A wealthy retired couple have been slammed online after speaking out on their decision to spend their children’s inheritance on holidays on SBS Insight.
Leanne and Leon Ryland, who are parents to two adult sons and from Victoria, consulted a financial planner some years ago before deciding to pack their suitcases and travel the world.
The married couple appeared on the program on Tuesday night alongside their son, who revealed he approved of their choice to spend their hard-earned dollars on travelling to new destinations.
But viewers at home were not as convinced by the jet-setting move, with the couple branded “selfish and entitled” in fiery debate online.
Ms Ryland told the program how the couple had done “all the right things” to give them the opportunity to travel freely later in life.
“We’ve done all the right things by investing in property, boosting up our super making sure that was healthy, going without a lot of things,” she said.
The couple have spent $170,000 on cruises and luxury holidays and described their travelling as a checklist.
“You’re crazy if you don’t retire when you can because you’ll spend most of your wealth on travel or whatever in the first 10 years and then after that it slows down,” Ms Ryland said.
“It’s changing your mindset. You get into a phase now where you actually spend instead of save.
“I’m trying to convince [my husband] we’ve got to spend now because if we don’t spend it, you know he gets it.”
The couple were asked about the “SKI” mindset, which stands for Spending Kids’ Inheritance, as they run a private Facebook group where they share travel tips and their experiences with other likeminded retirees.
“The more that we’re travelling, the more that we’re meeting people who are thinking the same way,” Ms Ryland said.
“Coming back off this recent trip, there must’ve been four or five couples who are in the same position as us, got to a point where they’ve just thrown in their jobs, they’re retired and you’re sitting there and they’re going ‘Have you done Africa yet?’”
“If you don’t do it now, you’re not going to do it.”
Ms Ryland said if they did not spend “all this money” now, they would not be able to climb the Great Wall of China or reach the peak of Machu Picchu in another 10 years.
“We won’t be doing those things. So we’ve got to do it now, because what else is there?” she said.
Alex, one of the couple’s sons, was seated beside them during the program and was asked about his parents’ spending.
“It’s their money,” he said.
“They’ve worked hard their entire life and invested well in order to get that money so I think they should be able to do whatever they’d like with it.”
However, viewers took to social media to lash out at the boomers who they claim were “bragging about overseas holidays with no regard for the environment” by spending “all their money so their kids have no inheritance”.
“Clogging healthcare due to their perceived entitlement for health and refusal to die. Selfish and privileged,” an X user wrote.
A second X user said it was “hilarious”.
“SBS Insight tonight is hilarious – boomer privilege at its best and still not conscious of it. So entitled,” they wrote.
A third, responding to economist Evan Lucas’s tweet, said it was “amazing coverage” of “this cancer of a generation”.
“Entitled, selfish and greedy beyond measure,” they wrote.