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.

No it was the same where I was in Scotland it was very difficult

My parents did live very frugally when they were younger. To the extent that I find myself wondering how they maintained their friendships if they could barely afford to drink or eat out. I will ask them about this but would be curious about other boomers. Did you host dinner parties and if so was that really that much cheaper (my parents couldn't cook so this wasn't an option. I was brought up on processed food). Wasn't that quite hard to do as you couldn't have all that many people at once surely and that would mean you wouldn't see people very often. Or did you just have endless walks and cheap cups of tea in greasy spoon cafes? How do you have friends if you can't afford to do anything with them for decades?

So I am early 50's my mother just scraped in as a Boomer, father generation before.
What I remember 70's 80's wasl lots of free activities for us kids like walks, bbq's although it rained all the time.
They would invite their friends over to eat yes dinner parties.Also my mother didn't work until I was 10.She was expected to do a whole lot more household chores than I do now.My mum made everything even fruit sirup for us kids, this msy not have been normal, but also making your own clothes was cheaper then.She did that too.We had secondhand clothes always plus what she made.
She had washable nappies for me at least.
I know they did have a tough time in their relationship at one point, but I think ( even if not everyone stayed and perhaps this is rose coloured specs, they just thought you had to tough it out.
Sorry can't name specific books but this idea of think about yourself, which I agree is also important, was not at least as wide spread.I remember reading a book on my sisterinlaws shelf about how to parent, about how important it is to put yourself first german psychologist.
You stayed you put up with things, because that's what people do.
You holidayed if you got one uk.

People went to the pub and played cards yeah they must have been drinking something my uncle did all the time.I want now to ask my aunt but I suppose it must have been cheaper to drink alcohol back then, sorry would have been underaged then.

Just remebered we had no phone in the house until I was 5 years old.We had to walk to the phone box to call people not sure how normal that was, also my friends who were 4 kids had no fridge for ages they keep milk in the bath on hot days.

Housing is a real horror story in this country
but have you asked them about their financial
situation at your age ?

my mother is well comfortable with a house worth nearly 300k that was bought for far less and pensions that give her a little spate each month - but in her 50s repossession was as real fear and when I was younger everything was a struggle - dad had to be great at DIY and car mechanics because we couldn’t afford a tradesman or garage. Edit to explain - And the car was given us for free as it had no resale value

Being in the north east of England in an old mining community meant that work was hard to find

This. They actively voted for policies that would make life difficult for the generations below them: eg Brexit, austerity, loss of child benefit and yet are outraged at the thought of losing the triple cap or winter fuel allowance for themselves- the richest generation that ever lived.

They’re a ‘tone deaf’ generation, quite an anomaly. You read all the time on here about early retirees on multiple cruises, hundreds of thousands in the bank, pooling inheritance while their adult Dc struggle. As a Gen X I wouldn’t be able to sit on £200k savings while watching my DC live in relative poverty. I am perfectly comfortable with the thought of downsizing my house to help my DC onto the property ladder, if needed.

People above naming all the hardships in the 70s/80s. I remember this well. The difference to now is we were all in the same boat. There wasn’t a generation above living it up while everyone else suffered. That’s the difference.

Please try to remember not all of us boomers are in the same situation. We dont all live in places where the housing market meant massive increases. I’m in my 60’s and still paying a mortgage off on a house nowhere near the value of your parent’s house. If my mum had been able to afford to buy her council house it would now be worth 115k. You can buy houses, bungalows and flats not far from where I live for under that amount. You have the choice of moving to an area where property is cheap OP.

Excuse me. I didn’t vote for any of those things (born 1953).

Well in the 70/80s there were well off -the people who had gone to university and got degrees in the 50s and 60s - professionals doctors, lawyers, architects - but I think society assumed they were v intelligent (or something) and accepted the difference. And there wasn’t social media telling everyone what they needed for a happy life.

There are a lot of them who did not for Brexit

and a lot of them are in a lot of ignorance around their wealth which is tied up in housing and which is inaccessible until they die

Maggie thatcher screwed the housing system and has screwed such a lot as a result ( care homes and nurseries can spend more on rent/ mortgage than staff )

don’t blame a generation - that’s a lazy way to think and some people ( especially politicians) want lazy thinkers because they are easy to manipulate and it’s easy if you can blame anyone but the politicians

Surely those who need the winter fuel cap are poor boomers.Not everyone is sitting on a pile of cash and not giving their kids any money.

The generation above are a soft target because they are old, you can't generalise like that.
That old some of them could have voted differently but so could you probably.I think the politicians have sold us a bill of gods for ages.
My parents were horrified at margret Thatcher selling off the council housing and all the publicaly owned aminities at the time, destroying unions and such like.
They always gave us money if they could.
I am also very sorry for this generation and children now.

We still didn’t have a phone in the house when I was in my late teens (late 70’s). I spent hours freezing in the phone box at the bottom of the street calling my boyfriend.

"wealth which is tied up in housing and which is inaccessible until they die"

This is not actually true. It is accessible. It's just that they prefer not to access it.

Probably in the same way a lot of people would probably prefer not to pay any tax.

No I don’t think that housing wealth is accessible
it’s their home - and unless they can afford to downsize - they need to free up sufficient cash to fund the move as well as fund a smaller property - and most are not living in 5 bed mansions and there are not many one and two bed properties available round these parts - and elderly people should not be forced to move away from their friends and relatives because some idiot fucked up the housing market.

we couldn’t afford to downsize from our 3 bed semi to a one bed flat around here because the cost of moving would be greater than the house price difference

so perhaps theoretically accessible but in practise not at all

You can borrow against any asset that has enough value.

Particularly one that is rooted to the ground and can't be moved.

You can release a fraction of your housing equity or all of it. And it will still be your home, not that that should be an argument. It's my money. But the government still taxes it.

My parents are boomers, I’m Gen-X, and yes they had some very frugal times. After they were married my mum worked behind the bar in a pub as well as a full time job and my dad worked shifts. Once they had me and my brother my mum stayed at home til we were both at school. They never went to the pub, rarely ate out. They had dinner parties and so did all their friends so us kids went as well and we all played together while the adults ate.

They have benefitted massively from house price inflation but the 70’s and 80’s were tough at times. We ate a combination of home cooked meals and freezer food, took a packed lunch with us on days out.

No one predicted the housing price inflation, it seems to be worldwide now, no one predicted that people would be collecting their pensions til they are 100, though relatively few, and there must have been ?8 ?10 governments since Thatcher. Anything could happen in the next few years -a worse Covid wiping out lots of the population so there are houses for all, A cyber attack crashing internet etc so we go back to the 1980s, a war? Don’t assume things will remain as they are.

Equity release is for the financially illiterate. I predict it will be a future mis selling scandal.

Possibly. But it's incredibly regulated at the moment. And I can tell you plenty of people go for the option with no repayments and don't really care about the mental load of their beneficiaries who have to pay it off when they're dead.

No it is not for the financially illiterate. It can be no more of a bad deal than mortgages or any secured loan is (depending on what deal is got on both of course).

It suits some people but not others and is largely a question of the price a person needs or wants to pay for liquidity while remaining (largely) in control of an asset.

Like all financial agreements it pays to read carefully the terms and understand exactly the price that is being paid to get a particular outcome rather than just take the cash and then moan about it years afterwards when it has all been spent.

I would not hesitate to use it if the terms of the agreement suited me, and actually plan to in the future given my particular personal circumstances. But then I actually take the time and trouble to bother to read the significant financial agreements I enter into.

It is for the financially illiterate. The compound interest rates are prohibitive and anyone who’s done it is completely fucked if they need care because the lender has first charge on the property.

If it were that bad the regulators would ban it. As a pp said it is a heavily regulated industry.

It comes in different types. So making blanket statements about it is probably more financially illiterate.