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?

You seem to believe that the oldies are all loaded. Well I am sorry to burst your bubble but that’s not the case. Some maybe asset rich to a degree purely because of house prices but may have to live a frugal lifestyle and have not updated the house in a while. Or maybe you have not noticed the increase in the numbers of older people renting.

What do you mean?

What change?

the entire point is that this behaviour from a majority of that cohort has impoverished the whole of society. It is impacting everyone already.

Nice way to try to avoid engaging with the economic issues.

Yet economic data disagrees with you. Workforce participation of working-aged people is at its highest level since it started being recorded properly in the 1970s, despite people studying longer on average. The number of hours worked on average is also higher. The “lazy snowflakes” trope about young people simply doesn’t stack up against the evidence, I’m afraid.

There are numerous social attitude surveys that are conducted by reputable research organisations on a wide scale that makes them statistically valid, which are stratified by age cohort. We also have the historical, factual evidence of how they have voted for policies that benefit them despite it being perfectly clear that these would make life inordinately harder and poorer for subsequent generations. You are right that there is a great deal of anecdotal evidence (as set out by many posters in this thread and, ironically, also evident in some of the posts from self-righteous people of that generation exhibiting precisely the attitudes being described) so people’s personal experience often (unsurprisingly) correlates to the findings of the statistically validated social research about that cohort, statistically stratified opinion polls and historically evidenced facts about previous behaviour/ voting/ decisions.

So basically you want him to give it to you? Surely you’ll inherit at some point?

You should recommend that he read the parable of the rich farmer...

@Reallywhatonearth
Eh? I think exactly the opposite of this

So can you please cite a couple of these reputable sources?

I also note that a number of PP here with adult DC are exhibiting a very different attitude. Then there are numerous PP of unknown age pointing out the tremendous cost of care. I will note that council funded provision in my area is not of a hugely desirable standard.

This 'cohort' is just people who happened to be born at a particular time.
If they're so awful, what do you think made them that way? Their parents? The time they happened to grow up in? Or do you think that somehow fate put all the nasty people in the same generation, and no nice people at all?

The problem isn't observing that statistically more people in one generation or other do something or other, including voting certain infuriating ways, the problem is talking about it as if that isn't just the result of the normal changing tides of influence and history and experiences and so on, but rather is down to Bad People vs Good People, and you've worked out who all the Bad People are, and it's them.

Yes i agree. The way some posters on MN talk about older people on MN is truly awful.
Some seem to honestly believe that Boomers are rubbing their hands in glee, watching younger families 'suffer'.
I have said before, but it never seems to be taken into account that the years of raising children are the toughest in every generation financially and the younger people being so awful about older folk now may well find themselves in a much better position once they come out of the other side, got a pension lump sum and/or inheritance along the way.
But they don't want to hear it. All they want to do is begrudge good fortune, think they are somehow entitled to share what isn't theirs, carry on spending on stuff like new cars, meals out, activities and holidays that Boomers would not have done, and moan that they can't afford to pay into a pension.

I agree the poster you comment on seems to think a whole generation ahs created this situation because they are "evil"- it, as usual, is far more complicated than that. Government after government has refused to bite the bullet and tax wealth, which means we have more millionaires and billionaires than ever before-which in turn obviously means the rest of us are getting poorer fast as the super rich group buys more and more assets with their wealth pushing asset prices (property in particular) through the roof.
Politicians are usually very wealthy (and set to get far wealthier once they get in power) so they have consistently refused to tax wealth-all the burden is on income, the government has sold most of it's assets, so it is as poor as the rest of us, but the individuals within it are wealthy- blame them and tax them-it's the only way , otherwise we are crashing towards a new feudal system with the vast majority in extreme poverty.

You are right. Every generation is faced with a different set of circumstances and they deal with these as best they can. But in general the years of bringing up family are the most challenging in every way and in every generation.
I am grandparent age and this was certainly true for us. We worked all the hours that god sent and lived on an overdraft, not to have luxuries like meals (or even a coffee!) out, but to keep our children fed and happy.
The deaths of our parents brought small legacies that helped us to be more comfortable after the children left home.
I do think that my children have had similar struggles at a similar stage, but they have things in their lives that seem normal to them and were outside our grasp ... meals out, holidays abroad etc are more the norm now.
I am lucky to have nil housing cost now as I downsized and thus paid off the mortgage. My pensions are small for a number of reasons including a sick husband whose ability to work was curtailed and who needed my support.
Widowed now, I do all I can to help them. I have saved them £1000s of in child care, willingly given and enjoyed.
I do have some savings .... not a large amount. Should I be giving those to my children, or should I be saving them to pay for any future care I might need, thus taking a burden from them?
Being born at a certain time in history does not make me an ogre!

The issue brought up upthread about voting for self interest is interesting. Is the aim of democracy the greatest good of the greatest number? .... in that case it makes sense to vote for self interest ... it is the point of democracy under that definition. Or is the point of democracy to vote with your conscience? Discuss ....

Some of the boomers are doing just that! That's the point of this thread. The whole point is that people in their 20s and 30s now will not 'come good' and get great pensions as you say, because the financial climate is completely different and absolutely stacked against them. They pay the most ever for childcare, both parents (if there are two) have to work, have student loans that will never be paid off, wages have been eroded in real terms, cost of living has spiralled, housing costs are astronomical. It's way more than simply 'every generation faces challenges'. If you can't accept that, you're denying reality.

I think you will find every generation thinks they are suffering the most.
I was certainly not celebrating my good fortune when i was back at work when my baby was three months old, paying full nursery fees and grappling with spiralling interest rates.
You are saying with such conviction what's going to happen in the future - you have no way of knowing what's going to happen.
I am not a boomer by the way, but absolutely despise the spite and nastiness towards people who just happened to be born when they did.

There's a massive difference between "some of the boomers are doing just that" and saying that as a cohort they're unusually selfish and loaded and gloating. Of course some of the boomers are doing that. Some of every generation are dicks, including the current middle working generations who are struggling compared to the boomers.

There'll come a point when we're older and have opinions on whatever is going on with gen Z and their children, who are quite likely to be even worse off. I'm pretty sure some of us will also be dicks.

It's not that we'll catch up with the boomers, it's more that there's likely to be a point where we'll still be worse off than that particular generation who're older than us, but we'll be very likely more financially stable than the people younger than us, so in that sense (at least until there's a real turn around and some generations are better off than their parents again) the pattern is likely to repeat itself. And there'll be plenty of things later generations can accuse us of - flying everywhere when we know so much about climate change for a start - so we're not really in a position to throw stones.

Somebody said they would like to be helped financially so that they could go down to four days a week and have a day to catch up with laundry, etc.

Other people have said they'd like their parents to pay for their children's music lessons and clubs.

I can't be arsed to read the entire thread again to find the exact posts.

Everybody should vote selfishly rather than trying to second guess what they think is best for other people. That will lead to a government and opposition that represents the interests of the majority of the population.

It's quite an immature viewpoint to complain about people voting selfishly, when that's the only way for democracy to work correctly.

This is actually nonsense. You should vote for what you think is RIGHT not what would personally be best for you. People not doing that is the problem. The baby boomer generation is the biggest generation. Them voting for policies that benefit themselves to the detriment of other age groups is at least partly why the country is in the mess it is now. Its not all their fault though. Young people dont bloody bother voting at all a lot for the time!

Most people vote in their own interests. It’s naive to think they don’t.

Of course they do. Although a lot of left-leaning voters like to they do 'the right thing' many are employed in the sectors traditionally favoured by Labour, such as education andvthe NHS.
So although they proclaim they are voting for the common good, they are doing so in the knowledge their livlihood is unlikely to be affected.

Who in the working population is buying new cars and having meals out? Not me. Can’t afford it.

Our adult children and their partners - both in their 30s.

Sigh. Just try to influence the government re the budget overtly. No need to start these over the top threads.

You don't need to scrape very far into MN to conclude today's families expect a generally higher standard of living than previous generations. Eating out IS more commonplace than it used to be, children are enrolled in a lot more activities and get toys more than just at Christmas and birthdays. School holidays are full of activities on a way they never used to be. Soft play is a weekly activity for a lot of children. Cars are also bigger, more expensive and there's more of them. Homes are heated longer and even overnight.
That's progress and not neccessarily wrong, but to suggest standards of living have not risen since boomers had young families is ridiculous and wrong.