Do you feel you have a better quality of life than your parents?

[justponderingalong]

Just pondering really because I can’t get off to sleep. My upstairs neighbors are re arranging furniture 🙄 and I was thinking how lovely it would be to have a house like my parents did when I was a child so I didn’t have to listen to it ! When I think back my mum was a stay at home mum and my dad worked for the council. Me and my husband have what I would consider better jobs but we couldn’t afford a detached with a big garden. My parents deffo had a better lifestyle than my grandparents so I’m wondering if it’s a generational thing ? I imagine the next generation will probably be feeling like my generation won the lottery by having a flat so I know I’m lucky. What changed the each generation doing better than the last thing or is that a myth ?

We had a good standard of living growing up but I’d say we are better off , have a nicer house and more disposable income . Our adult children are also doing ok and will likely end up better off than us .

Not in many ways, though I take PP's point about more opportunities career-wise. My parents still live in their 4 bed house with big garden. They are about 20 years into a comfortable retirement. Mum worked part time once my brother was at secondary school, Dad was an engineer. They were always careful with money and had some financial worries when I was younger but had a sizeable inheritance or two which made life easier for them and they were careful to use it as wisely as they could.

I've worked full time all my life - early 50s now and self employed, so almost no chance of retirement but I did have flexibility to be around for my children more than many can. I do own a small house so feel lucky for that, have done up about 15, so worked hard to get to this point (and it's not finished). Going on my first holiday in 10 years soon thanks to dh's small pension maturing. Parents not well enough now, but only ever had UK breaks by choice.

My young adult DDs will likely earn far more than me and probably travel far more than me, but will have significantly higher costs and more difficulty buying a property.

Without inheritance, I believe that certainly my generation and possibly my dds will have a lower quality of life than my parents as even two reasonable wages is barely enough to manage these days, and childcare costs will likely be a big factor for them too.

Less stressful than having to look after the home AND having to go work aswell tho....
I relished being a SAHM, but it helped that I really didn't miss my job....

I definitely have a better quality of life. My mum was widowed at 31 with a 4 and 9 year old, juggling 2-3 jobs at any one time to feed us.

dh and I have no mortgage, have numerous holidays throughout the year, can help our adult children if need be and have a decent amount of savings. We have a relatively good standard of life.

No.

Incomparably better (for me, than my parents) grew up quite poor financially (no TV (eventually a B&W one rented from radio rentals), no car, no phone, no heating, cheap (but happy) hols (local beach with family with a picnic), no food variety, hand me down clothing (never really a problem) defo no takeaways or leisure activities unless you could count swimming or going out on my bike). Went to Uni (when grants were a thing), got a job, worked hard, did OK, bought a house, had kids who had all of the reverse of all of the above. I miss some things about the old days (life was just simpler, and there were probably more "opportunities") but I don't miss the cold (especially the cold) or the inconvenience of nearly everything if you didn't have much money.

We have a similar quality of life to our parents when they had kids the age ours are now BUT they were ten years younger than we are. By 44 all their kids had left home to go to university (which cost sod all then), the family home was paid off as it only cost £5k in the first place, their parents were only in their 60s, and they had a good 15-20 years of freedom (ie not looking after kids or elderly parents) to do whatever they wanted which included some amazing holidays.

They upsized and bought a new house mid 1980s (when we were teens) which they recently sold for well over ten times what they paid for it.

None of these things are likely to happen to my generation.

Yes, I definitely think so, despite living in a tiny flat (I grew up in a terrace and could afford a similar house in my hometown but I live in London and I’m very happy in my cheap shoebox, I’ve never cared about or aspired to have a large property). I have so much more choice and opportunity and disposable income than my parents did - I never went abroad as a kid, the basics and some treats were provided but they couldn’t afford holidays or big expenses like residential school trips or giving me any financial help. I’ve now travelled all over the world to make up for that and had experiences they could only dream of. I have a career I’m passionate about - they actually did pursue their passion careers in the arts before I was born but had to give them up as they didn’t earn enough and had no financial help (grandparents also poor) so I grew up with them working minimum wage and manual jobs and not having much money to spare to do anything fun.

My quality of life is way better. Was raised by a single mom who didn’t go for CM and managed to bag herself a cocklodger-ie very little resources spread very thin.

Finacially I feel I am better off, I was a SAHM for 19 years, whereas both my parents worked and grandparents minded us. Although my parents were financially secure. I have regular great foreign holidays, my childhood holidays were in caravans, but I think mainly because that was the norm, my parents had foreign holidays once we had left home and they became generally more attainable and cheaper.

My working life is & has been
more demanding, with longer hours required. I feel my parents working life was simpler, although my dad worked a hard, manual job. Their life was simpler, with no on demand stuff that I feel we have, such as mobile phones, email, any tech or dealing with call centes, and they certainly didn’t drive my sibling and I to activities or play dates, parties - I’m a taxi service.

As my own DC reach adulthood I do worry they won’t have the same financial security. I feel my wealth & lifestyle trajectory has been massive and theirs won’t be.

My mother had a rough menopause and was misdiagnosed with arthritis amongst other things. It really limited her later years. I am beyond grateful that when I hit 50 and told my GP I probably have arthritis she checked my bloods, gave me HRT and I could get on with my life.

Not materially no. My parents did very well and had lots of family suppport. Dad had a 6figure salary, progressed through his job degree and masters paid for by his employer, and they only had one child.. with both their mums helping out with childcare as i was also the only grandchild. Multiple holidays abroad every year.
Parents suppprted them with buying their first home which they did in their late twenties before having me. They moved up the property ladder and ended up with a beautiful 6 bed victorian house with 2 acres. Mortgage paid off well before retirement. Moved abroad.

I have 3 kids and am on minimum wage. Only bought my first house at age 36 and it has no garden and my girls have to share a bedroom. No family support with childcare at all and i am now also a carer for my mum after my dad has died. My mum spent money like water and basically has nothing left now. It does irritate me slightly that she lived her life veey carefree with loads of help.. did not care for her own mother etc.. and at the end of it all its me who shoulders the burden and has had to spend my life working extremely hard for the benefit of others.
Despite that she still spouts boomer nonesense 'young people today' etc..
She spent the majority of her life not thinking more than couple of days ahead as everything was always just taken care of

Health wise though i have fared much better so far

Yes and no - difficult to compare!

The main difference is the amazing house they could afford on one income.

In terms of lifestyle it probably looks quite similar, but we have two incomes and they had one.

Min wage didn’t exist when I was very small and my mum was a hairdresser so she relied on tips and the goodwill of the elderly women who frequented the shop to take care of me sometimes while she worked. She split from my dad when I was a baby.

We lived in lots of different houses, I moved house around 6-8 times over my childhood. Some were absolutely hideous ramshackled slums to be frank. Council houses with concrete floor because they had a policy of removing all carpets/laminate before a new tenant moved in and mum couldn’t afford new flooring. It was rough growing up. Also lived with DV and an addict stepdad which didn’t help.

I have a PhD and postdoc from Oxford. I’ve worked really hard to escape that sort of lifestyle. DH has an MBA. Together we do relatively well for our DC. So yeah, I’d say my life is better than my parents.

I don't know. I think I've had more opportunities in many ways - I (millennial) grew up knowing I could do whatever I wanted, whereas my mum (in her 70s) was told in school that girls could either become teachers or nurses. My dad grew up in a small German village where his in-laws were considered suspiciously exotic because they used garlic in their cooking, escaped at the first opportunity and never looked back, which strained his relationship with his family a lot. I moved to south-east Asia for work, which would have been almost impossible for my parents, not least because SEA itself is infinitely more developed now compared with the 70s and 80s.

On the other hand, it was much easier for my parents to attain a stable middle-class life where they own their own house and are now comfortably retired with no financial concerns that I know of, despite having been respectively a nurse and a college teacher, neither of which are exactly high-rolling careers. So it depends what you value, I suppose. Overall I think we've both had it pretty good, in different ways.

To me, yes, because I would have really disliked to live particularly my mum’s life - being married to my dad was awful for her and she had to graft 18 hours a day due to his dysfunctional way of being and total inability to manage finances. He was institutionalised from the age of 6 though, not all his fault for sure.

She was always very sorry for me and thought both my generation and me specifically had it very hard. Perhaps if I’d been slightly more honest about how much fun I was having it would have been better. Anyway, as ever I end up glad to live now, not then. Tbh I continue to believe that most modern people who had to spend 1 week living my grandparents’ lives would run screaming back to the present - and my grandparents were ridiculously privileged.

I was thinking the other day about how my parents managed with 3 kids on mainly just my dad’s wage (which wasn’t huge). They got a mortgage for a 3 bed house in just my dad’s wage. We never had fancy holidays, but did go on trips around the UK. Didn’t have expensive clothing and didn’t get new toys / treats often, but we usually always got what we asked for at Christmas / birthdays. My mum did some part time work once we were all at school which gave them a little extra income.
Then compared that to my circumstances of having two kids, my husband must earn at least double what my dad ever did. If you look at just the finances then yes we are much better off than my parents were. But how far those finances stretch these days actually means that we’re in a pretty similar position. I’m currently on maternity leave and we can survive a bit longer with me not working, but I’ll have to return to work because financially we’ll need my input - to be able to move house I would also need to be working as house prices are so ridiculous etc.
It’s interesting because it feels like we should be much better off than my parents. But I’d say we’re only marginally so.

Yes in some ways, no in others.

Yes, because my parents grew up very, very poor. Both were in and out of children’s homes and their parents were too poor and chaotic to look after them, theyboth left school to work at 13. They have a huge house they bought for not much in the 80s and renovated though, which I could never afford, but it was through years of hard labour and dedication, they worked harder in their jobs than I ever will in my cushy work from home desk job. I will never have a house this size but overall my life has been a lot lot easier. If I worked two jobs, never ate out, never went on holiday, only cooked from scratch and only bought second hand stuff like they did then I could have had the same size house. But I didn’t and don’t, so so can’t really complain. They also have tiny pensions and mines a nice corporate package.

Probably not but I think that’s due to how much more expensive stuff, especially housing is. My parents lived in a big 4 bed detached house which cost 32k when they bought it in the early 80s. I live in a 3 bed semi which cost me 130k when I bought it in the early 00s.

on paper I should have a better lifestyle than them because both me and Dh have better paid careers than my parents. Parents were teachers, mum only part time. They had fancy expensive holidays every year and mum retired at 58. I rarely go abroad and can’t imagine being able to retire so young.

Hard to say, on paper we are better off because we earn more than my parents did (obviously adjusting for inflation) and having higher salaries brings some benefits. However the reason we earn more is that as a couple we worked more. My mum only worked very part time when we were young and didn’t increase her hours until we were in our early teens. If we did that and I worked the hours she did then we couldn’t pay our mortgage.

so I think the biggest difference is the cost of housing, which dictates a lot about how much people work.

I have a career, whereas DM’s stopped when she had me, I live in a detached house whereas it was a semi for my childhood home, and DH earned far more than DF did. But my DF had an affair, ended the marriage, and me and DM lived hand to mouth, whereas me and DH are still married.
But my DM had many friends, knew everyone in the town, and went to the social club a couple of times a week where she had a great time. I have no friends and no social life, so I suppose the answer depends upon what you think brings quality to your life.

I had a relatively comfortable childhood, big house, annual foreign holiday etc. My mum worked p/t but only after I was 11 before that she stayed at home. They are both still alive and relatively well off. Great pensions and investments, two houses. In contrast I rent and spend a lot of my time worrying about money. Never much left at the end of the month. I have had a lovely life and have lovely children but there's no way I will be as comfortable in my retirement as they are and have been. On the other hand I definitely have done more things and been more places than them. We have very different mindsets.

I am no where near the standard of living my parent had. Neither went to university but could afford a 4 bedroom detached with garage and garden, two cars and multiple abroad holidays per year.
I have a flat, no garden, no car and a holiday every two or three years.
I went to university and have always worked but could never have reached the standard of livingy parents achieved.