To feel resentment that my parents are so well off

[Lissm]

I know I will get flamed for this...
My parents are in their early 70s. My father worked in a factory in a low skilled job and was made redundant when he was 56, and retired on a full pension. My mother worked on and off as a cashier and stopped working at 57.

They have a house which must be worth close to £800k, purchased for £40k, and £200k+ in savings and investments. They are able to save at least £1k each month.

We have worked just as hard as they have but we will never have their sort of financial security. We have 6 months of savings and that's it.

I feel so angry that this has happened - not at them but at the situation.

I thought every subsequent generation would at least enjoy the same standard of living. I dread to think what is going to happen to my children.

Marry rich. The young have far more opportunities than my own generation.

Afraid that’s not the case with my parents - they had 2 foreign holidays a year, were members of a gym/spa and a tennis club, and went for monthly date nights.

the fact you’re using coffee out as an example shows how out of touch you are. Even if someone got coffee out every weekday, that’s £20 a week, so roughly £1k a year. So would still take 50 years of no coffee to save a house deposit!

also on house expectations; every single person of my generation who I know who has bought a property has bought a fixer-upper. Nobody has been able to afford a house that’s been “done up”.

It doesn’t take a genius to work out that you will have the same financial security one day. That 800k house may be worth £1mill in ten years and depending on the number of siblings you have you will be very very wealthy. Things change very quickly indeed. We went from being mortgaged to the hilt, to being mortgage free when a parent died.

Well I hope they spend it all on themselves having read this.

That lady is pretty much a unicorn these days. It's almost impossible to get that funding. My mum had a massive stroke which left her paralysed and helpless, but she didn't qualify, because despite needing 24 hour care, it didn't involve medical intervention. Just giving her mountains of pills and doing everything else for her.

For OP and anyone else who is interested in why this is can I suggest you read Inheritocracy by Eliza Filby, she explains it perfectly!

Times were actually quite tough in the early 50s when your parents were born. Mass rebuilding after WW2 & some rashioning still on. Winters were colder, only coal fires in our house, it was freezing.
No credit cards, my parents saved money before buying a major purchase. We didn’t have a washing machine until the 70s.
Decry that generation all you want but it’s a world you will never have to live in.
They’ll be passed on before you know it & then the money you’re so jealous of now will be yours. Unless of course their health deteriorates & the money will be eaten up with Carers or Nursing Home fees.
There is no perfect time to be born.

I have no idea! I don’t think anyone likes to think they had an advantage through luck, and that their achievements weren’t 100% their own.

Look at anyone who went to a private school - there’s never an acknowledgement that they had a big advantage. Look at those who hold other privileges that give us a head start - white people, men, the able bodied etc - no one wants to say, genuinely, “well actually I was lucky, I don’t deserve this more than you do”. I guess in case they are asked to share!

@GertrudePerkinsPaperyThing Good point if you acknowledge an advantage it's not a good look refusing to share or help others.

It doesn’t take a genius to work out that you will have the same financial security one day.

🤦🏻‍♀️

Also,you have to bear in mind that your parents’s financial situation could change overnight.
For example when one parent dies, the other immediately loses access to their state pension & usually loses half of any private pension. This is a substantial loss.

I’m a boomer and am pleased to watch my adult children have much easier lives than I did. They went to university, have travelled extensively and are on their first step on the housing ladder.

i had very little left to live on when mortgage rates were over 12 per cent. I did 3 jobs at one point.

My children remember this and are pleased to see me relax more now although question how I managed on the salary I retired on. My aspirations were much lower having been raised differently.

Property prices were lower and I appreciate that. It made a huge difference. My generation did not imagine the increases that we have seen in recent years. We just wanted somewhere to live. Low interest rates and higher wages are the culprit.

Yeah it's shit. I feel very worried for my kids. I am lucky I bought my house in 2006 and got a 100% mortgage. They didn't even ask for my payslip! And actually tried to get me to take a 125% mortgage!

I won't inherit much from parents nor will my husband. So our kids are fucked basically because we aren't rich at all.

Do they have the opportunity to purchase a house at the same price level as your generation?

Because it’s the norm for adult children to inherit from their parents when they die.

Some did, some didn’t. An evening in the pub was two halves of lager. I don’t think our pub even sold wine and we’d never have dreamed of drinking spirits - far too expensive! Just as we’d never had dreamed of getting a taxi home afterwards. Taxis were an expensive luxury.

I never had a proper holiday as a child. Once a year we’d go on the train to the seaside for a day. We stayed with an aunt in Kent for a week once. When I was an adult I had one holiday in Cornwall for a week in a caravan. I didn’t start having regular holidays until my 30s. Every penny went on the house and bills.

My Grandparents bought a house now worth around £250k she worked as a maid in a hotel he worked in the cellar at same hotel, very low wages. Both held down low paid jobs, he put up telegraph poles for BT and she worked various jobs. They worked constantly until he got laid off by BT. She was screwed over in her pension (I've seen the paperwork) but he got a FSP. They paid off the house in just less than 4 years. So if Ops parents made a bit more effort than my Gps I think it's doable especially if that house was down south London area.

When I was late 20s/early 30s, I thought the same.
I knuckled down and maximized my career and earnings. Took risks, blagged jobs, and went for the money even if I didn't really love the job it was a step to my goal.
I bunged money in pension
I overpaid the mortgage
I started my family at 39.
I bought solar panels - they pay all our energy needs
Now 30 years later I'm reaping the dividends. State retirement is later than I expected but my hard work earlier on has allowed me some grace to take a less stressful job for the past few years till I retire officially. Just got to hope I live long enough to enjoy it (mum d aged 69)

This what sickens me -that elderly people, private tenants and mortgage payers alike are being farmed by financial institutions (be they private equity care home owners, corporate landlords, banks) who can use ordinary people to suck wealth out of the economy and into their pockets, on the back of high house prices. It paralyses everything. I'm not an ecomist but I'm willing to bet that (and brexit perhaps) are big reasons our economy underperforms.

A cynic might think those same moneybags beneficiaries might find it very convenient if all the people who've been robbed by this situation, were to blame asylum seekers for their rotten life chances.

That's random comment without any proof behind it. Some boomers are generous, some aren't so much.

Some people, of every generation, have it hard.

Some people, of every generation, have it easier.

Only if you come from a well off family. Lots of people don't inherit anything.

Yanbu the boomers were absolutely blessed.
Its not their fault, but it really fucking irritates me when people like my parents tell everyone they worked hard and had it hard etc when my Dad worked, my mum was a sahp and we never struggled fir money. Their attitude and that of my ils is that we aren’t working hard enough or should save more. Save what?
It really angers me. They are in a position to help but don’t want to.
Saying that I also have lots of friends whose parents have acknowledged their privilege and have been incredibly generous financially as they can see how hard things are now.

That’s what I found too, I’m 56 and in the last 5 years or so things have come together financially for me. If someone had said to me 10 years ago this would be the case I would have thought it impossible.

A measure of spirits has always been largely consistent with the price of a pint of beer over the last few decades. Unless you go for some sort of speciality drink, so the idea of spirits being an out of reach dream is a bit fanciful.

There certainly was a lot less wine around in the 70s/80s.