To feel hurt that my mum bought me cheaper items than she would buy for herself

Take a look around you at what is happening in this world and on the news. There are people suffering huge losses. Perhaps it is time to step out and see yourself as an adult. Adults get on with getting by as best they can in the circumstances.

Totally! Who does she think she is buying nice things for herself? She should martyr herself for her children regardless of their age.

Yep, OPs mum should know her place.

(Sarcasm font enabled in case that's not obvious)

Are you kidding?

@DancingNotDrowning

yep. Personally I can’t believe she goes on holiday and has a nice car when her offspring doesn’t - she should give Op these things and go without herself. That’s what being a parent is, poor OP didn’t ask you be born and OP’s mother is an older woman and everyone knows older women only exist to serve and facilitate others ESPECIALLY if they are mothers. A full M&S shop is the least she could do.

Food is expensive. What is wrong with own brand juice? Do you usually only drink Fortnum & Mason’s? I’ve bought food for struggling family members in the past. It has to come out of my weekly shopping budget (even though I have a car and holidays!). If they complained that the items were not high-end enough for their expensive tastes I wouldn’t help them again!

You sound snobby, entitled and ungrateful.

I predict the expectation was for someone to say she is lucky to have any juice at all, which will then prompt the response of "it isn't a race to the bottom".

It is on every single thread of this sort.

Very tedious indeed.

There are some things that the cheaper brand (to us) tastes nicer.
I think she's been thoughtful, making sure that she's got things you normally get so she knows you like them.

But as others have said, if anyone had done a shop for us at the point we were desperate we wouldn't have cared if it was economy. We'd have been glad we'd got it.

Wow! You seriously need to developed an attitude of gratitude. You’d probably be complaining she could have bought lots of other things for price she paid for M&S juice if she’d done that. There’s no pleasing some people.

Seriously ungrateful.

I think it’s perfectly fine for an adult who more than likely made sacrifices on foods when raising children to buy things of a ‘perceived’ better quality now that they have come out the other side of having dependent children.

Many of us struggled both as young adults newly out in the world and whilst raising our children and just get to a point where we use the extra money available after all those years for a few niceties that we wouldn’t or couldn’t have bought previously. Your Mum bought things you would have bought yourself. Maybe she thought you wouldn’t have wanted more spent on items you would usually buy and would think it wasteful or maybe she thought I’ve done my time and I’m still helping but without wasting extra money.

If she’s not ostentatious generally she probably puts quite a high value on money and just wants it to go as far as possible whilst cutting herself a bit of slack on certain things after many years when that wasn’t the case.

Why would she buy you Innocent when she sees you drink own Asda brand at home?

DH and I are both high earners, if he asks for juice, I buy the Tesco or Lidl own brand. He would buy branded. But the reality is the juice is often from the same factories. He has never complained about non branded.

I would buy you what you would buy for yourself. I do this for my BIL who cannot manage his finances and relies on us to top him up. I shop at M&S because I can afford it, he does not shop at M&S because he cant afford it. Why should I shop at M&S for him when I need to top him up? Im pretty sure that if I did that I would be topping him up more frequently.. because M&S is much nicer.

Ungrateful much?? Think yourself lucky that not only do you have a mum, you also have a mum that helps you when you need it

She literally bought you the one you drink.

Get a grip OP.

Yabu

Not sure if this is genuine because it seems like an odd thing to complain about…
Logically she brought you the same things she knows you use, if she brought more expensive things then it would come across as wasteful because she would know that you could get 3 of your apple juices to 1 of hers and that would be wrong as well.
I don’t agree that your mum shouldn’t help you if she has the means, if any of my children were in the same position when older I would hope that their first thought would be “I’ll tell Mum” because surely any parent would want to help their child if they could, regardless of age and food is an essential item, you weren’t asking for money to go the pub…
If being short by payday is a regular occurrence and not a one off because of an unexpected expense then I would try and have a look at increasing your money by trying to pick up a second job/more hours. In your Mums shoes I would have transferred the money if you had the means to get to the shops yourself, but if you didn’t then I think what she’s done is absolutely fine, although I definitely would have brought more than 1 days worth of food for one of mine if I knew their cupboards were bare and they were living from payday to payday.

Really OP?
You're mother was kinds enough to shop for you, not least buy you the products you usually buy yourself and you're annoyed by it?

I could only dream of a mother like this.

Edited to add- I hope you manage to sort things financially so you aren't left in this position again. I should probably add that I feel that juice is a 'luxury', not an essential (it's also bloody awful for your teeth) so it may be worth having a second look at what you're spending your money on each month so you arent so close to the wire. Hope you get things sorted.

YABU
You've just said she bought you the items you usually buy and prefer
How ungrateful

Bloody hell, is this yet another goady made up scenario just to get people frothing? So bloody tedious.

If I was your mum I’d be taking it all back. You sound incredibly ungrateful.

Forget the juice OP.

What are you doing to make sure that you, I assume a grown woman, don't run out of money again?

What can you cut to bring your budget back to the positive? You have no margin for error and that is unsustainable.

Look again at your phone & broadband contracts, cut tv subscriptions, gym membership etc. Check your bank account for any DDs that can be cancelled. Change toiletries for less expensive ones. Overtime?

Do it now before RR's tax rise arrives or you will be in the same situation next month.

I think there's a massive back story here.
Most people with a mum that comfortably off would not have a daughter with one pound in their bank account. That's unless the daughter had continually refused jobs, made bad relationship decisions, got into debt through some dodgy activity like gambling, burning through money through drugs, alcohol etc, and the mum was already at her wits end and had bailed them out too many times.
Either that, or the mum is incredibly selfish, but given that she came round with shopping it seems unlikely.
Something is weird. Sorry but I can't focus on the juice until I understand the context.

It’s not an either or situation you know. Ensuring your children aren’t without doesn’t automatically make them codependent and unable to function independently, I wouldn’t say providing some food to one of your adult kids is “bailing them out constantly”.
They “learn to budget effectively or manage alone” because you teach and guide them how to do that, but with all the best will in the world, especially now, things are often very tight financially for people, even more so for those that live alone. Both my adult daughters have full time professional jobs, and live alone. They have mortgages and all the other commitments that go along with that, which is a rare occurrence these days for people in their 20s (and no, there haven’t been any giant handouts from bank of mum and dad, because we couldn’t afford to do it for both of them) But what they do have, and have always had is the comfort of knowing is that no matter how old they are, or at which ever stage of life they are at, they will always be my children, and their comfort and happiness will always be my priority.
No motives, just the fact that since the day they were born they became the most important part of my life.

The juice she bought for me was Asda's own brand. I'm perfectly happy with own brand, it's what I buy for myself.
She was totally in the wrong - she could have bought you some lentils, an onion and a carrot for that price and you could have learnt how to manage your budget better.