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.

DB are not the same as FS.

Yeah you don’t pay into a “system” to get money out of it-that’s actually not how society works I’m afraid, and it certainly will not be how it works for the next generations of pensioners coming after you. And pensioners do not get £1000 per month-you might want to check your maths.

I think it was going through wartime, losing friends and neighbours depending on where you lived (she grew up in a badly hit area), and a decade of rationing after the war, although designed to deliver decent nutrition, could feel restrictive and she remembers lots of queues and upset over it. It didn’t sound like an easy time to live through. In comparison life looks very easy now, and if younger generations had to live like that they’d be appalled. It’s not as straight forward as calling old people boomers and criticising them for living easy, privileged lives.

I used to have a neighbour who was evacuated as a child and spent her formative years with another family, then going back to parents who were then basically strangers. She had a lot of issues that she couldn’t shake off.

There's also the issue of discouraging people from driving once they're not in good enough health to be safe. Free bus travel may help there.

This person is in her late 80s. So when the war ended, she'd have barely been out of infant school.
I don't think her warmemories, if she has any, are the reason behind her thinking.

Your personal situation does not invalidate my post.

Well, for a start, it's not maths, it's simple arithmetic. Divide £12,547.60 by 12. What do you get? I'll tell you. £1045.63. So are you saying the £45.63 a month makes them loaded?

That makes more sense. The state control that came in took a long time to be removed in all areas. Even in the 1980s when you wanted to install a phone in your home you had to apply to BT (might still have been part of the Post Office then) and wait for months on a waiting list till they could send an engineer. That was annoying and inconvenient rather than traumatising, though!

I think it's more that things haven't increased/decreased in cost by the same amounts that trips people up. I remember in times before we had an IKEA (although I guess there was MFI) furniture was a "big" purchase. I remember when my parents spent months researching and looking for a new 3 piece suite and DH remembers the saga of his parents' dining room table and chairs.

Technology has got more advanced and proportionally cheaper. Nobody rents a tv any more and mobile phones and computers have come down in affordability so to someone who is used to those being very expensive luxuries it's difficult to get used to the idea that younger people who have those things aren't just throwing large amounts of cash away while being unable to buy a house. Food is, I think, a bit more complicated. Shopping bills are going up now but there is still a lot of competition between supermarkets and there is a bigger range of types of food and prices than there was maybe 40 years ago.

House prices have of course run away from wages to the extent that younger people can't still buy a house if they'd only sit on a camping chair and only eat baked beans.

If you're 90 years old you're probably not internalising these changes, even if someone tells you so it's all a bit distorted. I think the only thing you can do is reasssure her she has plenty of money for what she needs and doesn't need to worry.

I don't think she knows what she's talking about which isn't a slur, it's a misunderstanding on her part imo.

Which war would that be? Napoleonic? The War of Independence? The Boer War? Which one exactly? Which war will have affected a person who is in their 80s in 2026?

I assumed it was an attempt to undermine the points I made in my post.

And you were able to retire in your early 60s?

The Second World War. Depending on when they were born. Even if it had finished by the time they were, the impact of it would have been apparent to them growing up. Bombed out cities. Rationing. Of both clothes and food.

Free bus travel would certainly help the millions of young people who cannot afford driving lessons and the absolute shambles of the driving test situation, not to mention the exponential increase in the costs of buying and maintaining a car. Where are the policies to support them?

I mean there’s clutching at straws and then there’s that.

I cannot believe your reply. Sadly, no. I can.

I know, I’m a big meanie aren’t I? Using facts and logic to ask why we as a society are happy to shaft the younger generations over and over again to keep the pensioner electorate happy.

What a monster am I.

Late 80s could mean she was 7 or 8 when the war ended, plus rationing a further 9/10 years. Still old enough to have clear memories of it and how it affected adults in her life.

It was a different time. People tend not to adapt as well to change when they age. My grandparents could never use or understand a VCR ever, even though in comparison to technology now they were simple. My parents can’t understand why everyone has a smartphone and spends money every month on contracts, and renting music rather than owning it. We live in weird times but it’s normal to so many of us.

I am afraid you are just a wind up merchant. Your post and lack of appreciation for a generation who died and suffered for your freedom is foul.

Do you remember "party lines"? You shared a line with someone else in your area and you would sit at your "phone table" in the hall, pick up your phone to dial a friend and there would be a raging argument going on between the person you shared a line with and some other randomer. So you just sat and listened. 😂If it was really bad, you would shout on your family to listen too.

What are you going on about? Which generation died and suffered for my freedom exactly? The people on this thread who have said they are in their 60s and 70s? The people they are referencing, the vast majority of whom were children (or had not even been born yet) during WWII? Who are you talking about?

The post originally is about someone who is nearly 90.

No. I retired on my 60th Birthday.

Scotland! Feel free to move here.