"I'm moving into a retirement flat even though I'm not retired."
Following-up on a January 2022 interview
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Content warning: reference to suicide
One of the things I wanted to do for paid subscribers was follow-up on some previous interviewees.
I first spoke to this woman - who prefers to remain anonymous - in January 2022 and I know things have changed a lot for her since then, so I asked her for an update.
From the original interview, lightly edited:
What’s the best thing you’ve ever spent money on?
Giving my daughter the money from the divorce settlement so she could get her foot on the property ladder. It was something that a lot of people thought—and didn’t mind telling us—wouldn’t end well. After all, what twenty-something person seriously wants their mother living in one of the rooms in their house like Norma Bates? However, I’ve never been one of those interfering mothers and stepped back the minute we moved in. It’s her house, she can decorate it and do what she likes with it. It’s what she’d have inherited after my death, only this way I get to watch her enjoy it.
I’m so interested in you buying your daughter a house. Did you agree in advance that you would live there? Has it worked out okay? How do people react when you tell them about your living situation?
When my ex and I sold the house and after the financial settlement had been agreed, I realised I wouldn’t find anywhere to buy near my daughter for £150,000. I could rent, but that would be money I wouldn’t get back, so she and her boyfriend had a financial advisor round to discuss us buying together. This, though, wasn’t an option, because if I had my name on the mortgage (aged 55) then the repayment rates shot up because the repayment years went down according to my retirement/working life. The only thing left to do was to gift her the money which they’d use as a deposit, but which I’d have no way of recouping if they decided to split up and we had to sell.
It was an incredibly frightening experience. Even during one mediation session, the solicitors warned me against doing this because “Nobody seriously wants to live with their own mother until she dies; it’s a short-term solution and not a reliable one.” I was actually inconsolable hearing this and the session was suspended for half an hour while I calmed down. I mean, can you imagine. Horrible.
But it has worked out okay. Thank God.
May 2023
As far as I knew, we were all living happily under one roof and extensions had been built, made-to-measure furniture put in, everything painted and decorated beautifully, personally, characterfully… Unbeknown to me, my daughter’s partner had not been enjoying living with me in the house for at least the last three years - this was well into the fifth. I either didn't see or refused to acknowledge that we weren't as happy as I thought we were.