Parents upsizing - AIBU

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Parents are retired in their 60s. They have a 4 bed detached in a nice area (not south). They sold recently for 680k. They’ve discussed all
sorts about where to move and at one point said they didn’t need the space but now saying they are actually going to upsize as they want more space and so are making an offer on a house 100k more (so 780k).

I know there will be posters saying awful things about me saying this and I do accept that. I know what I’m about to say sounds money grabbing. But… we have two dc and will struggle to pay off our mortgage for many many years despite being in reasonably paid jobs and working hard to progress. I guess it’s easy to say when it’s not actually the situation but I can’t imagine doing this instead of giving the extra 100k to my kids to help them with their homes when we’d paid off our mortgage and didn’t actually need the space in our current home!! Probably being unfair simply because it’s their money and their choice but I just can’t imagine doing that in their position!

I can't imagine being bitter about my parents spending their own money on a house for them. They're hardly taking food out of your children's mouths to pay for it.
Focus on how you can improve your families' financial situation so one day you are in the position to buy a bigger house, or give your kids £100k if that's what you want to do.

Upsizing at their age is crazy. Who wants to maintain more house as they get older?
That exactly what we are doing. Im 60, dh is 64 and we are moving from a 3 bed semi to a 4 bedroom detached.
It's not crazy for us.

It's really not harder for younger generations. It's just the challenges of having a family, owning a house and just basically living are different for every generation.

My parents bought their house that they lived in for well over 50 years for 3k but my Mum had to fight to have the right to a proper education and the ability to work after she got married. She finally got her PHD at 50 and I have never been more proud (I was only 16 but I realized how big a deal this was). She is now widowed and has dementia and her care home fees are insanely expensive. Yes, we could go somewhere cheaper but she is happy there and loves it and her pension and life savings are being eaten up by the day and we will have to sell the family home. My siblings and I couldn't care less about inheriting a penny because we want her to be happy.

My Grandparents bought their house for about 3 pound 50 (not really but it was cheap) but they were both one of only 2 siblings that lived past 40, despite their parents having several children each and they had lived through 2 World Wars by the time they hit 35.

We are late 40s/early50s and have paid well over a million $ for our children's college fees but, house wise, we did ok as we bought in the 90s. That doesn't make us lucky. It just means that's when we were born.

Our children are all debt free from uni debt because we paid for it. They all have a car that we paid for or have upgraded their cars using the car we paid for as a deposit. They have had their healthcare, phones, insurance, even their (by past generations standards, completely unnecessary) Netflix accounts paid by us.

We did all that so they would be hopefully financially independent and the rest of our money can go on US! We want to enjoy our lives too. Travel, plan for our hopefully very active future retirement and live as long as possible. And if we want to do that in a fuck off great big house with beautiful furniture, art and insanely expensive wooden floors that took us years to get to, we will.

Sorry, this thread has really pissed me off!

You sound very put out and entitled and maybe a tad jealous.

You should just concentrate on living your own life.

There is a world of difference between starter home and 4 bed detached. Most people go from small starter home, to 3 bed terrace/semi.

A downsize to a bungalow is very rarely a viable option if you want to take out equity to help your kids. Bungalows are expensive

We are planning to do the same if we inherit. We can see that we aren't going to the same retirement as parents with lots of holidays as we couldn't do that whilst watching our children struggle, but we have a house and are able to save for pensions. I can see both OP and her parents points, but younger people do have it much harder now, with housing costs, student loans, high cost of living and no cheap rentals. We're only in our 40s and we couldn't have the same standard of living 15 years later, and we rented a cheap house first and we could save, and our house was much cheaper then. We also had very cheap interest rates for most of our mortgage and you don't get that now.

Thank you for this. I agree that the idea that everything was rosy back in the 80s and 90s is rubbish. Interest rates were high and very much subject to sudden rises. Repossessions were very common and mortgages were harder to come by.

We also had very cheap interest rates for most of our mortgage and you don't get that now.

Interest rates now are incredibly low compared with the 90s. I remember nearly vomiting the afternoon they went up to 17%. The low interest rates were as a result of the 2007 crash, they’re now much closer to the norm.

On the other hand, that will be £100K less that OP's parents will have available to pay for care costs should they need any down the line.
If the purpose of the move is purely to have 'more space', I understand why OP would have some questions. If they think the extra room could potentially be put to use for someone who could provide live-in care, then it's not necessarily a bad idea. All depends on context I suppose and how they want to plan their later years.

Whilst on the surface they seem selfish to you but it is their money to do what they want with it. They clearly want to enjoy the rest of the time they have left with each other. Be thankful you have both your parents and be happy for them. They have worked hard and may have had some difficult times during that so surely they deserve some happiness. You said "we" so you have a partner so two incomes coming in and a mortgage, so you own your own home. You are in a fortune position even without any money from your parents and it was your choice to have two children.

On the other hand, that will be £100K less that OP's parents will have available to pay for care costs should they need any down the line

You don’t get to keep your house if the funding for social care runs out, the LA puts a charge against it and takes what’s owed from your estate when you die.

A number of people are pointing out that many younger people have large student loan debts. This is another thing which is wrong - there is no NEED for practically every school leaver to go to University; yes to those who are studying something which will be of benefit to society, e.g. medicine, law, economics, etc, (and I think these courses should be paid for by the tax payer), but not for many other subjects. Many kids would be much better off doing an apprenticeship, and it would mean they had no debt!

We did this too, only on an even larger scale. In our mid fifties we bought a large beautiful house in desperate need of modernisation and completely renovated it.

After fifteen years we sold at the end of lockdown to somebody who wanted a lovely house that didn’t need any work. We’d loved living in it and enjoyed the renovation.

Op never defined her struggling.. I'm wondering if she meant she couldn't have two holidays abroad a year!

Jesus...they are her parents! Mine and my mums lives are very much intertwined ......maybe because she is European, not British born. She is shocked by your comments. Family is family.
My two DDs are 15 and 13 and I've been saving for house deposits for them since they were born. It's what families do (if they can). You so so bloody cold .....

There are regularly threads on here from people with two high salaries coming in, complaining that they’re having trouble maintaining their lifestyles and had expected more.
Some of us posting here had very high interest rates in the 90’s which we struggled to pay. I’m guessing that many of you are like me, we didn’t have two holidays, two children in private school, large people carriers etc etc. We had different priorities and there’s no reason why we shouldn’t now reap the rewards and have the house we’d have like earlier in our lives.

Sorry I thought I had missed something hence why I asked.

Yes, she won't pay off her mortgage for quite a few years.... her parents are only 60s so I'd guess the OP is in 30s or 40s. I think that's a perfectly normal life. Most people I know (even with good jobs) will be close to retirement before oaying off their mortgage.

Comparison can be the thief of joy comparing herself to her sister who is well off and her parents who have potentially 30yrs on her building finances.

How will you feel if you find out you've brought up kids who feel entitled to your savings? Who feel entitled to question your financial choices, who don't think you are entitled to live in your family home? If they questioned things you bought for yourself - thought you should have lived on less so they could have more. Will that hurt or will you agree with them that you should have bought fewer dresses and set a lower food budget, not gone on that luxury weekend for your birthday?
It's one thing to give - as the OP's parents did - they gave her £30k for a house deposit - it's an entirely different thing to feel entitled to someone's life savings and to question their financial choices.

You are an adult! You should, if anything, support your parents now not the other way around. When you have worked your life and reached retirement you can enjoy the fruits of your labours too. Expecting endless handouts is childish and mean spirited.

DH and I are in the same position as your parents; we are 52 and 59. Why do we want a bigger house? Because DH wants a big garden that he can redesign, because we both work from home and want a space each for that, because we want more parking, because we would like DS2 to have more space whilst he is still living with us, because we like the house better and because going forward it will be more flexible for adaptation as we get older.

We haven't given them money towards deposit, but they have both received a legacy from DHs parents, which eldest used as his deposit. We have paid off their student loans, paid for driving lessons, supported them through university and gift them each £3000 a year (because that can be done without tax penalty) to go into their ISAs.

We do carefully record everything so that we have all the evidence for tax should we die; from that I can see that in the last seven years we have spent far in excess of £100K on them. Not counting meals out, costs when they are living at home, adding them onto our car insurance, paying for dental visits as they can't get an NHS one, phone contracts.....if you added up how much your parents have actually spent over all those bits you might be surprised.

I'm glad to say that DS1 has told us he's really pleased to see us enjoying our money now; DS2 has never been greedy, and is always grateful.

You don’t need evidence @shufflestep. HMRC is remarkably trusting on bog standard estates. I’ve done probate twice and never been asked for anything.

Low interest rates was another Blair policy that wasn't thought through. The '50% go to University' policy was supposed to lift everyone to the sunlit uplands but, instead, means that degrees are devalued and people are saddled with a 9% graduate tax.
He thought that increased, cheap credit would allow more people to own homes. Instead, all it did was push up prices (bad enough) but it also made getting on the market in the first place more difficult because it was harder to amass the initial deposit.

Money aside I think it's crazy to up size unless the property can easily be made accessible but I am in the middle of helping my parents (mid 70s) downsize and it definitely feels like they have left it 10 years too late, now they both have health problems it's been an absolute nightmare.

Low interest rates was another Blair policy that wasn't thought through.

It wasn’t. Low interest rates were the result of the 2008 crash and ensuing recession. Brown was PM at that point and the skilful management of the UK economy meant we came out of recession earlier than many comparable economies.

Blair was voted in May 2, 1997. The Bank of England was granted operational independence to set interest rates on May 6, 1997.

Brown was PM at that point and the skilful management of the UK economy meant we came out of recession earlier than many comparable economies.
Hmm, if Brown's management was so wonderful, why was he voted out only two years later? Brown's mismanagement was the reason for austerity; we are still feeling the effects of his "no more boom and bust" policies now.