Children feeling resentful over parents’ luxury holidays

[Loyallyreserved]

I read an article in the newspaper today where several adult children (30-40 yrs age) were feeling resentful that their parents in retirement were going on luxury holidays a few times a year.
Their gripe was that they believed their parents were spending their inheritance which they felt was rightly theirs. It made them feel frustrated, envious and bitter. And they also claimed that they should be given their inheritance now rather than wait until they died.
I have to confess the article gave me the impression of selfish, cold hearted money grabbing adults.
AIBU?

I shall retire in a few years, and OH will next year. We scrimped and saved, and saved some more- for a mortgage, and to put our 3 boys through school and Uni and help them in so many ways. We never had fancy holidays- camping with them in France or Northern Italy. Skiing once a year, always on a shoe string, small simple apartment, all self catering, self driving, self everything.

So when the time comes, we shall be SKiing big time- and with their absolute blessing.

We ran a business. DH would be up early and out by 6am. I’d drop the kids at breakfast club, and go into the office then pick them up from after school, take them home and feed them. I’d be back on the laptop by 7.30 until gone midnight. DH would get home about 8.30. We’d spend all weekend catching up on admin.

Once they were at secondary school my role changed and involved more travel, so my days were similar to DH’s. I can remember years when we worked on Xmas day, and throughout our one holiday a year. Things were so tight but we were barely breaking even for years and couldn’t afford to recruit any more senior staff.

My DCs would go to my ex at the weekend and for chunks of the school holidays, and go to holiday club for the rest of the holidays. Eventually we sold up and made a lot of money.

But all that meant that we were able to fund uni, provide deposits for houses and help with other stuff for the kids. But if they think that after all that I’m going to penny pinch so they can inherit what we’ve worked for, they’ve got another thing coming. I think we’ve earned the right to enjoy it now.

My dh is in finance - actually pension investment and it’s nothing to do with ‘luck’ the system was designed that way to directly benefit them. Younger generations will never ever see any kind of retirement much less the one currently sitting on most of the country’s assets. They are also on triple lock, free prescriptions and bus passes, having made hundreds of thousands on property alone. I am always amazed at the acceptance - it’s grotesquely unfair. A system built by boomers to serve the boomers.

It's disgusting to feel jealous because your parents are enjoying their retirement. Nobody is owed anything, parents already raised the kids and anything extra they get is a bonus not a must.

My parents didn't get any inheritance, I won't get any inheritance; opposite, I have to help and give occassional financial assistance.

I'm a millennial and have worked hard for everything I've got, made many sacrifices to buy my own house and get any luxuries I get. Of course, I'm blessed that my parents gave me a university degree and I'm healthy enough to work a full time job.

As other people have mentioned, to give kids money when you haven't died depends on life choices, relationship with kids and circumstances. You can't expect no or low contact, and get money all the time from the parents. Did they choose to study? Did they choose to work full time? Relationships are complex and if kids are close enough to the parents, the parents would help but it depends on all those things.

Example, my brother chose not to go to university, chose to stay in a low paid job with no benefits when I offered to get him another job which was also low paid but had very good benefits (health insurance, low % loan for housing, etc). Chose to marry a women who only got him on big debts and left him. He's struggling but I can't be helping, if I do it, it will be forever. Have given him loans in the past which are rarely paid back. In these circumstances, its harder to help. Same would be with the kids.

You don’t know much about how the financial and political structure works in this country; nor about the advantages of free university tuition and gold plated pensions work. I suggest you educate yourself more fully.

In the early 80s youth unemployment was off the scale.
Most people of my brother's generation left school facing almost certain unemployment or a job scheme paying peanuts. He earned £23 a week for three years milking cows as that was all there was. The farmer charged him £13 of that for his keep.

I can't imagine he ever thought he'd be able to build a business, buy a home, or retire. Yet here he is about to retire at 60 on the pension he paid into all his days. Life has a way of working out. All the despondency about the future in young people is really sad. You have your whole life ahead to make what you want of it and find a way. Just because you don't have it all in your 20s or 30s doesn't mean you'll never have it. Nor does it mean that that the older people who do have some money shouldn't have it.

It's not the fault of most older people that many young people are not where they want to be right now.

God, I wish young people would rise up and protest, vote for their own future and kick the arse out of this bloody government until they get the better treatment they deserve. I know a lot of people my age, yes, us fucking boomers would support them.

It’s not that boomers didn’t struggle or work hard. It’s that they’ve seen big returns in their adult working life due to the times they lived in, that would be highly unusual now.
(for example maybe selling their £32k house for £320k, selling their £320k house for £800k)

‘To make something of your life’ nowadays, it’s so much harder to start.
It’s a lot harder to buy your first property for example, even if you have a senior role in a professional career. You likely won’t ‘make’ much money off selling it, nothing like your parents did.

I agree the DM article is designed to create ‘others’.

Widowed. He's not spending it on his new partner. She has plenty of her own. Finances seperate.

I can see her point, because MIL was very vocal about wanting her money to go to her kids & she sees that disappearing. However, SIL's relentless bullying is shocking. DH has had to intervene as he's very upset. I don't even like the man & feel sorry for him!

Still it's disgusting to feel entitled for other's people's money.

Even if my friends got inheritance from their parents I wouldn't be jealous, either their parents or grandparents worked hard for that. Even if they didn't work hard, maybe they got into big business opportunities or just luck.

It's ridiculous to spend time just being envious and jealous of other people or other generations which will change nothing and just be detrimental to their own mental health.

Relative pensioner poverty is at one of its highest rates (almost 18%) this century and is more than four percentage points higher than a decade ago. It means that 2.1 million pensioners in the UK have an income that is less than 60% of the national average. (Centre for Better Aging)

There are two sides to this coin @Severalwhippets

Time for the next generation to go all out to build a better system for them and all who come after them for sure.

Well that will start with ‘kicking the shit’ out of all the undeserved perks given to extremely wealthy older people. Let’s tax all of their empty houses, bedrooms and unused space. Let’s stop the free prescriptions unless they are genuinely deprived, and the free travel and the triple lock. Yes they must pay for their social care and all the other stuff. Let’s even the playing field so we also care for the young.

Enough is enough. I am glad we have your support.

That’s really interesting.

What I meant by ‘luck’ is that most boomers/ordinary people who have benefitted from this system didn’t design it themselves, but I have no doubt it was engineered.

You see free education and gold plated pensions for all. If you’d grown up in an industrial town or pit village, the reality was a million miles away. Barely anyone went to uni, and most people’s Dads had been made redundant and were on the dole.

sorry replied to wrong post lol 😆

No, not for all. There are always have and have-nots in every generation.

But as I said, many people live in that asset. They can't make anything of it for themselves if they want the roof they've invested in and loved all their life over their head. That's me that is. I'm rich in bricks and tiles and just about keeping my head above water otherwise.

I totally get that it's harder to buy now. We need to build more houses, especially houses that are affordable for the young to raise families in.

This, exactly. You’re always going to get some outliers but I don’t think most 30-40 year olds think like this. It’s not typical.

They did design it themselves that is precisely the point. The systems post war were designed to benefit older people directly.

My dh laughs when he hears ‘we paid our taxes’. It’s a tiny tiny fraction of the cost, the maths have never added up. But they don’t care, because the burden will be passed to the young. The cost of the NHS and social care alone for this age bracket is off the scale.

It is typical in my social circles.

I couldn't agree more.

Young people and the poorest in society have always had my support and that of a lot of my generation.

Thank you for that 🙏🏻

Yes totally get that, I wasn’t so much referring to people in your situation - my mum is similar.

@MaybeRevisitYourWipingT3chnique

Personally, I see money (capital) as an asset that produces (with sensible choices and a bit of luck) more money.

British people tend to see money as something to be spent. I try to see the return as something that can be spent or reinvested.

My father grew up in poverty and inherited very little. He will leave his house and some savings to me and my brother. When that happens, I will only be the custodian of that capital and will try to grow it for my children. I will try to educate them to see things the same way, so that they can grow it and pass on even more to their children.

It is an entirely different mentality and outlook to life/money that prioritises long term management and delayed gratification. I think it is very common in Asian families, but for some reason isn't common outside of the UK's upper and upper-middle classes.

Benedict Cabbagepatch's family have conserved their wealth since the time of slavery. They clearly understand the importance of only spending the return and never the capital.

I agree with this too. I'm tired of my colleagues in their 60s on £100k+ per year and about to retire on final salary pensions boasting about travelling in to work using their free bus passes. And they dont actually have to work - they just choose to because they like the social aspects. Many work half time, one week on one week off (usually spent travelling in Europe).

In London I assume? You don't get a free bus pass until state pension age in most places in England.