in a decade but it’s more out of a concern for them than anything!

But you still think it's wasteful. Do you need any money or are you ok? I had help from family in terms of deposit & childcare but they had the same, they had much more childcare in fact. The op isn't talking about my parents I don't understand those who are wasteful if their dc are struggling.

Do/will your parents expect you to provide some form of care for them when they are older?

Parents who talk about years of sacrifice and how they clothed and fed their children can get in the sea. Feeding/clothing your own children is a legal requirement, not something that requires praise and gratitude.

You sound very generous and supportive to your adult daughter and grandchild. Certainly, no-one is owed an inheritance, but OP's parents who provided no help or financial support from when OP was 14 and got a part-time job are the ones talking about spending her inheritance.

Most of the grandparents I know, wouldn't see their adult kids struggle if they could help them financially.

I hope your parents don't expect any help and support from you now they are much older? It does seem to be a common theme on the Elderly Parents board where parents who have treated their children really badly, expect these same children to step up to provide care once they can no longer manage alone.

MPs criticise 'wealth-hoarding' boomers stereotype www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvg1e75ddygo

Aren't many MPs boomers? 😆

The only "help" they offered in our 20's was to offer to rent us one of their BTL's at market rate. They gave DP the cold shoulder for the first 7 years we were together because as DP came from a working class background, they assumed DP was a gold-digger who was after the family silver. We were so poor in our 20's that at one point we slept on the floor of an unfurnished apartment and ate meals off a packing crate, because we couldn't afford a mattress, never mind a bed.
DP's parents were as bad/worse in different ways (no money but emotionally manipulative), so we have chosen to live somewhere that requires a day's travel and a flight away from them. There'll be no support from us beyond getting them into a nursing home.
I don't even want their tainted money. I'll be giving any inheritance from them straight to my kids if they're old enough, or putting it in trust for them, so they don't have to struggle and worry through their 20's and 30's the way we did.

Parents have a legal requirement to care for their babies/children. Failure to do so can lead to your children being removed from your care and possibly prosecution for neglect.

There is no requirement, moral or legal, for adult children to provide care for their elderly parents. Most people aren't in a position to do so as they have full-time jobs and their own children to care for. The sort of parents who would expect this from their adult children are probably the last people that would deserve such care from their children.

I've only ever heard it said as a joke.

Infact just this weekend we joked with Dd that we were spending her inheritance as we were wrong at an expensive restaurant in London. Obviously it was nothing like that amount and as we are only in our early 50s and still working/earning it's no where near that time.

We've joked similarly before, as have most people I know.

And to be fair - we tell our own parents to spend their money now and enjoy it. They've earned it so should enjoy the befits now whilst they can.

Dh comes across this a lot. He's a solicitor and does a lot of tax planning for clients as part of will etc.
he has to really try to force some parents to spend some of their money now rather than just save it. In some situations spending some how is a better way to use the money than it just being taken up with tax later.

He sees this attitude much more than the let's spend it all on ourselves now attitude.

I have boomer parents and have heard this 'joke' too many times. Apparently it's hilarious amongst the cruising boomers 'we're skiing again, Spending the Kids Inheritance '

A school friend has the same sort of parents. It just grates. What are we supposed to say? Do we laugh with them?

I think what killed it for me was inviting them on our holiday for the year - a four night break off season out of school holidays when the kids were tiny. They moaned about the cottage, the food, no evening entertainment. Made us feel terrible about our parenting of an overtired tantruming toddler. And then announced they were off on a four month cruise (£50k) skiing around the world. Hilarious.

Some people are selfish, some people make bad jokes.

I'm Gen X. MIL (silent generation) is still living in her big house partly because 'I want to protect your inheritance' and she's convinced property is the best way to maximise that. She's been told by all her children they would far rather she moved to a smaller, more comfortable, property that would free up cash for her to spend on herself. She's continually offering to pay for big ticket items for us and DH and I always tell her we have a much higher income than her and that we don't expect her to do that. But FIL was a lot less generous when he was alive so it's not a generational thing.

My parents are silent/boomer and farmers. Dad was of the opinion that the aim of every generation is to pass on the farm in a better condition than you inherit it in. My boomer Mum did make the 'spending our kids inheritance' joke once and I told her I thought it was in bad taste, she hasn't done it since. However, her and Dad were financially supportive when I was young and generously supported us through University so I have no complaints.

I do think though that whatever you do for your children you feel like you could do more. Some grandparents regularly give money to their grandchildren, some people save regularly throughout their children's childhood, some pay all the University fees, some give them big deposits to help buy a house, some regularly gift lump sums throughout their retirement. You can always look at your own parents and think they are not as generous as another parent.