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.

If @ThreadGuardDog is correct (thanks for the link), the SIL is the OP and is 56! So she's had since the latter 1980s to make something of herself and not be living on minimum wage and complaining she's not receiving parental handouts.

Eff off with your Boomer shit. That’s got nothing to do with the whole generation.

I have quite a few Indian friends and something I admire about their family structure is they often seem to have a sort of family bank concept. With people paying into it when they are in a position to do so and taking out when they need to, throughout the natural life stages. Even when they are paying "interest" it's still in a way going into their own family pot. It's enabled many of my friends to buy houses and start businesses etc by having this access to capital.

In a way it's fairly financially inefficient to just save money for one person/couple's retirement, and separately have the children paying an external mortgage. If you could have confidence that your children would support you in your old age then you might want to arrange it differently.

Yep, this. And I think OP is now actually 58. It took me a moment to realise that that that post was from 2024 !! She’s done really well in the last two years, if what she says is true - in 2024 she was selling personal items on eBay just to be able to give Christmas gifts and wasn’t able to put her heating on in the winter. But here she’s had lots of ‘joy’ from being able to help out her own kids with house deposits, weddings and meals out.

👍

I am nearly 80. I started life in a squat (only accommodation available in London immediately after the war, bagged by my grandmother) in 1947. My father had been in the Navy, my mother a nurse, during the war. We had “Lino” on the floors, no carpets, brown blistering varnished doors, no fridge, a single cold tap and no bath. Other families upstairs and downstairs. No tv but, very importantly, a radiogram. Life was good. Gradually we achieved a better standard of living.

I find the politically-expedient term Boomers offensive. People of that generation had something intangible which has been lost in more recent times. Perhaps optimism? which overcame feelings like avarice and envy and greed. Perhaps it was because we were all starting from scratch.

I’m glad I had that start in life.

I apologise for veering off-topic, but the expression “Boomers” got me thinking about this apparent division between generations.

Her money her business and there may be a very good reason why she doesn't give money to your sil. Maybe sil has a past that you don't know about maybe she spends money on booze or drugs. Oh and by the way I hate the way older people are called boomers.

Agree - the £10k income (gross) from her rental portfolio would barely touch the sides of care home fees after tax. Maybe she’s keeping it for that as her grasping, grifting, financially incompetent DCs have proven they won’t be able to help her.

I've already answered this.

Ime these people get like this if they feel that their children's relative penury is attributable to their life choices.

I had a colleague like this. He gave his kids everything to get started in life, privileged upbringing, private schooling, expensive hobbies, access to travel & enriching experience. They end up struggling because they chose really poorly paid "fun" careers. One had all uni costs paid by him but took out loans on top & frittered them on a luxury lifestyle. Another walked out of a decent job to become a dog walker. A third chose to have four kids by three men, despite never earning much.

They just assumed he was there to subsidise them never taking responsibility for themselves. He stopped because he was worried they'd never learn.

Yeah it would. Care fees would be say £6k. That still leaves £4k left over plus all the properties and assets worth a few Million.

I think that mumsnet and this thread is split by people whose parents can’t or have never helped them out, who are full of “you shouldn’t be entitled and expect help”, and those of us who have been helped out. We are incredibly grateful and in the main, want to pay that help forward and help our own children. It’s inconceivable to us why anyone wouldn’t. That’s not entitlement it’s just a different way of thinking because we know how beneficial that help is and how grateful we are.
Similarly even if we haven’t been helped out, if that’s our natural inclination, it also seems alien that other people don’t have this mindset.

Obviously there are people like the ops mil who have had help themselves and don’t want to pay it forward, but they are just generally selfish people.
The others who have never had help, can’t understand the mindset of those who have because it’s outside the realms of their own experience.

My relative went into a specialist home for dementia three years ago at the age of 70. The fees are around £12k a month and that didn’t include all the ‘extras’ that have to be paid for separately. She’s already close to exhausting the funds from the sale of her main home and the flat she was renting out will have to be sold to cover future fees when her savings are depleted. At this rate it isn’t going to be long before her funding sources are completely gone and she’ll then have to move into a home for which the LA will pay - the one she’s in doesn’t take LA funded residents.

Of course you are not unreasonable OP. I’m shocked how many others find fault with your SIL. Your MIL is rolling in money and has family members - her own daughter - who can’t make ends meet. Yes it’s her money and yes she can do with it what she likes. But like you I don’t understand at all why she behaves the way she does and why she can’t pay for a meal when you’re all out together.

It's the lying as well. She recently had the opportunity to help SIL financially, by passing on a windfall, but spun a weird story about how she couldn't due to some "fees", long story short, I did a bit of googling and that's simply not true. She then kept this windfall for herself. Weird inheritance thing, don't want to say more as outing.

'Boomer'? Are you American?

I think people are either very individualistic or missing HOW tight the mum is. She could do things like take turns paying for meals out so she pays her share or so that she chooses nicer restaurants to spoil her kids and then has them treat her in less expensive ones. Show up at her daughter’s house with treats or baby supplies.

I changed my mind when I read how the sil spent her 20s and 30s travelling.

Meh. It’s her money, no one else is entitled to it. Equally if parents want to help their kids because they’ve got the means to then that’s fine too.

However it sounds like your SIL has spent 20 odd years frittering about on an ever extending gap year that lasted into her 40’s rather than making any real attempts at a career or creating any financial stability for herself like everyone else has to. In a situation like that I can see why MIL may begrudge just handing money over.

I don’t think it’s at all unreasonable to hope any inheritance doesn’t all go to the ‘boyfriend’. It seems one of those MN things that a boyfriend or a husband in later life, who is not the father, gets the lot but hey, that’s absolutely fine. I don’t believe people (unless they are very rich themselves) would be ok if a second or even third husband got it all but children and grandchildren got nothing.

RAGE BAIT You’ve posted this before!

I find the politically-expedient term Boomers offensive. People of that generation had something intangible which has been lost in more recent times. Perhaps optimism? which overcame feelings like avarice and envy and greed.

That optimism came from growth. Population growth hugely underpinned economic growth. Between 1947 when you were born, and 1990 the world population grew from 2.3bn to 5.3bn, a factor of 2.3. More people buying and making more stuff, governments spending massive amounts on housing, transport, publically owned utilities, medical systems and education. Much of the spending was debt fuelled but nobody cared because everybody got better off.

Today it is 8.3bn. A growth factor of 1.56 since 1990, but critically a lot of that population and economic growth has not been in uk or even europe. Uk investment has been among the lowest in the developed world.

Its hard to be optimistic when you are constantly getting poorer.

Agreed. She as a close relative could chose to be a little kinder.

I find so many of the responses to this thread strange. For context, I am typically very anti- any mindset of 'having expectations' of parents or other older relatives. I have a very good university friend who, despite themselves and their spouse both being professionals on good salaries, live their lives as if they don't need to plan for the future (financially) because they expect to inherit from parents. I find it all very distasteful and always have done.

However this situation doesn't appear to be the same at all. From the way I read the OP's posts, it seems as if very, very wealthy parent is prepared to stand by and watch whilst child or children are genuinely struggling, without so much as treating them to a meal. And grandchildren struggling too. Surely even if you think your daughter has wasted their 20s and 30s frittering away time and money, once they're in their 40s with 2 children, arguably reaping what they've sown... well assuming you haven't totally fallen out then surely you at least treat the grandchildren sometimes, treat everyone to dinner...? I mean it honestly is quite bizarre behaviour. I agree that nobody should have 'expectations' like this of parents, and that the parent has her own money and is entitled to spend it all as she sees fit. With my own parents, I just want them to die with zero (or preferably, in debt!) having spent it all on having a good life. But that doesn't stop me from thinking the circumstances outlined here are unusual and not 'normal' at best.

My parents are boomers but they aren’t multi millionaires sadly ☹️