HAVE you spent years moaning about being part of ‘generation rent’ but now your parents are bunging you some cash for a house? Here’s how to explain it to your pissed-off friends.
‘I wasn’t expecting this’
Ultimately, this isn’t true, because you always knew the wealth contained in your parents’ four-bedroom detached house would eventually land in your bank account. Your friends knew it too, because they’ve spent enough time listening to you banging on about your folks’ plans to buy a ‘bijou little place’ in Pembrokeshire. You’ve all been lying to yourselves, but imagine having a porch!
‘I’m actually quite angry about it’
How dare your parents make you part of the terribly unjust system of wealth transfers by giving you a large sum of money to avoid inheritance tax? It’s monstrous. You rant to your mates about it for a while, before starting to realise that their silence is not down to sympathy for your plight, but seething anger at what an entitled twat you’re being. It’s just all so unfair.
‘It won’t change me’
Having got over the inequality of the situation, you insist that being able to buy a nice flat in the good bit of town won’t change your commitment to the cause of improving conditions for renters. You’ll just make everyone come to your place when you meet up for dinner, because you don’t want to spend time in damp, smelly, mould-infested basement flats if you don’t have to.
‘We can still be friends’
You’ll be paying out less for your new mortgage than you were for your rent, but that doesn’t mean your lifestyles will be that much different. You can still meet for oat milk lattes and craft beer, just like the old days. The problems will come when you suggest a holiday to Barcelona because you’ve got savings now, and they look at you with murder in their eyes because they’ve had to move house for the third time this year and lost their deposit due to leaving a smudge on the oven door.
‘Homeowners aren’t all as bad as you think’
Now that you’re a homeowner, your friends’ shitty attitudes and opinions start to grate on your nerves a bit. Yes, you spent the previous decade bitching about boomers rattling around in massive houses while younger people are crammed into rented shitholes, but you aren’t the enemy now you’re on the property ladder. At least that’s what you like to tell yourself.
‘Maybe you shouldn’t have spent all your money on avocados’
Eventually, you’ll lose patience with your poor friends and their shared kitchens with individually labelled fridge shelves, and go full boomer on them. Surely if they just saved a bit harder they could stop being so scruffy and useless and become a decent member of society? You decide not to allow them in your precious property anymore, even when they’re homeless because the unmaintained roof of their shared house has caved in. They just don’t deserve it.