Parents hoarding money

[Antisocialg1t]

Speaking to my Dad today and he boasted he saves £2,000 / month and has well in excess of £250,000 sitting in the bank. He was lamenting not having enough places to put his money without paying tax. He also stated that in retirement he's never had it so good compared to his working life.

I can't help but feel resentment. I think this stems from the almost daily grind of raising two children (15 and 13), always wanting the best for them, and sacrificing constantly. I'm hugely motivated by the fact I strongly believe that adult life is going to be harder for them than it was for me and hugely more difficult than it was for my parent's generation. I just can't reconcile feeling how I do about my children, and knowing that my dad thinks very differently about me and my family. It has brought to mind how little he's ever done for my children / his grandchildren, despite being retired for their entire lives. It's also brought into sharp focus how much of his time he's used to save and hoard money, rather than give more of himself.

But I feel huge guilt because this has come up because of a conversation about money.

Anyone else in a similar position?

I don't thinks it's anything to do with entitlement to be fair. I think it's the boasting the OP dislikes not the fact he has money. Lording it over other people because you have money when you know they have none isn't very nice however you look at it.
I'm quite happy for my parents and pil to spend every last penny they have on themselves. I'd rather it was on treats / luxury lifestyle than care home but whatever. It's their money.
However, if they kept boasting about it and telling me they had loads of money to waste and gloating about having more than poorer family members, they would go down in my personal estimation of them. Not because I want their money but because it's not a personality trait I like.

I can’t imagine seeing my children suffer whilst I have £££ in the bank. Selfish, greedy bastards.

My dad has rarely helped me with anything. To be honest, I don't think he has any clue of my financial situation, because he's never asked and I've never told him. That's despite me being separated with children, even at the time he didn't really ask.
Why is is hoarding it away? Do you think he's doing it to leave it all later to family, or because for some reason he feels he needs to have a big back up?

I don’t care about IHT because if a tax free windfall of £250k, plus 60% of the remainder isn’t enough for our four kids, we’ve failed them.

That generation is just messed up in the head. The war that they suffered from but never participated in, the poverty - they're all **ed up. Endlessly saving crap, scrimping and saving, going without for no reason.....unless they want a new car!

I sneaked a peek at FIL's computer as he was ignoring his family, who'd travelled 4 hours by car to visit him, and "working" on his accounts. He's retired. The screen had £12,000 emblazoned across the screen as "amount available to withdraw". I work part-time to accommodate our disabled son and that's pretty much my yearly wage. He's always hinted that the reason we're not financially secure (we are) is because I won't go full time. When my DH was young, he worked away from home and relied on free childcare from MIL's parents...something we've never had!

They even brought in new laws to close the IHT loophole of buying a farm that he used but they didn't get him - it's under the £3m threshold 🙄

My mother is exactly this. Endless handwringing about “the government”, taxation, IHT, how she personally is affected by the tax bands not rising with inflation, laments of “I don’t know what to do with all this money” combined with a flat refusal to spend any of it is extremely frustrating. She’s not worried about care costs (thinks she won’t need any) and nor am I (income would cover about 60% - the money in her current account - £100k+ and increasing by about £3k/month, savings, ISAs, would keep her going for 10 years at £40-50k a year top up, and then she could sell her property portfolio, which would give her a further 7-8 years, then she could sell her main home. Its a combination of the moaning about it, the statements that she is going to gift some of it (because of IHT which bothers her disproportionately given she’ll be dead) when we all know she won’t even put £10 in a card for a birthday and the extreme tightness to the point where you do a 300mile round trip to do some odd job she won't pay a handyman to do and you don’t even get a biscuit with your tea let alone a meal, or god forbid, petrol money. It’s not prudence - it’s hoarding. She has a background of extreme poverty so I understand but that doesn’t make it sensible and it doesn’t make it less rude to ask for a lift to your appointment and not even offer parking money.

That is the worst part of the callousness, isn’t it?

It’s one thing to be so selfish you would happily leave your family in a dire situation while living a life of luxury (talking about my own family here) but to rub it in their faces constantly is just appalling. When my father does bother to speak to me he barely ever asks how any of us are. All I get is a self-absorbed rant about how difficult it was for him to choose his newest car, or the very “thoughtful” postcards we receive 4-5 times per year from their luxury holidays costing them around £20k per time (he likes to tell me this, obviously I do not ask) telling us what a fantastic time they’re having.

Knowing meanwhile that his daughter is struggling through each day in chronic pain trying to hold down a full time job and care for his grandchildren alone, terrified of becoming so unwell I am unable to care for my young children, and that they are both struggling to attend school regularly because of their own medical conditions.

Some people really are unbelievably selfish and I don’t think there is any excuse for it. It’s difficult to have any respect for him anymore because I don’t think he has any decency or compassion.

Thank you for this post. It expresses it so well.

I don't have kids but if I did, I can't imagine not doing everything I could to make their life as easy as possible. Why on earth wouldn't you.

Because a normal person might care about what they can leave behind to give their family a better life??

Tell him the tax man will get 40% of anything over £325k unless his house is inherited by you or your DC then it rises to £500k! So it would be better for his DGC to receive some of it now via their hobbies.

your kids…you support them yourself! Entitlement at its finest!

Maybe there’s another side to the original post….two sides to every story!

The “other side” is that many such people are supremely selfish and don’t care about their families at all.

I'm a bit torn. On the one hand, your dad has had it tough too, (and not EVERYONE in previous generations had it easier than your generation and your childrens,) and he has every right to keep his own money. If he spent many decades broke and working every hour God sent just to make ends meet, he is probably reluctant to spend the money.

Then again, if I had £250K in the bank, and £2000 a month spare cash, I would not see my adult DC (and grandchildren if I had them) go short, and struggle financially. Does he know you are struggling?

It doesn't always follow that the younger generation will have it harder either. My 2 DC (both around 30,) both have a University degree. Me, (and also my DH) never had the chance to do a degree and were pushed out to work by our parents. (At 16!)

Whilst we have an OK income, we have never been big earners. Right now, both our adult DC earn between £70K and £85K a year My one DC also has a YouTube channel with 150,000 subscribers, that they make another £35-40K a year from. The other one does a job where they can get an extra £25K from bonuses.

DH and I could only ever dream about this kind of income. (£110K to £120K per year.) They spend 1000s on tech, and have a new car every 2-3 years, they travel abroad 5-6 times a year, and own their own home - in nice areas. Both of their careers also bring quite a few perks and freebies too. They have had more opportunities in life than we ever had. (We late1960s born.)

I know if DH and I were struggling financially that they would help. But we would be very reluctant to ask. As it happens we are comfortable, and better off financially than we have been for some years, but we are nowhere near as well off as our DC.

This is very true.
We are in our 80s so financing a care home is approaching. We have enough for a few years. We don't stress and worry about it but it is always at the back of my mind, We did give the DC a help though.

No one knows how long they're going to live or how expensive their care will be in the end so it makes sense to hoard. If he was sitting on millions, I'd understand how frustrating it would feel but £250,000 isn't millions. This money gives him comfort and the fact that he is happy to live an austere lifestyle in order to preserve it, shows you how important it is for him to have it.

I don't have that much but I'm comfortable. Back in the 70s with a mortgage and kids life was a struggle so although I think I'm generous to kids and GC I find it hard to spend on me. I don't like long drives anymore and my four are scattered due to where they went to uni and settled, jobs or where partners hail from so j travel round on trains a lot but I can't bring myself to buy a first class ticket. Often by the time I've bought a coffee and snack that I'd get free in first class I'm not even saving much. Habits can be hard to break.

I agree completely and I'm in a similar situation. Yes, in theory, it's their money, but I could never watch my children and grandchildren struggle whilst I sit on more money than I can spend in my lifetime.

This is a fair point and, in my case at least (obviously I am not the OP) if the financial situations were reversed it would never have occurred to me not to help my parents. I couldn’t sleep at night knowing my parents OR children were struggling for money and under financial stress if I was in a position to help them very easily.

If I hadn’t become ill I’d be earning at least 3 times what I earn now, probably more. I have a decent salary because I worked so hard when I was younger before I had children (professional qualifications and working 90 hour weeks), but now as one person trying to pay a mortgage and specialist childcare and medical costs it doesn’t go far and I am very scared we’ll lose our home even if I manage to carry on working in constant pain with health declining every year. I am so scared for what will happen to my children, who are vulnerable, if I die before they are adults. Obviously I have life insurance in place but that doesn’t provide them with a loving parent to raise them.

I just can’t understand how people who are in the position to help their children financially can live with themselves when they don’t do so, if their children are clearly in need of the help (or even when it would just improve their lives hugely, with no detrimental impact on the parent because they are in a position where they have more money than they could ever conceivably need, even if substantial care costs were to arise).

My personal view is that such people are deeply flawed and callous, and it’s not remotely “grabby” to expect that family would help other family members financially or in any other way they can if they find themselves in a terrible situation and other family members could help with no detrimental impact on themselves at all.

What is the point of family at all if you can’t rely on them in any way to show the slightest care or love for each other? Personally, I think it’s abhorrent to be so selfish.

I think many hoarding parents know exactly the tax situation. It doesn’t bother them 🤷‍♀️. Hard to understand that lack of care and tunnel vision.

'Counting down the days'?
You sound utterly horrible.
The title of this thread is equally telling - hoarding or just saving?
The greed and entitlement of some posters on here is horrendous. I hope that they realise that they are teaching their children how to treat them in years to come.....

I cannot stand jealousy of elderly people having decent finances after working all their lives. You have a sense of entitlement to his money, that's why you're angry. Earn your own money and support your own kids for God sake. Your father needs his funds to support his future, should he need to go into a care home.

Some people are citing early poverty as one reason these rich grandparents are hoarding in old age. But that doesn’t completely answer the question. Other people who grow up in relative property would like for their own children/grandchildren to be able to avoid some of this struggle and help a little. That’s my attitude towards my own adult child, especially regarding wishing I could help him with housing as I’ve never been able to afford my own home. There does seem to be a selfish mindset and lack of “family feeling“ in some of that generation. I also suspect. it’s not just financial parsimony, but also some emotional indifference .

It isn't just their money in theory, it actually is their money. It might not be how I spend my money or how you spend yours but it actually is their money.