I am NC for this. I am just really angry and wanted to put this out there. Not sure how it will help but maybe just to vent.
Basic story is about two families:
- My husband and I are British (but both grew up in another country) and absolutely avid Europhiles, and I have been very active in the anti-Brexit, pro-EU campaign since the referendum. All the marches, volunteering etc etc. Then Brexit actually happened, which I really did not think it would, and it has impacted us hard emotionally and, in the future, given that we have property and business interests in the EU, potentially financially. There are also other family, and in my case, strong ideological reasons for being gutted at leaving the EU.
- My parents are elderly (late 70s) and have always been completely irresponsible with money. They do not live in Britain. They have no pension, no policies of any kind, no property and no income other than my father's small business, which he continues to run even though he is nearly 80. This is going to have to stop some time soon and he is also in quite poor health. I support them financially to quite a large degree. If my father dies my mother essentially is destitute (except not, of course, because I will be expected to support her. Oldest child, professional, good income in Britain etc).
So, my husband and I just, since Brexit Day, have decided to move (well, retire actually) to Ireland. We can get our EU passports back in 5 years, which means an enormous amount to me. We have however no ties whatsoever to Ireland, DH has never been there and I once went there for conference for three days twenty years ago, We have despite that made all the arrangements to do this. I have a pension lump sum due which will mean that, for the first time in my life since I left my first husband and he fleeced me for everything I had in return for my freedom, I will be able to buy a property (in the part of Ireland we are going to go to we can, we have never been able to afford a property in England).
So I phoned my mother tonight and told her of our plan. Her response was "well, that is a completely crazy idea". I had to bite my tongue so hard not to say no Mummy, what IS a completely crazy idea is to be nearly eighty with no assets or pension of any kind, with no plan whatsoever about what happens when Daddy cannot work any more or he dies.
I said nothing but feel so angry. I don't know why, this is not new ridiculousness from these people. When I left X country (where they live and where they grew up) for Britain in the 1980s, to further my career, my father told me "I don't know why you are leaving, you know you will just have to come back". I never did. Why am I so angry now?