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.

They should have set it at that in the first place then there wouldn't have been all the fuss about people with pension credits being better off as it would have been a fair bit over the PC threshold and its added benefits, It was ridiculous setting it so low, then setting it what seems rather high.

I completely agree. I’m not as generous as you. I’d have said £15k should be the cut off. I’ll get it again now and I really don’t think I should. At least the food bank will benefit.

I wish people would stop arguing whether young people have better consumer goods nowadays - of course they do, and rightly so. As I pointed out above, our GDP per capita literally doubled in the last 50 years, a trend that's been ongoing for centuries. Something would have had to go crazily wrong for any of us, including the young, to not have better lives than 50 years ago.

What's incredible then is that young people nowadays are actually worse off in terms of the things that matter most, like housing. We'd already built most of the houses 50 years ago, they should cost peanuts by now. What an absolute shameful cock up. What are we going to do about it?

My mother used words I'd never heard her use to describe Starmer.

Honestly this is absolutely ridiculous. The people you're describing here are the ones on Love Island or Geordie Shore. Not real actual people.
NOBODY I've ever met spends their money on all that crap. It's just lies!

I bought my first flat in the year 2000 with zero deposit. It was 80k and we got 4.5 times our salaries. We took out a 110% mortgage so we had 8 grand on top of the house.
I was 18 and working for phones4u over the summer holidays in between college and uni and my partner was a postman. 3 months credit history and salary was all we needed to prove. We had a mortgage broker who knew the underwriters and it was approved within a day of applying.

You’ve never been to Liverpool then?

Interesting post, my parents bought their new build 3 bed semi in 1975. It cost them £7950. At that time they were both high earners for their age ( mum definitely earned more than her own dad did at the time ) but despite having some savings they were unable to get a mortgage for anything bigger.
Mum gave up work when I was born 5 years after they married but returned part time within months because the person appointed to do her job moved away. My dad changed professions just after I was born and earned very little during his 3 year training. He retired after working for over 40 years in the NHS.
They still live in the house they bought 50 years ago. By today’s prices it’s worth very little - It is what it is, a first time buyers house that needs updating. I admire them because they never chose to keep up with the Jones and their house is definitely a home not a show house. They make no secret of the fact that money was tight after I was born but as children we lacked for nothing (apart from the fact my sister and I shared a bedroom until we went to university and our brother slept in a room barely big enough for a single bed). I never felt embarrassed about the fact that I lived in a smaller house than my friends or that our family car was what lots might consider a runaround.
As teens we were all encouraged to get Saturday jobs as soon as we could, and did, but by then we definitely also reaped the rewards of our parents lifestyle choices - driving lessons were paid for, fashionable clothes were bought and we were each seen through university. None of this would have been possible had they not been mortgage free or had huge debt. Some might say we were spoiled but I disagree because we were all taught the value of money and encouraged to save and it was our parents choice to spend as they did. We consider ourselves lucky not entitled
The comfortable lifestyle my parents have today (which the very wealthy amongst us may not think is comfortable at all) is not because they inherited a fortune but because they both worked hard, saved when they could and had no desire for a bigger house, fancy car or expensive foreign holidays. Even now they don’t spend extravagantly but do spend what they have on what they want.

At least two of my primary school friends (in a friendship group of six) only had an outside loo. Likewise my godmother, who used to come to our house once a week to have a bath. That was in the 1960s.

We just had a coal fire until I was in my teens. We were one of the first people we knew to have central heating. The boiler was huge!

So all the people on Mumsnet posting about hen do's and Mounjaro etc are not real?

I must admit I resent my in laws. Live in a huge house (five bed) and retiring on more than they earned whilst we scrape by paying rent on a tiny 2 bed house. They love wasting their money on plastic crap from The Works for our daughter but never offer to help us in any meaningful way. I feel cheeky even thinking that they should, but I would if I was them. I am not sure they even realise we are struggling, it's so far from their experience.

Some people waste it on going to a hen do others wasted it on a 20 a day habit and 3 pints ever evening at the boozer.

Oh wow, you’ve reminded me of the day our first TV arrived!
Must have been about 1960 I guess. It had those typical 1950s Scandi-style black tapered legs with brass feet, and had what I now realise must have been very incongruous wooden concertinas doors. Maybe it was aping a Junior Miss size drinks cabinet.
Within, the screen was pretty small, and verging in bulbous.
Not that there was much to watch, except Andy Pandy and Torchy etc. But who could forget Saturday afternoon sport?
Could anything beat televised scrambling, in black and white, live, and almost always in the rain. All you’d see was mud splatters and the occasional BSA Bantam lugging its rider up hill and down dale, in an orgy of waterlogged misery (or that’s what it looked like, at any rate!)

That to set served us well, until we upgraded to a far out white Melamine Murphy colour set, on a fluid, space age leg/stand. (Mick Jagger had the same model at home, to my delight)

(Pa then embarked on a project of making simple, cool-looking coffee tables using for tops the thick plate glass sheet old TV sets had in front of the actual screen. I’ve still got one, having dragged it around with me ever since uni. Amazed the glass never got broken.)

I am somewhat stunned that a person could be jealous of their parents’ good fortune and financial standing. You should be thankful you are not having to financially support them. I would be so saddened if my children were envious of the money I had after a working lifetime and who expected a large handout when they were at the early stages of their own careers. Being covetous of other people’s money is hardly going to make you friends.

There are plenty of people who work just as hard as you do, and as your parents did, who are in a far less favourable position than you. Do you think it would be acceptable for them to be resentful of you, with your 6 months of savings?

40% of UK adults have less than £1,000 saved, and 10% have nothing at all. You have 6 months of savings (so presumably at least 5 figures) and stand to inherit an £800,000 property. Only 42% of UK adults have £10,000 or more in savings. You're in a better financial position than at least 58% of the country.

There's one other huge benefit that springs to mind when you have financially solvent, elderly parents; they can buy in help when it's needed, rather than having to rely on their child(ren) to step in and do it themselves. Many people spend years providing care to their parents because the parents can't afford to fund it themselves. You're excused from cleaning, personal care, shopping, driving, and a long list of other things that so may of us do for our parents - and without the inheritance at the end of their lives.

I think your resentment needs some perspective.

I feel this too- we earn well and are very lucky, but we budget much more carefully than many people on a fraction of our income. Things like concerts or shows are a big treat if we know we have the money for it AFTER paying into savings etc and never ever go with a hotel stay and extras, I rarely buy coffees during the week, or lunch, they are treats.

I don't live in the UK but house prices here are out of control also, and wages not high. Yet most of my friends, in their late 60s and early 70s, have children who are wealthier than they are, and certainly wealthier than they were at the same age. What is so different in the UK?

40% of UK adults have less than £1,000 saved, and 10% have nothing at all. You have 6 months of savings (so presumably at least 5 figures) and stand to inherit an £800,000 property. Only 42% of UK adults have £10,000 or more in savings. You're in a better financial position than at least 58% of the country.

Why would you just look at savings to ascertain who is in a better financial position? House value, a mortgage or not, income all makes a difference.

herit an £800,000 property. Only 42% of UK adults have £10,000 or more in savings. You're in a better financial position than at least 58% of the country.
well if people are in a couple maybe one has a lot and the other less. If you divide couples savings they need 20,000 +

No one has ever asked me about savings etc where do they get these stats and if you have savings you won’t get benefits so maybe some have them in a sock under the bed or you lie about ot

The WFA was introduced as a traditional arrangement and never meant to be permanent. Labour missed a trick in relation to that and the comms should have been better and the cessation tapered.

Mother and MIL (89) both thought it was absurd. They gifted it to charity.

I haven't read all the thread but I suspect one of the big changes has been the availability of rental property. It was more expensive and harder to find when I first came to London in 1980. Two friends and I (yes, two of us shared a bedroom) rented a two bed, scruffy maisonette in West Ken for £340pcm. There were only two of us on the tenancy and it was about as reasonable as we could get. Because I shared a bedroom, I saved a bit.

I got my first mortgage in 1981. It was strictly 2.5 x income. My mortgage was only £23k but it was far higher than my rent had been. My salary then was £447 and the mortgage was £282.

Our DC 27 and 30 have been helped significantly, in a way we never were. They are respectively an academic (early career researcher/Lecturer) and secondary school teacher. We never had the freedom to follow our hearts; we had to follow the money.

I do accept property purchase is challenging nowadays but I also think that in the 70s/80s , disposable income was equally squeezed due to high interest rates. Also stuff was proportionately more expensive - I recall my first washing machine was almost a month's salary. However, I recall colleagues in the throes of nappies ruefully saying "my dad was a tailor/postie but now my parents have paid off the mortgage, they're better off than us - 1990ish, investment banker on £60k!

I'm not sure how many of my generation actually have gold plated defined benefit pension schemes. I think I recall looking up the average annual pension paid by the LGPS once and it was about £4k.

Many people don't budget as carefully as @99bottlesofkombucha. And as @saraclara says plenty of people buying mounjaro, going on holidays, building extensions on homes, so let's no pretend all have no money. There are of course many on the breadline.

Agreed. It’s why I’m worried about assisted dying developing into a situation where the elderly have to choose between life or leaving an inheritance for their children.

Sorry, bit of a tangent I know.

And this is all for a very standard 3 bed semi, low grade car and both working full time stressful jobs, it’s a complete contrast to the one wage 4/5 detached house lifestyle.

many are paying more than 2k mortgage too - due to house prices and rates.

I’m highly sceptical that anyone has a higher retirement income than when they worked. Our joint income is around the same as one of us earned when we were working and I’d have thought we are fairly typical.

One of our kids has made some dodgy life choices, the other hasn’t. We want to treat them both the same. We have given both a large deposit to help them on the housing ladder plus occasional extra money. We don’t tell them what to spend it on, money gifted is not ours once it’s given. We could give them more but don’t because of the ‘dodgy choices’. ‘Dodgy choices’ has no idea we feel like this.
Parents often don’t give generously for a reason, not because they are tight or it doesn’t occur to them.