Children feeling resentful over parents’ luxury holidays

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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 do think people should remember that if they are 30 now then it's nearly 40 years till they retire and the world can change a huge amount in that time

Most of the people who are having holidays and enjoying themselves now didn't have holidays or homes with inside toilets and central heating when they were your age

I agree that the direction of travel is bad but there is so much time for things to be changed for the better just like things changed for the better in their lives

@BellatrixLestranger that would grate on anyone ! You're a saint for not whinging x

It seems as if we mostly all agree (albeit differently) I know ! Bear with me.

It seems to be entitlement we don't like.

Be that greedy younger adults expecting inheritance or self centred older generation who had it comparatively easy or inherited and then spending blithely with no thought to their young adults.

Yip entitlement sucks.

And I also hate the attitude of a lot of my peers - the "I worked hard for it all my life"

Nope, no you didn't.
Most of you were a one working parent family and had affordable mortgage and gold standard pension and uni grants.

Boomers didn't work nearly as hard as younger people and yet those younger people will Never have that lifestyle.

AND those boomers voted into power the government that ended grants and introduced loans and great pensions & fucked the economy

I despair of my and slightly older generations frankly

@beachcitygirl I just zone her out to be honest, we're not particularly close these days. And this isn't about inheritance etc for me, I just couldn't deal with my parents' level of entitlement anymore, and it goes beyond money. It's entitlement to time, energy, resources, friendship and so on. A long, long list of wants.

They expected their children's lives to revolve around them, but left their own parents to fend for themselves. It's so bizarre.

I've already told my mother to not expect anything from me-I'd rather she spends every penny of "my inheritance" on providing herself with whatever she needs so I can freely live my own life-my time is more valuable to me than her money.

WTAF? My parents are in their 29th year of retirement and when they were my age owned a house with three toilets. All of them inside.

@deplorabelle my mum was the age I am now in 1997, not 1897! These conversations about generational differences are so strange sometimes!

That might be the case for your parents @deplorabelle but not everyone had that kind of house. I was born in the 1960s and we had a tin bath until I went to school.

"The 1967 House Conditions Survey found that 25 percent of homes in England and Wales still lacked a bath or shower, an indoor WC, a sink and hot and cold water taps. By 1991, only 1 per cent of households lacked one or more of these."

My point isn't 'woe is me' but that as with any age group not all baby boomers had the same experience.

This is certainly true I completely agree. But most of the multi holidaying retirees we are talking about did not spend their adult lives in accommodation with an outside lav. They might have spent their childhoods like that but the wealth they are sitting on now ALSO bought them central heating and indoor plumbing during their working lives.

There are plenty of older people who missed out on the wealth creating bonanza of housing booms since the 70s, and final salary pension schemes. They aren't the demographic being discussed here.

Most of you were a one working parent family and had affordable mortgage and gold standard pension and uni grants.
You have to go way back in history to say 'most of you were a one working parent family'. In the 1970s over half of mothers were in work.

Until recent times on the very few went to university, sure they had grants but it was an opportunity only afforded a few.

Boomers didn't work nearly as hard as younger people and yet those younger people will Never have that lifestyle.
It's simply not true that boomers didn't work nearly as hard as younger people. Where are you getting that from?

Christ I missed these gold standard pensions. I am in my sixties, disabled and have to work until my state pension. When I was young tuition fees were free, but I come from a very poor background and hardly anyone from my school went to university. The big push at the time was to get people to stay on until 18. Most people left school at 16 and went straight into work. It was the middle class going to university.

My gripe is more that growing up we had holidays but they were basic, and that I can remember being quite bored as a child while my parents spent the weekend diying or gardening. Now they are loaded and have lavish holidays flying first class, and my mother speaks of how good my father was at saving for their retirement and I can help but think they should have spent a bit more when I was a child. I went to a shitty comprehensive while their contemporaries sent their kids private, plus doing some more fun stuff in the holidays would have been better. I don’t resent them spending it now though, just that they were too focused on squirrelling money away.

This reminds me of a show I watched with Gordon Ramsay and his son, where Gordon was talking about how hard he worked and how poor his family was and nothing was handed to him etc etc. Until his son reminded him that the council gave Gordon (and I believe his sister?) a flat when Gordon was in his late teens. Can you imagine a young, single man being given social housing now?

My parents had to wait 2 weeks(!) to be housed by the council when they applied. They were given a three bed house in London. We were so lucky.

Now this is not a race to the bottom, and the two examples above are how it absolutely should be, but the point is that it would be nice if people at least showed some understanding of the vastly different state of affairs now and just how much things have degraded in the last 20/30 years.

What I don't get is that my parents are well off now but DONT spend anything on themselves.

I asked them didn't they fancy going away but the answer was no. I'm not sure what they're saving it up for to be honest. My mind boggles at that, because I'm fairly confident they're not worried about leaving us an inheritance (they never inherited anything themselves, so I doubt they even think about it)

Who will think of all those poor children whose parents didn't send them to private schools and only took them on basic holidays.

Sounds about right. And don't get me started on expecting their children to babysit each other, working all hours so leaving all household tasks to their kids without outsourcing anything, making their kids work in their businesses, their kids having to basically raise themselves.

My parents didn't even realise I needed glasses. I had to book my own appointment, go, and order the glasses myself. When my glasses were ready the optician was legally not allowed to sign the glasses over to me as I was 12 years old, so I had to bring my older sister to pick them up because my parents weren't going to come with me.

And then talking about how hard THEY had it. One of the reasons I'm not having children myself is so that I can finally know some peace and treat myself to all the things I never had as a child.

So yeah, when my mother talks the way she does about what she has (knowing full well her children literally helped her to make that money and facilitated her life), it aggravates me.

My parents are the same. I know they have a lot of money but they live as if they don't. I feel a bit sad for them sometimes but they seem happy enough. I assume they're saving it in case they need care later on in life? All of my grandparents spent some time in care homes of varying quality - I guess the more money you have, the more choice you have in that scenario?
Conversely, my in laws have no money at all and spend as if they are loaded so 🤷‍♀️

@Evensong you mean parents who could have used some of their money to facilitate spending more quality time with their children, enriching their lives with more experiences, and giving them a better educational experience? The horror.

Is that how it should be, though?

Surely it would be better if people weren't reliant upon the state for housing?

@Evensong your last 2 paragraphs contradict each other. Quite a few of my contemporaries did not go to university but walked into good jobs the day after leaving school & those jobs were secure, with good pensions
Those who went to university did so without requiring loans. Housing benefits were paid & unemployment benefit if a summer job couldn't be procured

Almost ALL of my contemporaries worked part time at most and brought up their kids, those who worked their parents helped out

Most young couples couldn't dream of such luxury - 2 wages are needed to live anywhere halfway decent.

Mortgages are not 💯 anymore
Houses are not bought for 3 x an annual
Salary anymore.

My friends dad bought a detached house with 4 bedrooms and a huge garden in a very desirable part of Glasgow for £7000 in the 1970's.
His dad was a teacher whose wife stayed home, ie one wage (no inheritance)

Same house was sold recently for close to a million.

There is no teacher with a stay at home partner buying that house.

Baby boom generation had it easy in so so many economic and housing and job ways.

Really hard hard working young adults who have to go to university to get a job in a shop are struggling to get on the market and they will not be retiring early with a holiday home on the Costa's

Young people today work harder and longer for less.

It's a disgrace and it's my generations fault for the bloody thatcher years.
Greed is not good
We need to check our damm privilege as do our parents

@ThisOldThang that is a much bigger question I know. Ultimately my point is that there is basically no safety net anymore, whereas there was in the past.

Certainly in the Gordon Ramsay example, I wonder how he would have fared at the start of his career working in low-paying restaurant jobs etc without secure, affordable housing? Not many 20 year olds can live in a 2 bed flat with their sister working on a kitchen porter's salary in London these days...

@beachcitygirl one of my favourite films of all time is Ethel and Ernest. I would recommend that film to everyone, it's beautiful. And a true story.

Ethel and Ernest lived through the war. They had hard times. When they got married they had no furniture. They furnished their house over the years with mainly second hand furniture and so on.

They were also able to buy a three bed house in Wimbledon on a milkman's salary.

If private rent was affordable you might have a point, but it isn't.

Is it?

Hoping that people would never be reliant on ‘the state’ only work in an economy that actually allows people to live from the wages they get, give them a good healthcare so they dint end up off work unnecessarily etc etc

Why bearing people up for ‘needing the help of the state’ when in the other side the whole system is piled against them to be sure everything is hard as it can? Which ofc means that the slightest issue will see them fall (and in need of them) pretty bad.

The strange thing is that having social housing / state managed housing tends to leave societies and people better off than private housing markets manages

And that's what state should be - a way of working together for all our benefits

You doesn't cost money to have quality time with your children or enrich their lives.

I perhaps take your point about education but it sounds really demanding to hear an adult whinging about being bored as a child because their parents didn't take them on better holidays. Some people never go on a day trip let alone a holiday.