SPEND
IT BEFORE YOU DIE
Article for the DAILY MAIL by EDWINA CURRIE
Published
Wednesday July 20 2005
"Hope I die before I get old…" warbled The Who, back in the days when all I wanted from my mother was a tenner to buy a fashionably long coat. The answer was no; my parents found it hard to make ends meet with two baby boomer kids. My father would juggle the sums; after the mortgage and meet household bills, there was nothing to spare. But someday we kids would get the house.
We didn't. As the Joseph Rowntree Trust found, most people don't get to inherit. Instead my lovely mother lived to be almost 93 and had a wonderful retirement dissipating the proceeds of a lifetime's thrift. She left just about enough for her favourite charities, and that was it. Along the way she had a great time, touring the Rockies with friends, cruising in Norway, travelling from Liverpool to a great-nephew's wedding in London by booking a taxi door-to-door, both ways.
And, as I have warned my own two daughters, I have every intention of doing exactly the same. They can whistle for their money. Much of the time I am too busy spending it to fret about them.
It seems I am not alone. The researchers found that though nine out of ten of us have the potential to leave a bequest, barely a quarter would choose to be careful with money on order to leave something. Most people don't plan to leave anything, and the majority of over-eighties thought it far more important to enjoy life. They are Skiers - Spending the Kids' Inheritance. That's me, madam. I'm up for that.
It could take a long time and I don't intend to blow it all at once. Next year both hubby JJ (64) and I will be officially pensioners. We regard ourselves as Owls - Older people Withdrawing Loot Sensibly.
Wherever we go we find the same. Our neighbour called us on the mobile. His bike had fallen over, could we come and help pick it up? The gleaming Harley Davidson was his latest toy but it's a tad heavy to haul upright when you've been doing wheelies and fallen off. Especially when you're 67. His leathers probably cost almost as much as the bike and he did not resemble Steve McQueen once we got him remounted; the grey hair and wrinkles gave the game away. But he's thrilled to bits to be the proud owner. For him it's the fulfilment of a dream dating back to 1950.
JJ and I are often asked to talk on cruise ships. Highly enjoyable: unpack your bags in a roomy cabin, change for dinner and knock back those tax-free gin-and-its. The majority of passengers are over-fifties, respectable, middle-aged, from Newcastle and Manchester and Aberdeen and Chelmsford: ordinary people. As we sailed out of Valetta one evening in February, a smartly-dressed lady approached me. "I can't understand how Tony Blair could possibly win an election," she said, "when everybody hates him." "Look around the ship," I suggested. "It's packed. Not one empty berth. And this holiday is a thousand pounds a head, minimum. People our age have plenty of loose change, and they are spending it. That's why he will win."
In April I spoke at a seminar in the east end of London at the giant ExCel conference centre. In three days some 25,000 people crossed the threshold, many with determined expressions on their faces. They had come to find a place in the sun, and were bombarded with literature and lectures on every aspect of buying property in Spain, Morocco, Florida, Turkey - you name it, they're signing up for it.
I know exactly what they are doing as they squint at maps of Mallorca and Dubrovnik. I did it myself in 1990 when my first proceeds of book-writing were spent on a cottage in the Loire Valley in France. It was a wreck when we bought it from a sceptical farmer, who thought we were mad. We spent three times as much on refurbishment as the original price. But roses grew over the walls, lizards skittered across the path, we could pick our own grapes, apricots and peaches, nights were filled with the sound of crickets and we never needed to pay over-the-odds peak holiday rentals again. It never entered my head to hoard the money for the children.
Next year we will spend my birthday in Las Vegas. There is a special reason: friends are members of Surrey Harmony, a ladies' a capella choir who are UK national champions. In October 2006 they fly out to compete in the international competition against dozens of other "Sweet Adelines" and we are determined to go too. I've never been to Vegas but we will be cheering them to the rafters. Probably take a few extra days and go white-water rafting down the Grand Canyon. Maybe stay on a dude ranch and ride out to breakfast. Why not?
Don't leave it to the kids.
Spend it while you have the health and strength to enjoy it. They
don't need it; they have their youth, and their education, and their
preoccupation with their own friends. If you've brought them up
well, to behave with respect and dignity and to be able to earn
their own living, then you've probably given them more than money
could buy, anyway.
These are the thoughts I exchanged with my own mother. It was grand
to see her in full flow as she practised what I preached. For the
Millennium, I asked how she planned to celebrate. "If God spares
me," she said (she would be almost 88). We worked out that
she, well-travelled though she was, had never been to the South
Pacific. So we booked on the cruise ship Paul Gauguin out of Tahiti,
flying via a two-day stay in Los Angeles, and we saw the new year
in with fireworks in Hiva Oa in the French Marquesa islands, where
Gauguin is buried. She insisted on paying her share and luxuriated
in a balcony suite with a marble bathroom. I have a photo of her
on the plane, all excited anticipation. No grand duchess could have
enjoyed herself more.
Some people will save against direr contingencies. Grandma may need
care, for example. But since those who save will have to pay, while
those with nothing will get it free, where's the incentive to keep
some back? Those old people who cling on in the family house may
find that it has to be sold willy-nilly if they have to go into
a home, so the children won't get it anyway. By that time Grandma
isn't up to spending it: she has left it too late.
That's a mistake our generation won't make. While the going is good,
the grandparents are getting going.
As I write, my husband has just returned from an auction with a 1605 bible, a box of old books and a case of vintage port. "It'd cost us a fiver a tot in a pub," he tells me with glee, and is thrilled with his bargains. It's no good our children asking, when our demise eventually arrives, whatever happened to the money. We'll have drunk it, and relished every drop.