Now is the time of year when we start thinking about booking summer holidays, and at my parents’ house in the West Country I listen to their plans for Tuscany.
“We booked a villa with a pool,” my mother told me as she looked through photos online of a beautiful old Italian farmhouse overlooking olive groves. My mind does the math.
“For just the two of you?” ” I ask. “Or are friends joining you to… share the costs?” »
“No,” she replies. ‘YOLO after all.’
YOLO is an acronym for You Only Live Once, and – oh irony – it’s an acronym I taught him several years ago. This became my parents’ mantra. We might as well expose it under the neon lights of the living room they so rarely live in these days.
Like so many newly retired baby boomers, my parents seem to have developed a real penchant for traveling.
Because, like so many newly retired baby boomers, my parents seem to have developed a real penchant for traveling. And with each excursion to Provence, with each luxury getaway to Thailand, New York or Costa Rica, I’m afraid to say that my resentment grows even more.
It’s not a nice thing to admit, but the fact is that their dream vacation is draining my inheritance.
As an impecunious 34-year-old millennial in an incredibly expensive real estate market, I’m counting on, at some point, a handout from them. But all I can see is my money slipping away on a long-haul trip to Bali.
With many of my friends in a similar situation and the cost of living crisis still in full swing, the question on our minds about the generation gap is this. Who is selfish? Us for wanting them to save their money so we can have it one day? Or them, for spending everything so freely on themselves?
At the start of their journey, about five years ago, I loved their courage and ambition. Growing up we usually went to Devon or Cornwall once a year. But when it was just the two of them (my younger sister and I have long since left the nest), they could afford to globetrot. For a moment.
Well, good for them, I thought. Let them, in their late 60s, have a few nice vacations, before settling into a comfortable retirement at home.
The problem was that it didn’t stop at one or two. It didn’t even stop at three or four o’clock.
Five years later, my phone is flooded with photos of Thai fishing boats bobbing on watery seas. Mom’s friend moved there several years ago and she thought, “Why not visit?”
She spent two weeks traveling around Thailand on her friend’s motorbike, hitting bars, restaurants and beaches like a twenty-something backpacker.
Then Dad – a man who was once content to watch Rick Stein’s culinary travelogues from the comfort of his couch – suddenly became interested in Tokyo street food and Japanese night markets, which he studied extensively. obsessively on YouTube.
Flights to Japan aren’t cheap: that’s what I know. He nevertheless reserved some.
They went to Ibiza, where they spent much of their thirties; in Madrid (my mother learned a little Spanish on Duolingo for that); and many other beautiful, warm and interesting places. What I had imagined as a ‘gap year’ between work and retirement in the UK, largely at home, is fast becoming a ‘gap decade’.
Even if their pensions are healthy, these trips eat into their savings. Is it incredibly horrible to consider the money they spend on these trips as mine?
After all, they had mentioned that they would split any eventual money between my sister and me, and I was quietly counting on that to get a head start.
At 34, I am still a tenant and I live from day to day. Unlike baby boomers, my generation is more accustomed to freelancing or settling for jobs in the gig economy than climbing the corporate ladder into a solid, lifelong job. Soon, AI will come to the white-collar workers among us anyway.
I know that when I finally get on the property ladder, I will be in so much debt that there will be no way out without help.
Well, good for them, I thought. Let them, in their late 60s, have a few nice vacations, before settling into a comfortable retirement at home. The problem was that it didn’t stop at one or two. (Stock image)
How can I settle down and give them grandchildren if there is no money lined up to support them? Do they want to go on vacation more than allow me to have and raise children?
I’m not the only one wondering where my parents’ hard-earned money is going. According to a survey by Moneyfarm, an online wealth management consultancy, two in five adult children have their blood boiling at the thought of their parents wasting their inheritance on luxury vacations.
Among adult children aged 35 to 50, 40 percent thought their parents should give them an inheritance (compared to 25 percent over 65) – and 20 percent had ever argued with them over what should stay.
More coldly, almost half of them wanted this money while their parents were alive.
“Of course your parents are selfish,” says my friend Kerry, a 38-year-old interior designer in Edinburgh and mother of a two-year-old. His father died six years ago. Her mother then realized, at the age of 75, that she wanted to try her life again. She now has appointments, Kerry tells me, is less present for promised childcare, and has “found Saga.”
“It’s obviously great that she has a life after my father, but I wonder, ‘Do we really need to see India again?’ and “Is it still safe to ski?”
“She’s 80 now and has already had a happy life of travel. She had the marriage, the children, and the house at a time when none of that cost anything like it does today.
“And it’s not just the inheritance I need. I need childcare so I can actually work. I can’t even afford to work! »
Another friend admits that she mutes her mother’s phone notifications when her parents go “galling abroad” – because all the photos of dream destinations make her jealous. And full of resentment.
“My heritage is currently being drunk through a straw from a coconut in the Caribbean,” she says. “At this rate, the choices will be slim.”
Although constant traveling is my main bone of contention, it’s not just that. My parents refinance a new car every two years, but I can’t even afford to learn to drive. Four months ago they assured me the price of upgrading the new model was “very reasonable” – but when the flowers arrived the next day from the garage they bought it from, I must have suspected the opposite.
As for vacations, I haven’t gone for six years. You have to have a lot of disposable income these days to mention YOLO.
Surprise, surprise, Moneyfarm’s advice is for adult children to save now in case their inheritance doesn’t live up to what they bargained for. They estimate that 70% of millennials do just that – although it’s a number I find very surprising. In my experience, saving for a financially secure future when you’re living in a financially insecure present is extremely difficult to undo.
Apparently, it’s not all bad news. About 60 percent of older adults say they skimp for the sake of their children and grandchildren, and 80 percent leave everything to them.
The question is: what will be left? I already know exactly what my legacy will be. An ever-growing collection of Wish You Were Here postcards.