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?

Why did her daughter have three children if she is struggling to huddle caring for them, financially?

I agree with you, OP. We are now in our 50s. I definitely want to be able to help my kids out.

It is interesting. My husband and I were brought up differently. I am from an Asian background and my parents would never have considered charging me rent and they automatically paid for driving lessons and university costs. My husband said he and his friends were just left to fend for themselves when they became 18. He didn’t have any help with University or driving lessons.

We have paid for our kids’ university fees and their driving lessons. We are lucky to be able to of course. Our children are hard-working and dedicated and will hopefully be working and financially independent very soon.

However, I have made some financial decisions to make sure that when the time comes we will hopefully be able to help them with a house deposit.

It brings me a great deal of pleasure to be able to help my kids out. And if they were struggling financially, there is no question that I would help. Whether that was by giving them some money or letting them live with us. My young adult kids expect nothing, and are v grateful when we help them. They want us to enjoy ourselves.

I do feel sad when I read about parents taking half their children’s paper round money or leaving them to cope financially when they turn 16. Of course if they have no money, they have no money. But sometimes it seems to be a point of principle for some parents and I will never understand that.

What? Please don't do this. To think all people in a massive generational band have the same attitude is crass.

Absolutely this
Someone who rants at the dinner table or at waitresses has some kind of personality disorder.
Agree its across all generations
I mean we have all these face injections and fillers and constant pictures of meeee all over Insta these days
Meeeeeee at the beach, with my dog, with my Costa 🙄

I agree. This is a Boomer Bashing thread.
What about the lazy Millennials then. They ALL sit around their parents massive houses, ALL gaming while mummy brings them food. Too scared to get a job because someone might be loud towards them. Moaning about not getting a £45k salary as soon as they leave uni. Bitchin about rent and wanting everyone over 60 in a home so they can have cheap housing. Snowflake.

There you go, that's what us boomers think. Perhaps we are like it because we want you to be strong and work for your bread and butter

Yep same.

You wonder how the fuck our parents were raised by such moral and generous people, then turned out to be these kind of parents. The contrast is stark and horrible. Like they took and took and took, soaked it all up like sponges, then went "I'm ok, Jack"

Although I don't even think it's being a parent. Because some of my parent's childless friends are equally self congratulating about how they cleverly managed, through such hard work to buy a farmhouse for an absolute pittance, and it's now worth £2.5mill. Yes Susan, it's testament to your level of ignorance and ego to think that you and Derek, a maintenance man and a stay at home mum, live in a mortgage free home worth £2.5mill, because you worked hard.amd saved . Whilst now, Bill and Ben, two doctors can't afford the fucking thing.

I am a so-called ‘boomer’. I worked full time as a teacher once my twins were 18 months old. Returning to part time teaching was not an option. My husband and I had no financial help from our loving but relatively poor parents. We have had no inheritance. We lived within our means. We did go on a Eurocamp holiday once a year. We bought our home by saving before we married-12 at the wedding ceremony, so inexpensive. Inflation was sky-high. The mortgage rate was the highest it has ever been. Unemployment was a serious problem. There were strikes and three day weeks. No one had expensive mobile phone contracts-they were rare. I did have a mobile phone from 1995. No one had TV apps. Or lease vehicles. Our household did not have Findus or any such meals. Day time tv was limited to one show at lunchtime and children’s tv at early lunch and again at teatime. Exercises classes were there for those with time or leisure. Fewer gadgets, unless you could afford the ones available, meant chores took longer. No idea where your idyll existed.
We were happy. Some weren’t. We certainly didn’t have a chip on our shoulders about previous generations. And still don’t.

Oh dear.

You do know millennials are 28-43.

Or rather you don't, given you think we're sitting in your houses you paid pence for playing computer games.

@Devon24

at the end of the day, it’s their money and they can do what they like with it 😀

Actually @Mere1 there was a huge amount of strife between the silent generation, who'd had the shadow of the first world war and then living and serving through the second world war.
A lot of rhetoric behind the 1960s stereotype was about asking the older generation to either shut up about the war or stand silently by whilst the boomers invented sex and rock and roll.

In terms of earnings it is the norm for most of my age group, that I know. We have more disposable income than our parents despite things costing more now.

But our backgrounds re not wealthy middle class (and above) families with 2.4 children in degree- needing professions. I'm talking about hard working but working class parents from larger families, where university wasn't the norm when/where they grew up and often the older boys sat least were expected to leave school at 15 to get a job to help support their families. Inheritance isn't really a thing in those kind of families.

So in this situation it's more likely that the children - now in their 40/50s did manage to earn more than their parents and have better standards of living, more disposable income, etc We benefited a little from student loans(I had a grant for my first year but loans after that) but just missed out on the best deals in housing.

We benefitted massively from having supportive parents who really valued education. They may not have been able to support us with financial handouts when younger but they gave us the foundations to go out and find our own way, I paid for my own driving lessons, wedding, student loans, house deposits, etc (with Dh) but had my parents support backing me all the way, just not cash handouts.

We only have one child and we are in a very different financial position that our parents so yes, we can support her financially for much longer and she will - all things being equal - inherit from us, though hopefully not for many years!

Our parents definitely did all they could when younger to give us great childhoods. We tell them regularly it's now their tine time to go out and enjoy their money in their entire ent, and not wait until it's too late!

Agreed. Some parents in the 80’s/90’s did the bare legal minimum for their children in that they provided physical care but little in the way of emotional support. A lot also hit their children when they were small and defenceless.

Morally, I don’t think such parents deserve any reciprocal care from their adult children as they age & grow frail themselves.

i do feel it is different though if your parents did give you a loving childhood. Legally you have no obligation but you are likely to want to protect them in their vulnerability as they did you.

I find all this categorisation down to age ridiculous. Boomers, gen X, millennial etc . I get it’s interesting from a social analysis perspective. What I find stupid is when people attribute personality types to each generation.

We are all individuals. I am a gen X. But if I had been born a bit earlier, I would be a boomer. A bit later and I would be a millennial. I would still have my own personality traits but would be stereotyped in a completely different way. We could all have been boomers, or millennials or gen X etc if it were not for the accident of our birthdate. if we were boomers, we would also be taking advantage of cheap housing and free university. If we were all gen Z, we would likely be posting a lot more on social media and getting our news from there. We all act according to the norms of our time.
No generation is intrinsically better than another.

Criticising people essentially because of the year they were born is pretty stupid! It’s like ostracising somebody because of their horoscope ;-)

Jesus Christ, this is perfect boomer pitch.

A phone contract 🤣

Ahhhh, it wasn't the house costing £20k that now costs £650k that sorted you out. It was how prudent you were without a phone contract, or "TV apps". Only 12 at our wedding, weren't we good savers.

Again. A high mortgage rate is nothing, because 12% of feck all, is feck all.

Keep telling yourself you just worked harder and made better decisions. The scary bit is you really do think that's why. The whole generation of you do.

This is a crazy thread. The phrase is not serious. People say it with a smile on their face e when they go on holiday or buy a new sofa-things they may not have previously done a lot of. It's not a serious statement. It's typical of a small number of younger people-possibly even a small sub set-that they'd read it as someone intentionally depriving them of something they were entitled to. Happily, most people are not like that, in any generation.

The fact is, people with spare money will mostly leave what they have, other than what is taken for care home fees. Obviously , people without money can't.

I’m a 1949 dob so a boomer. The older I get, the more aware I am that the shadow of 2 world wars, the financial and educational poverty in the lives of our parents and grandparents. I’m often surprised by the sneery comments about my generations. That somehow we were over indulged and grew up selfish. That is so far from my experience or that of family and friends.

we were fortunate in the 60’s to have easy access to employment, housing costs were manageable but I knew nobody with any spare cash on the day wages were due.
we inherited as our parents left small houses. The bulk of that has been given to our children, deposits for houses the main gifts but numerous significant amounts for specific needs. This pattern is followed by family and friends. My kids joke about me spending the children’s inheritance - do it they say, enjoy it while you can
i dislike inter generational wars. They must reflect the relationships

Your parents actually sound dreadful. Pretty negligent parents and uninterested grandparents. I'm not sure why you have said that you are willing to provide care for them when they need it. The affection and responsibility seems to be a one way street, i.e. from you to your parents.

If I were you, I would direct all my resources, attention and care towards my children/grandchildren rather than my selfish parents.

How do you know I'm not? In another post I said how much I enjoy helping out my adult DC and DGC, I'm enjoying my well earned retirement with them. However, none of my children expect me to do this and are very thankful.
I'm desperately sorry for the younger generations nowadays and acknowledge my generation were more fortunate with housing etc. A report out today has shown 80+% receive financial help from their parents to buy their first homes which flies in the face of the selfish, greedy boomer generation theory we're constantly seeing in MN!
I hope you all realise you're playing into the old divide and rule tactics espoused on the right. You should be looking at the politicians who decimated public services, forcing you to pay extortionate fees to private nurseries, for selling off council houses and not replacing them, for giving tax breaks to the rich because it will 'trickle down' allowing other countries to manufacture goods that we used to make in the UK and now which we buy from the other side of the world. You should be protesting on the streets not slagging off a whole generation of ordinary people.

As someone in their 30s, reading these comments filled with ageism is horrific. I don't understand how people think this is ok to say, no other "ism" would be tolerated.

Even though the economy isn't great im very pleased to have been born in the 1990s and not in the baby boom generation because I can acknowledge I have more opportunities now then as a woman from a working class background I would've had in the past.

I think those spouting all these ageist comments barely have a clue about history except for the classic comments about how cheap houses were totally missing the racism, discrimination, lack of further education, poverty, domestic violence and other crimes etc to name but a few socials ills that still absolutely existed in far greater quantities in the past.

And who provided THEIR money when they were young and had little kids ? Your post is confusing. You are saying you don't want the money yet complaining about em spending it!! If you were my offspring with that attitude you'd get sod all.

She was just telling her story
Interest on mortgages were 18% at the highest. This meant the mortgage rose to above what my husband earned. In my case, and we had a small baby and no childcare available, so we basically had to go without a lot to survive. Not great if you were earning less than a payment, and hence folk handing back keys to estate agents. And they still owed more than the house was worth.
I can't imagine how snowflakes would cope today, I really can't.

I've worked 50 years for the NHS and will have as many cruises and kitchens as I WANT.

I’m an X and have helped out my oldest DC considerably (high five figures) and have savings for my other two DC for when they buy a place in a couple of years time.
In my friendship group there has been lots of talk of helping their DC financially but so far there has been little or no action. It would be interesting to see the difference in what people think they would give their DC and what they actually do when it comes to it.

@Tuppenceabaggy
You make sweeping generalisations about 'boomers'. Just because you 'believe' your parents were rubbish doesn't mean that all boomers were. TBH you sound very bitter.
We struggled financially when our kids were growing up and there was no way we could have saved to pay for driving lessons or uni. We both worked,didn't smoke, drink or spend money on ourselves. Everything we earned went to support our family.
My DH died while he was still employed so I received a death in service payment which I shared between my kids to use as they wished to help them with mortgage deposits etc.
I'm now in my 70s and for the first time in my life I can afford a few luxuries and my kids don't begrudge me having a holiday or going out for meals.
Am I spending the kids inheritance, no I'm spending my hard earned money to enjoy a few things which I've never had before.

Ain't they delusional and stupid!