This is the time of year when thoughts turn to booking summer holidays, and at my parents’ home in the West Country I listen to their plans for Tuscany.
“We booked a villa with a pool,” says my mother, as she scrolls through online photos of a beautiful old Italian farmhouse overlooking the olive groves. My mind does the math.
“For the two of you?” I ask. “Or will some friends come with you to… share the costs?”
“No,” she answers. “YOLO anyway.”
YOLO is an acronym for You Only Live Once, and – oh irony – it’s an acronym I taught her several years ago. It has become my parents’ mantra. They might as well hang it in neon lights in the living room where they so rarely live these days.
Like many newly retired boomers, my parents seem to have developed a real travel bug (Stock Image)
Because, like many newly retired boomers, my parents seem to have developed a real travel bug. And with every random excursion to Provence, every luxury getaway to Thailand, New York or Costa Rica, I’m afraid to say I’m harboring more and more resentment.
It’s uncomfortable to admit, but the fact is that their dream vacations claim my inheritance.
As an impecunious 34-year-old millennial in an impossibly expensive real estate market, I rely on a handout from them at some point. But all I see is my money disappearing into the distance on a long-distance trip to Bali.
With many of my friends in a similar position and the cost of living still at full tilt, the question that worries us about the generation gap is this. Who is selfish? Us because we want them to save their money so we can have it one day? Or them, because they spend it all so freely on themselves?
At the beginning of their journey, about five years ago, I loved its courage and ambition. Growing up we usually went to Devon or Cornwall once a year. But when there were only two of them (my younger sister and I have long since flown the nest), they could afford to travel around the world. For a bit.
Well, good for them, I thought. Let them enjoy a few wonderful holidays in their late sixties before settling into a cozy retirement home.
The problem was that it didn’t stop at just one or two. It wasn’t even three or four hours.
Five years later, my phone is flooded with photos of Thai fishing boats bobbing on the aquatic sea. My mom’s friend moved there a few years ago and she thought, “Why not come visit?”
She rode around Thailand for two weeks on the back of her friend’s motorcycle, hitting bars, restaurants and beaches as a twenty-something backpacker.
Then Dad—a man who used to be content to watch Rick Stein’s cooking travelogues from the comfort of his couch—suddenly became interested in Tokyo street food and Japan’s night markets, which he obsessively researched on YouTube.
Flights to Japan are not cheap: I know that. Still, he booked a few.
They went to Ibiza, where they spent much of their early thirties; to Madrid (before that my mother learned a little Spanish on Duolingo); and many other beautiful, warm, interesting places. What I had envisioned as a ‘gap year’ between work and retirement in the UK, with me mostly pottering around at home, is fast becoming a ‘gap year’.
While their pensions are healthy, this level of travel is eating into their savings. Is it incredibly horrible to consider the money they spend on these trips as my own?
After all, they had said they would split any amount between my sister and me, and I quietly banked on that to get an edge.
At 34, I’m still renting and living from hand to mouth. Unlike boomers, my generation is more accustomed to working freelance or settling for gig economy jobs than climbing the corporate ladder in a solid job for life. AI will soon be available for the white-collar workers among us.
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 enjoy a few wonderful holidays in their late sixties before settling into a cozy retirement home. The problem was that it didn’t stop at just one or two ( Stock Image)
How can I ever settle and give them grandchildren if there is no money in the pipeline to support them? Do they want to go on holiday more than I can have and raise children?
I’m not the only one worried about where my parents’ hard-earned money is going. According to a survey by Moneyfarm, an online wealth management consultancy, two in five adult children feel their ‘blood boiling’ at the idea of their parents squandering their inheritance on luxury holidays.
Of adult children between the ages of 35 and 50, 40 percent thought their parents should give them an inheritance (compared to 25 percent of those over 65) – and 20 percent had already argued with them about what would be left.
The worst part was that almost half of them wanted the money while their parents were still 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. Her father died six years ago – it was then that her mother, at the age of 75, realized that she wanted a new direction in life. She now goes on dates, says Kerry, is less likely to be around for the promised childcare and has ‘found Saga’.
‘It’s of course great that she has a life after my father, but I do think: ‘Do you really need to see India again?’ and ‘Is it still safe to ski?’
‘She is now 80 and has already had a very happy traveling life. She had the marriage, the children and the house at a time when it all cost nothing like it costs now.
“And it’s not just the legacy I need. I need childcare so I can actually work. I can’t even afford to work!’
Another friend admits she mutes her mum’s phone notifications when her parents go ‘strolling abroad’ – because all the photos of dreamy destinations make her jealous. And indignant.
“My legacy is currently being drunk through a straw in a coconut in the Caribbean,” she says. “At this rate, the harvests will be small.”
Although the constant traveling is my main bone of contention, it’s not just that. My parents refinance a new car every few years, while I can’t even afford to learn to drive. They assured me that the upgrade price on the new model four months ago was “very reasonable,” but when flowers arrived the next day from the garage where they bought it, I had to suspect otherwise.
As for the holidays, I haven’t been away in six years. You have to have a lot of disposable income to mention YOLO these days.
Surprise, surprise, Moneyfarm’s advice is that adult children should save now in case their inheritance isn’t as much as they expected. They think 70 percent of millennials do just that – although I find that a very surprising figure. Saving for a financially secure future when you’re living in a financially insecure present is, in my experience, soul-destroyingly difficult.
Apparently it’s not all bad news. About 60 percent of older people say they are cutting back on spending for the sake of their children and grandchildren, and 80 percent want to leave everything to them.
The question is: what is left? I already know exactly what my legacy will be. An ever-expanding collection of Wish You Were Here postcards.