To find my elderly relative’s attitude to money very wearing

[definitelybothered]

I help an elderly relative (late 80s) with various admin tasks, paying bills, ordering shopping, etc. It can be time consuming but she is virtually blind and can no longer do this herself.

But I find it really hard to bite my tongue as she is constantly complaining that she doesn’t have enough money, can’t afford to put the heating on in the winter and is one of those people who says young people today have more money than she ever did but they spend it all on holidays, coffee and concerts etc. She honestly believes it was harder financially in her day and young people today are just spoilt.

When I try and disagree with her she shouts me down. But what really irritates is she pleads poverty but it’s rubbish, she has an income of £4.5k every month (after tax) and barely spends a grand of it. She has an eye watering amount in savings too. Her latest grumble is she doesn’t think she should be in the higher tax band (she’s just been taxed 40% on something) but I said she must be based on the maths but she won’t listen.

How much!

completly irrelevant really but how on earth is she getting so much income?

I mean for many pensioners they, as well as younger people, do have far more now than they did when young and they put up with stuff that today no one would - kids sharing a bed never mind a room , cardboard soles in your shoes , living at home till married - the world has changed and - if it wasn’t for housing costs which are a joke, younger people do have far more at a younger age than today’s older pensioners

but you see it an any generation - people rolling in it complaining they are proper broke and that tax rates are so unfair - although usually that’s because they keep spending it all

It's not an uncommon attitude, just like at the pensioner groups on Facebook bleating on about persecuted they. Your relative does sound typical of the type!

My MIL is like this - absolutely minted but loves to play the 'poor old widow' card. She could be one of those oldies the Daily Mail trotted out when WFP were means tested, pleading poverty while sitting on a fortune. What can you do, you can't change people so I just choose not to spend time with her. Maybe leave the moany old person to get on with it herself?

What happens to some elderly people due to natural cognitive decline as that they no longer fully understand how much money they have and what things cost. Or at least not in the sense you do. What they do remember is how they needed to scrimp and save themselves. Also as you get older you tend to get more anxious and you focus in on that too much.

For your own sanity I would say gently each time that she doesn't need to worry and she has it all under control and then change the subject. It won't work entirely but you have to assume that she isn't doing it to be difficult just externalising the anxiety, sight loss can make people feel more vulnerable generally. Try to be patient. Easy to for me to say though!

Stop trying to disagree with her. Just ignore any talk, no matter how hard it is.
Someone in their late 80s had a complete different experience growing up in and after the second world war, things were hard with rationing etc. Many of them have never got out of that way of thinking. My parents, aunties and uncles were all like that, the ones who are still alive in their 80s are still like that. They were all hoarders to a certain extent, never throwing anything away which could be used again.

She has several pensions - state pension, final salary pension (from back in the day when they existed - she’s been retired 30 years but it increases every year), plus pension from her late husband.

She and her husband must have had high paying jobs

perhaps that’s behind this / her income is much lower than it used to be ( in real terms )

Tell her that you don't want to listen to her complain about being in poverty when she has a higher income than most working people.

Has she always been like this or only since she became very elderly?

Is she grateful for your help? Are you the only person helping her? How close a relative is she? If she's your mum or your grandmother and you are close, I can see why you feel obliged to help her despite her attitude to money. If she is a more distant relative, why is she your responsibility?

Was going to say, I can well see how those would rack up for someone of that age of a particular social class. She's of an age where the more privileged had access to some incredible schemes, both in their own right and as survivor of a spouse.

They had ‘normal’ middle class jobs in the public sector which earn around £40kish today.

If I said that to her she would erupt, she genuinely thinks someone on £30k today is much richer than she is because she never earned that while working. If I ever try to point it out she shouts me down.

I help her along with another relative, but more so recently as the other person has a lot going on themselves, I can’t really say no as it would be tricky.

I think you are going to have to tune out a little for the sake of your sanity OP, as its highly unlikely to change! Its so frustrating to watch people trapped in a futile loop of misery of their own making.
I had a friend (we are both old) who was seriously wealthy , beautiful home, very healthy savings and 4 private pensions who constantly bleated to me how others were entitled to gov help and they had tried and failed to get pension credit!
When I explained how some folk had to live and try & scape by they cut me off! (Thank goodness)
You are being very kind to help her with this admin, but preserve your MH by not engaging, don't see it as another chore to educate her also

I'd just laugh at her every time!

In fact - why are you doing so much when she could afford to pay carers?

Everyone thinks everyone else has more money and is whittling it away while they are struggling (in inverted commas as they may not be!) and that their generation had it worse.

The reason she thinks people have it easier now, if I’m going by how my mum talks is for example’in her day’ people didn’t fly the way they did now or buy like they do now (my mum used to mend things with holes in them). Houses didn’t have example multiple bathrooms or wooden floors. So they did struggle more than us but saying that it was a given people could get a bridging loan so they could own for example and I do think it was easier to get a job that was secure.

So we’ve all different pros and cons of our time.

She’s not going to change.
She’s one of those people who will sit in the cold because she can’t afford to put the heating on.
Her money will either go on care when she really needs it, or whoever she leaves it to in her will.
Most people that age moan about younger generations. This lady had a childhood when rationing was still in place and I think that created such a sense of lack in childhood.
Of course, life is more luxurious now in lots of ways but the ways of getting out of poverty, for example, going to Uni or doing really great training don’t always lead to anything now.
I think for just young people buying a house is an impossible dream.
My dad outlived my mum by several years. He had a decent pension and whilst he didn’t throw it around and did spend, he never scrimped on good food, heating, a new car every couple of years. There was no way he was going to sit in discomfort.
It is a mindset.
There was a poster on here a couple of Christmases ago who had parents who would never put the heating on at all in a huge house and she was ill every time she visited them in the winter. They wouldn’t even allow a heated throw.

You won't change her feelings now, however irritating it is to hear her moaning unnecessarily.

For some people, being 'poor' (even when they very much aren't) is their chosen identity - just like the 'teeny tiny eat like a sparrow' people, or those who claim incompetence in the simplest, most basic tasks and the supposed need for somebody else to do it for them (not saying that your relative doesn't need help in this now; more like the blokes who couldn't possibly know how to start a washing machine going thenselves).

You don't say what your relationship is, but if you or your children stand to inherit when she is gone, I'd just accept it as a double win: that she gets to enjoy her extreme frugality hobby/identity whilst she's alive; and then you also get to benefit from the natural results of it in due course!

I do think that some elderly people are jealous of young adults - when they see their own limitations, ageing-related issues and their own lives heading towards their close whilst the youngsters still have the world at their feet.

It's much easier for them to blame them for buying takeaway coffees and declaring that we should 'bring back national service', rather than accepting that they too were once young and equally despised by certain of the elderly folk then.

As somebody who is neither elderly nor young (but considerably closer to the former than the latter), I do wish that people would embrace their own lives that they actually have - for good or bad - rather than focusing on other people at different stages of their lives.

Just ignore her and if you’re able to step back from her, do so. She can pay for help.

You can have a money saving mindset, regardless of actual income / financial assets. Some people happily spend what they don't actually have, others are careful regardless - I fall somewhat into the latter camp myself, though I also like to enjoy myself so I'm no miser!

She's maybe just stuck in old habits that she can't get out of despite the fact she could live in far more comfort. And she's right that young people today have far more than she would have had, despite the problems we do have with living costs. They see things like fancy coffees, false nails, highlights, expensive trainers, latest phone etc as essentials - I don't but my DC do.

Help her or don't but you can't change people. Change the subject instead!

Would your Aunt consider someone a bit more patient and less gossipy to pay her bills look after her money and not talk about her on the Internet?

She’s in her 80s, why get into disagreeing at all? What a waste of your energy.

She’s never going to see your point of view. She likely grew up in a time of rationing, which was very hard and meant lots of older people had a skewed attitude towards money and the need for scrimping and saving. She grew up in a time with little technology. It was a very different time.

Stop arguing with her.

Have you got LPOA? You are leaving yourself very vulnerable without it.

OP try to understand.
Someone like your relative lived through the Second World War. And possibly the Depression in the 30’s. Or will have heard about it. Rationing.
The meaning of money and its value gets a bit lost as people age. They are often terrified of not having enough.
My lovely late father, intelligent man, kept all his rent books from the 1950’s in case he ever had to prove he had paid his rent. There wasn’t internet banking in such times.
She is very old now. And probably being blind very frightened too.
And actually I hate to say it but as a young girl she probably didn’t have much at all. She would likely ( unless very posh) grown up without central heating. No abroad holidays. She grew up before man had landed on the moon. Before disposable nappies. Before woman had the Pill. Before many many things. She would have grown up with rationing still in place. This was a limitation of what food you could buy. And clothes were rationed too.
She is trying to say perhaps young people have no idea what it is like to grow up in wartime and post war. Apart from those who have served in the military or perhaps lived in Northern Ireland she is correct. No idea.

Have a heart OP.

The world is a very different place than the world she grew up knowing. Even back when I was a child flying was extremely expensive and only the rich took a plane on holiday - now almost everyone can afford to fly on a package holiday. I think the older you get the harder it becomes to process the fact that the world has changed so very much. And this extends to money too.

I agree with others, you just don't engage on the subject. Nothing you can say will change her mind, however galling it is to listen to. Nod, smile and grey rock are your friends.

I don’t argue, I hold my tongue because if I say the slightest thing that may disagree (like when I told her she must be in the higher tax bracket or that it’s harder to buy a house now) she gets very cross. The whole point of this thread is I shut up and don’t say anything but I find it wearing to listen to the rants (which I don’t argue with)

Agree with @ItsGregg . Leave this old person alone . Why does it bother you so much? Just be kind and encourage her to spend money on herself ie good food etc.