Boomer parents who don't help their children

[hoarderofthedough]

I will preface this by saying that my own Boomer parents DID help me and my sibling, and I will be forever grateful. They were wonderful.

BUT.....my DH's mother, on the other hand is the opposite, and it's giving me the rage. I wondered whether anyone else had experienced similar?

She is super rich, and by that I mean a multi millionaire. She lives in a 6 bed mansion, has around 8 properties that she rents out, providing an income of circa £10k a month, and she lavishes it ALL on herself and her boyfriend.

Her daughter (my SIL) lives in a tiny house in an awful (dangerous) part of town, and doesn't have a pot to piss in. Scrimping and saving, not able to put the heating on in winter, no treats ever - and all the while MIL is jet setting to exotic holidays, always in business class....with not one thought for her DD and grandkids welfare.

On the rare occasions we meet up for a meal, MIL will let DH and SIL pay. Or at best the bill will be split - but never are we treated with her paying. However, she is very happy to treat her boyfriend to lots of things.

She's almost 80 now, and still has no thoughts of gifting money to avoid inheritance tax.

Anyone else experience this? I find it truly baffling, because if I was in her position I would be filtering down money to my adult kids regularly.

Wind your long neck in from your mil's business. Greedy mare!

On the face of it, it sounds as if the MIL is very mean and thoughtless

I wouldn’t have it in me to watch my child struggle as a grown up with something that I could help with, be that time/money/skills. When we brought our first house we were short of £4000 on our deposit due to the mortgage deal expiring, one set of parents gave us the money because they didn’t want us to lose the house.
Another parent who didn’t have spare cash helped renovate it when they weren’t at work as it needed a new bathroom, plastering etc When we had our first child another parent had our child one day a week to save us nursery fees etc
I never had to ask for any help, it was volunteered by the people that cared about us when we needed it.
No one is entitled to funds from anyone else, however you would need to be a pretty selfish person to be wealthy enough for multiple holidays and know that your child can’t afford to heat the house for themselves/your grandchildren and not offer help.
My Grandmother always used to say that people who accumulated great wealth were tight fisted , that poorer people were usually more charitable.
She grew up in poverty and raised her own children as a widow and said it was always the neighbours that had little to spare that would offer to help and not the ones who could easily spare it.

Just responding to.part of this to say it is not at all unusual to work full time with very young children, as I and many others do

My parents helped me go to university. That was their contribution to my adulthood. After that, it’s been up to me to make my own way. I don’t have a problem with that.

Enormous wealth?

Possibly in upper middle class circles. Not for those from working class backgrounds.

My 2 bed house cost 22k in ‘86. I built on accessible accommodation for Mum.

I’ll be lucky to get 150k for it when it’s sold to pay my care fees (assuming I don’t do my cousins’ kids a favour and kick the bucket before I need to go into a care home.)

My furniture is nearly all second-hand. I’m hoping to replace my carpets at some point - they were here when I moved in.

My dad was a coal miner. I taught for a living.

I’ll add that to took more than 27 yrs to pay off the mortgage and the extension took all my savings.

I’ve had the same from my parents. I’ve been homeless so you can’t get much lower. A good example I used to privately rent ,had to move all the time, my parents hobby is checking out house prices. So I’ve been made to stand at endless estate agents windows in my area whilst they check out the housing market and point out beautiful homes……at the same time that I was being evicted and had nowhere to go.

is there anyway you can help SIL? Just a little would go a long way? If it was me I’d put an envelope of cash through her front door anonymously so she’s got some money for heating and stocking presents this winter.

Urgh I hate peoples responses on this thread. Of COURSE if you have the means, you help out your children.

I’m guessing they’re not millionaires but if they were and you hit hard times you’d be ok if they just left you to get on with it, even though they could give you a helping hand?

Every single thread with ‘boomer’ in the title never has anything good to say. The term is always used in the most disparaging way to dismiss an entire swathe of people who just happened to be born within a particular time frame. All using £50 notes to wipe their arses. Yes, things are harder now, but a large percentage of the baby boom generation endured terrible poverty that young people now could barely even imagine, and many are only marginally better off now. Why does everyone focus on the ones who ended up wealthy? Maybe because this site is overwhelmingly middle class. And as for passing on their vast riches, some people are incredibly generous and others are absolute misers. That has nothing to do with what year they were born and more to do with their personalities.

Not just Boomers, I would guess. Parents (of adult children) don’t have to give money to their adult children.

Nice if they do, their choice if they don’t. 🤷‍♀️

YABU for being annoyed she won't gift you some now to avoid inheritance tax. I wonder if she's planning to leave everything to her boyfriend anyway?

What does this mean?

It was there for the taking if you were born between 1959-1964 so what did you do wrong do you think?

In 1978 I was home with my boomer parent mother, who didn’t have to work, because my dad’s working class blue collar job was enough to cover the cost of a semi detached house back then, even though he had zero qualifications and a low stress job, when they were in their early 20s.

This is very true. I’m a ‘boomer’ but was brought up working class on a council estate. I had to work from age 16, giving my mum a good chunk of my weekly wage, none of that secretly putting it away for me that so many MNers who are not boomers seem able to do. We didn’t have a car and our holidays were one, wet, week a year in a caravan, usually only a couple of hours train ride from where we lived. On MN posters who are not boomers seem to be on high salaries with husbands also on high salaries, two cars, holidays abroad every year, can afford cleaners and gardeners, (when I was growing up only the very wealthy and Royalty had those), and have children at private school. If MN is anything to go by they are doing very well for themselves indeed. But they are no more representative of of their generation than some ‘Boomers’ are to theirs. Most of us are just ordinary people.

My mother was widowed in 1966 with 2 children aged 3 and 12. She had a mortgage she had to pay (once she was 'allowed' to open a bank account) two jobs on the go (no real childcare then. I got a free place at the local nursery and all the Sahms thought that was appalling. How dare she when they had to pay. )two kids both of us having medical issues and the terror of the married neighbours thinking she was going to steal their dull and unpleasant husbands! That makes me a 'boomer'.

I was deeply affected by all of the above and grew up in the 80s and 90s when things were not easy at all. Women had few rights and, remember, marital rape was legal until the early 1990s. The only real way I have 'had it easy'was getting social housing in the late 1990s - we somehow got a big three bed (second h) with one child and pregnant with the second. This would never happen now and I hate that for my kids and grankids generations.
It doesn't stop a huge majority of us 60s kids being compassionate, and absolutely not multi fucking millionaires.
And if I ever have a bit of spare money, of course I help my children. I wish I had more for them
Maybe I should been more together and 'grabby' but me and my h and most of my friends are in no way what we are painted as. It's sickening to read the nastiness

I wish!

Well your parents just sound absolutely awful don’t they. Hope you have gone NC with them. How despicable for you that you had to have boomer parents. I hope you let them know in no uncertain terms how disgusted you are with them and their sort.

Absolutely, my DC don't ask me for things. I offer because I have a lot more than them and I can still remember having to count every penny when they were small. I remember crying because I had taken a year off maternity after first 2 DC and I could only afford 4 months after youngest DC. I felt like the worst Mum and vowed then I would make it up to my youngest ds when he was older. I was able to do that by gifting him £55k towards house deposit to add to his own savings for deposit so he could afford to live locally and was not forced to go further afield in search of a cheaper home.

♥️ What a lovely idea.

Technically yeah it’s right they can spend their money however they want. However as a mum myself I would rather help my DD out than have her living in a shitty area with my grandkids. But also having said that, we aren’t reliant on our parents giving us anything, we have absolutely been helped out but didn’t need need the money iyswim. Been very lucky in that respect, but thats probably cultural as well. Every single person in my family has had or will have some help. So I don’t really get watching your kids struggle and not caring, couldn’t do it to mine.

Her boyfriend may just make her very happy, she’s 80, she only has so many years left on this planet so yeah totally understandable that she is enjoying the good years where she can travel etc before it becomes difficult for her. Her last decades will be full of fun and love, thats pretty good. She could be more generous if I’m being honest, not from the perspective of a recipient but as a mum. I assume we’ll be helping with uni, first deposit, etc etc.

Is her daughter Cinderella?

We have a similar situation in our family. My DDad and DM are giving money away as often as they can to avoid inheritance tax and so they can enjoy us enjoying it. DFIL and DMIL are the complete opposite! Always talking about upgrading to business class, talking about the Michelin starred place they eat at whilst we talk about getting bargains on Vinted and considering cancelling a child's bus pass because we can't afford such a massive chunk upfront. Some people are tone deaf and your MIL sounds like one of those people. So busy having a lovely life she cannot imagine what it's like to struggle. If only she really listened rather than making up lies.

Would SIL ever directly ask for help?

I'm child-free by choice, but my boomer friends have all helped their kids out. One set paid off their DDs student loan to increase their mortgage borrowing potential and their DSIL's parents gave them an equivalent amount for a deposit on a flat.

Loads of them have helped with house deposits, clearing debts, funding post-grad studies, providing free childcare etc. One lot have just downsized and gave each of their 3 kids £30k each.