A wealthy boomer couple who boasted of spending all their adult children’s inheritance on lavish holidays abroad have been branded ‘selfish and entitled’ – despite their son being supportive of their philosophy.
Leanne and Leon Ryland, a married couple from Victoria with two adult sons, consulted a financial planner before they retired four years ago, after a lifetime of what they described as scrimping and saving.
‘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,’ Ms Ryland told SBS Insight on Tuesday night.
‘And he said, “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.”
‘It’s changing your mindset. You get into a phase now where you actually spend instead of save.’
The couple have since spent $170,000 on luxury holidays and cruises to see the ‘wonders of the world’, including Machu Picchu in Peru, and trips to India, Sri Lanka and the Maldives.
They are set to head off another trip to the U.S. in the next month.
‘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,’ Ms Ryland said, pointing to her son who also appeared on the program.
‘We’re not going to be able to spend all this money so let’s do it because in another 10 years we won’t be climbing the Great Wall of China. We won’t be going up Machu Picchu.
‘We won’t be doing those things. So we’ve got to do it now, because what else is there?’
The couple run a private Facebook group entitled ‘SKIclub’ which stands for ‘spending kids’ inheritance’ where they share travel tips with other jet-setting, cashed-up retirees.
The couple joked they had amassed piles of cheap tourist trinkets from their far-flung destinations, which they described as a ‘shelf of s***’.
This, they claimed, would be all that their two sons would inherit.
Their son Alex, who also appeared on the SBS panel show to discuss the ‘boomer economy’, could perhaps be forgiven for feeling bitter that his parents’ love of travel was likely to leave him with nothing.
But he was supportive of their plans and said he never saw their money as his own.
‘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.’
But not all viewers were so enamoured with their philosophy, however.
One viewers accused the boomers of being ‘evil’.
‘Bragging about overseas holidays with no regard for the environment, spending all their money so their kids have no inheritance,’ they commented on X.
‘Clogging healthcare due to their perceived entitlement for health and refusal to die. Selfish and privileged.’
Another commented: ‘SBS Insight tonight is hilarious – boomer privilege at its best and still not conscious of it. So entitled.’
Sonja Van Vliet, another ‘boomer’ who appeared on the program, revealed she lived in a neighbourhood of Sydney where the house prices averaged $3million.
‘We own our own home. We’ve got healthy superannuation and a little bit of investment,’ Ms Vliet said.
‘So, you know, by Australian standards definitely we would call ourselves comfortable.’
But Ms Vliet said she had been able to accumulate that wealth and security through ‘age’.
‘Certainly when I first started out I went straight from high school, didn’t do uni at that time, was able to get a full time job,’ she recalled.
‘My parents were fairly working class. We lived in the western suburbs, and it was definitely expected that you got on your own two feet ft fairly quickly.
‘And so I did that by my early twenties, I was able to buy an apartment in the western suburbs for $42,000. I was earning $21,000 at the time, so that was a pretty good bargain.’
Ms Vliet said she was then able to buy further into the city.
Fellow boomer Lorna Shuker recalled how she bought her first home with her husband for $62,000 without any help from her parents.
‘My family were very poor. They never owned a home of their own or even a car,’ she told the program.
‘I went nursing because you got paid at the same time as getting a qualification, and I just saved and saved.’
Since then, Ms Shuker has been able to buy and sell several million-dollar properties and describes her life now as ‘comfortable’.
She said she thought baby boomers are a ‘fabulous generation’.
‘It was a lovely time to grow up,’ she said.
‘It wasn’t as fast-paced life as it is now.’
She said she didn’t think younger generations were ‘brilliant at budgeting’.
‘I think they’re the generation that sees something and they want it right now,’ Ms Shuker said.
‘And that’s why they will use services like Afterpay and live beyond their means.
Another boomer, Craig Doyle, discussed how he had been able to use his super fund to buy five properties worth $3million in total but complained he was getting hurt by high interest rates.
Click here to resize this module