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.

My dad is absolutely loaded. He’s just replaced a perfectly good 3piece suite and bought himself an E bike that he doesn’t really need/have any intention of using because, in his own words, “I need to do something with my money“. Meanwhile, I’m struggling to renovate a house, work around two young children(my mother never worked) the air-conditioning is broken in my car, I’m counting down the days until payday… Don’t expect anything but I find it a bit offensive to be honest! He retired early with a gold plated pension. I know I’m not entitled to anything I haven’t earned he knows we struggle and yet literally wastes money before our eyes.!

What if you are a boomer who got totally shafted? I wonder what that is. A shoomer?

Some have gone to career average schemes, which is less money, DH and I had final salary pensions from a large private multinational which went to career average about 12 or so years ago, so if you had been there years like DH it was a mixture of the two

I'm kind of curious now. Baby boomers - in your experience, when you were younger, did older generations call people frivolous for spending money on things that they didn't have but are now commonplace? I'm thinking indoor loo, central heating, fridge, car, TV, microwave...

@Twofoursixeight great post

@Ddakji I know we have more over 65d than under 15s which is insane.

It was a lot, my parents also stretched themselves to buy their £40k house. They also had some equity in a previous house. But the house value has increased much more than can be accounted for by inflation

It’s not just a single £5 coffee. It’s the holidays abroad, the hen dos, the botox, nails, hair extensions, the leased SUV, the nights out, the JustEat takeaways, the Turkey teeth, the designer clothes, festivals and concerts, the Mounjaro, the football season tickets, the £££ cosmetics, the 3 grand dog, the gym memberships…

I’m not saying that all young people will have all these things, but lots of young people will have a few of them. I know that my own DCs have many of them and are always crying poverty.

But my parents generation and my gps generation had some of these things or the equivalent of them. Fish & chips has been a popular takeaway for decades, make up brands were founded before the 00s, dogs became pets in the Victorian days. Why the pretence that nobody shooed or spent money before today?

Exactly. Don’t get me wrong, we weren’t in poverty, but there was always money for my dad’s cigarettes and for him to play golf and go to the pub.

I don’t remember ever not having an indoor loo. My parents (Great generation) did and, in my dad’s case, it was shared with several other houses. I remember being blown away when I saw colour TV for the first time, years before either I or my parents had one. My dad was incredibly frugal but loosened up a bit in old age and they had a series of nice holidays and cars. On the other hand my mum was 40 before she flew for the first time and that was for an overseas posting, not a holiday.

You stand to inherit all that so you’re not as hard done by as you’re claiming to be! You’ll one day be seen as one of those people who has ‘generational wealth’ so… 🤷‍♀️

high rate tax papers are only 2 people on 50K (55K) if allowing for pension contributions.

So 2 people on 50K, after tax, NI and pensions would be what £2800 each? X 2 that’s £5,400 total household. Mortgage alone for a 3 bed in many places in the country could be 2K at least and that’s without assuming they are on a really brutal interest rate (which many have been hit by). They then have childcare bills, council tax, bills, commuting costs, plus food and £3400 does not get you far these days so £150 savings in this climate with young children is good going.

No, because there wasn't the same judginess / resentment / jealousy then, well not that I can remember. And way less consumerism. My parents might have joked privately about a neighbour's flashy new car, etc. but really it was water off a duck's back. There was an element of being happy with your lot, typical of my parents' generation (both born in 1932). And more deference for authority and the unspoken rules of society.

Edit to include student loans to assume the £2800 approx monthly figure.

My parents were the silent generation, (boomers were later), who were the ones who maybe didn't have indoor loo and fridges. My parents bought their house in 1960, house had indoor loo when they bought it, they put central heating in in the early 70s. We had a fridge with a tiny ice box at the top. Car was on HP, which was a loan type thing. TV was rented which was very common in 60s to 80s. Microwave was much later,we had one in the 80s. I can't recall people would think us frivolous but of course there was no internet so it wasn't so widely known what people had unless you came to the house.

Colour TVs are an interesting anomaly.

Back in 1980, a colour tv could be had for about £250, equivalent to about £1K today.

Whereas today for £400 you can get a pretty decent TV and of course a lot bigger than the old ones with an infinitely better picture quality.

So TVs are one of those things that have actually gotten more affordable. I expect it is similar for a lot of electronic goods.

So we may be able to afford a giant telly that it much better than the usual one in 1980.

Unfortunately affording a house to put it in is considerably more of a struggle.

Career average is still far more generous than any defined contribution scheme. You’d have to make eye watering contributions to a DC scheme to come out with the equivalent of a career average pension.

It’s not really the same. Cosmetics were pennies in Woolworths, not from exclusive shops selling £80 foundation. They washed their faces with soap and water and a dab of cold cream. Nobody had designer breeds of dogs. Everyone had a mongrel, and they were usually free. People gave away puppies when their dogs got pregnant (this was back when people would just ‘let their dogs out’ to roam the streets, rather than walking them). Nobody would have spent two month’s salary on a dog.

In ‘Road to Wigan Peer’ tea was seen as luxury goods, so there will always be things that folk see as something they couldn’t afford ‘in their day’, but the fact remains that today’s young people spend far more disposable cash on non-essentials than the generations before them.

My DCs are in their 20s. They all own a house and car, and have holidays and other luxuries. They’re streets ahead of where I was at their age, literally like 10-15 years ahead. Yet all we hear is how much worse off they are and what bastards we are for having a bit of money saved to pay our bills in retirement (they don’t say this but it’s heavily implied, as per this thread). And I’m not even a boomer! My boomer parents never owned a house nor did they have a pension.

DH and I were talking about the price of televisions the other day. I realised for the amount we spend on groceries in just one week is more than the cost of a fairly decent sized TV. This fact would have been mind blowing decades ago.

I think nowadays the basics are what's expensive...and the so called luxury items are more affordable.

My parents had colour TV in the early 70s, it was rented as they were very expensive to buy and if it went wrong they came round and fixed it. When we bought our house in 1984 we still rented a TV and video recorder then until the 90s.

My great aunt also did this…..

very wealthy, wouldn’t even buy bubble bath 😭 washed EVERYTHING in value washing up liquid.

lived on cheap food, would stick a cheapy plain white wax candle on at night instead of the lights.

nothing we could do. A total shame

It's hard to comprehend that in the past , shopping wasn't seen as a pass time. I remember the first supermarket opening in my town. A strange affair, wooden pallets and bags of stuff.
Clothes shops had their own language. It was considered rude to say out loud to an assistant that you were looking else where.
People made their own clothes. You picked out a pattern and material.
Everything was closed on Sunday, everything apart from Church. It was bad form to ring around meal times.

There was no "going out for coffee" There was a bakers with a few plastic benches, that was it. And an old fashioned cafe like the one in the Julie Walters 2 soups sketch.

My mum made most of my clothes even my school uniform jumper at secondary school was knitted. I don't really recall having many shop bought clothes until I was about 14 or 15 and bought some of them myself, I did 3 paper rounds at 13 and worked in the small Spar on Saturday from 14

I first tasted tinned soup aged 10 or therabouts, also first shop bought cake.

My Grandmother had no TV, phone or fridge.

Good job you decided against the council house option, given that it was that new government which had the atrocious idea to flog off all that housing stock, and at a stroke infect even staunch resisters with ownership mania and at the same time ensure that subsequent social housing needs would largely be met by an eager new breed of rackrent landlords.
The knock on effect of that catastrophe in British society (and in Ireland too, where Thatcherism was frequently imitated) is illustrated in the main OP here.

Housing has never recovered, whether through sheer lack of political will catch up in restoring an adequate part of the public stock, or owing to the still hysterically inflamed private market, both renting and owning.
I’m not telling you owt you don’t know of course; more like venting a buildup of steam (alright..hot air!)