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.

It is recognised that this is the richest generation that will live at least for the next few generations, unless AI solves all the world's problems.
They had
Massive house price increase from 2-3 to 7-10 average income.
Lower taxes as a percentage of GDP
Most times women didn't work and instead brought up kids.
Have plenty of current workers lining their pension pots
Didn't have to support many retirees when they were working due to life expectancy and everyone smoking themselves to death.
Have been pandered to by every government because they vote, the only group not to be means tested.
Free university,
etc.etc.

The house of cards may be dismantled soon as Labour have finally realised that they can't increase taxes on workers any more and have to go after wealth.
Good luck with that given that Reform are nipping on their heels and have promised pensioners the moon on a stick

Where i live this is definitely not the case. In my small town the cheapest 3 bed house is 205k. Its had the same owners for 50 years, according to rightmove. The heating is a very old gas fire. I doubt the electric has been updated. Flats start at the same price.
A quick search on indeed shows 2 jobs that are within walking distance. Both minimum wage. 1 is part time. That's it. Or I drive/use public transport. But guess what? The vast majority of jobs around here are minimum wage. We live in a tourist area.
So, no, we dont all live in the south east. But there are lots of people who still struggle.

That's so refreshing to hear about your not being jealous. But sorry to hear about domineering husband. There was a lot of those about.

And boiling nappies was one of the worse jobs plus getting them dry in Winter, without them going rock hard.

Our bath was in an outdoor veranda with slugs crawling up the walls. We used to go to our parents once a week to have a bath (no showers) so used the bath to soak nappies in.

Can laugh about it now but awful at the time....

Hmmm...true. The main equipment for the midwife was a horn to listen to baby's heartbeat.😉
No scans and no epidurals in the hospital. In for 10 days to have a baby!!

And you don't understand that the 1000 can go TOWARDS your savings?

I've got the violin out now AND the black cat to see whose is blacker!

I walked over half a mile and 2 buses each way, also often being late for work AND late back for DC leaving school.

See, my cat's blacker than yours...

Clueless indeed!

Thank goodness. Someone caring about, appreciating and respecting their parents.

Can certainly relate to @Petitchat re slugs! Our rented flat had big gaps between the skirting board & floorboards. Each night an army of slugs would creep across the bedroom carpet leaving their silvery streaks behind them. Couldn’t risk going barefoot.
The bathroom was shared by four households & we used to go to my DP for the standard weekly bath & hair wash.
Yes it really was quite tough, this was early 70s.

Someone has probably already said this in the thread but houses used to cost 2-3 times annual earnings 50 years ago, now they are 7-9 times.

Which is completely true. But because we were busy successful business-minded people in the 1980s, 90s and beyond (til today really because we are not totally retired, despite being almost 70) we also thought and planned for pensions for self-employed people.

Without bragging, only DH and I have put money into our pension since we were 38, and we've been self-employed ever since. We didn't inherit until the last three years and any money we inherited was passed down to the next generation.

And now we're 70 with 10-12 years to make what we have earned see us out, we are busily shovelling as much as we can into potentially exempt transfers. We shall keep the house and enough back to cover our care home fees, rather than leaving our DC to pay IHT on a huge sum. DC get it now, at 26 when it's needed for a home.

Haha. Ok, I'll just tell my employer that I need to be late for work every day because some random on the Internet thinks it's outrageous that my family has two cars. I'm sure that will go down well.

And that's the distinction between generationally successful and not. I have spent hundreds of hours mulling education, and succession, and most people don't.

We'll spend pension money first, then savings, and leave only the house that DC won't want to occupy as an inheritance. DH can't spend time in the sun, so there are not going to be long extravagant cruises to exotic locations. By the time I shuffle off this mortal coil, I intend to have restricted tax depredation to a sensible percentage, and yes, I do think my estate should pay some tax. But it's not my responsibility to fill the deep hole that generations of inadequate politicians have dug.

I never said it was outrageous?
People do make things up on mumsnet, it's a regular problem.

But, I'll bet my random bottom dollar there's a way round it to enable you to sell one?
And also bet you won't try for a solution...

From the royal economic society:

https://res.org.uk/mediabriefing/the-housing-bubble-baby-boom-spiralling-uk-house-prices-mean-homeowners-have-more-kids-but-renters-postpone-starting-families/

Meanwhile, today's newspapers report that fertility rates are at an all time low. So low that our population is due to halve in two generations.

But let's ignore that, because I didn't get a colour TV until my teens while the youth of today all have Xboxes and coffee and therefore everything's fine and/or it's all their fault.

A report recently confirmed that in order for a student to enjoy the full student experience they need around £20,000 in maintenance. That clearly illustrates how expectations in life have changed.

Or maybe just that students today can't get free tuition plus a living costs grant?

It’s a trade off. Until 30 years ago less than 10% of the population had the opportunity to go to university at all.

How much will your family home be worth when you’re their ages? Ask them what percentage of their wages they saved in order to have £200k in their seventies.
Are they well travelled? Have they always driven new cars ? You can’t compare their retirement with yours unless you follow similar spending habits.

Sure. But now you have to go to uni and rack up the debt to get pretty much any job. Plenty of which you could have walked into when I started work in the 90s. I don't have a degree. I wouldn't be able to get into the same industry now without one though

Before WW2, as documented in his book about them, the parents of Raymond Briggs (The Snowman) bought a 3 bed house in Wimbledon on one milkman’s wage.
It’d now probably sell for around £1m.

It’s a moot point anyway. It’s hard for graduates to get jobs now and will be increasingly so as AI becomes capable of carrying out more and more functions. Smart kids will be looking at apprenticeships into trades that would be hard for AI to replicate, they’ll be the ones still in work in 20 years time.

For more than 300, 000 years humans lived in caves. You are privileged to live in this era. Be more appreciative and stop whining.

I don’t understand how AI is making it much harder for young people to find suitable jobs but we need immigration or the economy will collapse.
There seems to be a load of twaddle spouted when in fact no one really has a clue and is basing predictions on past events when they are quite irrelevant.
One way to fix ithe ‘need’ for immigrants (who will grow old and need more immigrants to pay tax to keep them in old age) is to reduce payments to pensioners or tax them more.

I disagree. The Micawber principle still holds very true and always will. Income 20s and expenditure 20s1d, result misery. Income 20s and expenditure 19s, 11d, result happiness.

20s = £1, 12d = one shilling (5p). Us boomers remember Old Money.

I agree. I didn't have an undergraduate degree when I started work in 1980. I was far better educated, however, than many graduates of today. It's a significant issue that as a society we are producing rafts of well qualified young people who, in the context of literacy and numeracy, are increasingly ill-educated.

It's high time this nation properly respected the skilled trades we all need: electricians, plumbers, mechanics, hairdressing, etc.

I don't remember it being easy for graduates when I was looking for a job in the 90s either. We'd just come out of the recession - confidence was low in the job market around the country - maybe not in London though?