and if I'm not how do I deal with it? (parents, ILs, money, decisions...)

[fraktious]

Please don't flame me/give me a kicking for this. I want to say before I start that I'm enormously appreciative of everything that both sets of parents do for us and I don't want to seem an ungrateful cow.

DH and I live abroad with DS, 1st grandchild on both sides, 1st great-grandchild for one of DHs grandmothers. Our families are quite comfortably off and have given us a lot of support with education, paid for our wedding and a second celebration, flew out to see us, often send money to help towards to the cost of things for DS, coming home etc. We are hugely grateful for this because the cost of living here is very high and it's costing us upwards of £3k to go home for Christmas, which we're happy to pay because we WANT to - it's DS's first Christmas, we haven't seen our families since April and we've not been back since last summer.

But it seems more and more that this money is a) coming with strings attached and b) our parents are in some bizarre kind of 'keeping up with the Joneses' competition. We don't deliberately play them off against one another but it'll come up that my parents offered to pay for the pram or his parents are paying for something else and then the other set has to do one better. We felt this a little when we got married - my parents were paying for our wedding (central London, 100 guests) so his parents paid for a blessing and party, mostly for the French family and friends who couldn't come to the first (South of France, 300 guests), but now it's all coming to a head really.

Let me just reiterate at this point that we are very grateful and we don't ask them to constantly be paying for stuff.

DS is being christened when we go back. DH's mother volunteered to do a lot of the preparation for the christening as she said she had a lot of time and it would be fun for her. We agreed and gave her a budget because WE want to pay for this. It's our first baby, it's our choice and responsibility etc and it was quite important to us (or I thought us) that we paid. Plus it guaranteed at least some control because a lot of decisions went the way our parents wanted for the weddings.

So MIL called up over the weekend very excited because there's been a cancellation at her preferred venue, which is lovely and very convenient for the church, and she's nabbed the spot. DH gave the go ahead and all seemed fine until we looked at how many people we have coming to the reception afterwards and it's over budget. DH called MIL back and said it was a really nice idea but no can do. MIL offers to pay because it's hergrandchild and she wants it like that.

I'm not denying that it's a really gorgeous venue and it would be great but this is DS christening that we wanted to pay for and have things how we wanted them. Now she's paying I feel like we're going to have to defer to her again.

I need to call my own DM this evening and I don't want this to become a case of 'we can't let ILs pay for everything and have control so we'll go halves'.

So how to I kindly say thanks but no thanks? Or do I accept that they're doing this with the best of intentions?

And if I accept that how do I stop them running the show?

And how do I stop this constant flow of money which leaves me feeling beholden? If they want to put stuff aside for DS then that's one thing, for schooling/university, but a few hundred landing in our bank account at random intervals makes me feel horribly dependant, like pocket money almost.

Sorry it's so long and complicated and please don't go at me too much.

Email this thread (or your post anyway) to your mum and your MiL. "If all else fails, tell the truth" as someone or other once said...

I think this is a bigger issue than just the christening - which has brought matters to a head.

IMO, it the only way to manage this is all or nothing, OP. You've either got to decide that you wish to receive no financial support from them whatsoever and politely make that clear and unequivocal, or accept that if they are going to support you, its going to be conditional.

I think you need to stand on your own 2 feet. Which means paying for your child's christening (not sure why you need expensive venue for a Christening anyway ...). And organising it yourself (or at least giving MiL very specific tasks if it's hard to do from abroad).

And also refusing further "random" gifts - small toys and clothes for DS and birthday presents etc allowable!! The phrase "thank you, but it's too much, we can't accept" could be useful.

It sounds like your parents (and in-laws) are still treating you as small children - they control you both financially and in terms of what you are "allowed" to do. You need to redress the balance so they see you as adults.

If you genuinely feel beholden to them for making these deposits into your bank account when you don't really need it, then I would return the money to them, saying thank you for their generosity but it's not needed. If they refuse to accept the money back then I would tell them you will put it into DS's education account and leave it at that.

With the Christening, DH needs to contact MIL again and say that you want to pay for this, he is her grandchild but your child and you want to do it your way and that means sticking to the budget she has been given by the two of you. He can thank her for her generosity, but really I think that the only way to put an end to the feeling that you owe them and to the constant (however kind) donations of money, you both need to be very clear.

Just stop accepting so much money and stuff from them?

You're a married couple with a child so yes, there will be a few times you're a bit skint and you need to borrow to pay a bill or something.

But other than that, stop taking from them and get your own lives under control.

But how do I do that without throwing it in their faces? And how do I stop the stealth contributions? My dad is particularly bad for that. We don't want them to keep giving us handouts, it feels exactly like we're being treated as small children :(

We would be happy with the original christening plan! But MIL isn't it would seem and I can't see how to stop her going ahead. She can be, erm, forceful.

I wonder sometimes whether they're trying to make up for being so far away.

Well, if paying for the christening yourself, is really important to you, then you and DH as a united front, have to tell his mum what you want and what you don't want. The problem is that you've allowed her to organise it and any criticism will feel a bit personal to her now. That said, you are the parents, it's your baby, so what you want should be more important than anyone else's wishes for this event.

I think what you need to do, is stop letting your families organise key events in your life and when they offer money, either refuse it, or put it in a separate account for your dc and let them know you are doing this. Then it becomes money for their dgc, rather than money for you and dh and you will feel less beholden and more in control of your own lives.

There is a sense of he who pays the piper, calls the tunes, so it is important for you and dh to be financially independent, if you want to be able to say no and not feel bad.

I know that taking money from my IL's would make me feel as if I had to consider their wishes more than I would want to, so for this reason I don't take it and only allow take money for the dc, not for me and dh.

Remember though, that their hearts are in the right places, but you've all fallen into the habit of letting them treat you like you are still kids and not parents yourselves.

Just say no, thank you very much, but Ds is your child and you'd really like the pleasure of paying for it.

Sounds like you have to go with her choice of venue, but if you want to stay in control, you're going to have to pay for it yourselves. You admit you've done well out of parents and ILs in the past, so now it's your turn to pick up the tab, if only to get your message over.

Take the money.

Don't accept strings attached.

I X posted with you, fraktious. I think that you and dh will have to have the important, but awkward discussion with your parents (in this particular case, with mil) where you say that you want to pay for the christening yourselves, that your budget is X amount and so numbers and venue will have to be adjusted accordingly.

Okay putting money aside for DS is a good idea and would make me feel better, and make things clearer without offending.

I just get so tereribly British when money is involved ad I'm terrible at saying no in general.

I would say thank you very much I will put the money in an account for DS future needs. They will either get the message and stop or continue and he will benefit later in life, invest wisely for him as the way things are going he will need all the help he can get.

If you don't start saying 'no' to things you are not comfortable with, then you need to be prepared for a whole lifetime of this. For as long as you keep blithely accepting money or backing down when one of your ILs or parents wants something done a particular way and will pay for it to be so despite your wishes as parents, then this is probably how it will be.

What happens when DS is school age, and one of the GPs decide they want him to go to X school and will pay the fees, even if you absolutely do not want him to go there (as an example)?

If your ILs and parents choose to see you declining their offers as throwing it back in their faces, there is nothing you can do about that.

If money is randomly turning up in your bank account then close the account and open up a new one and don't give them the account details.

yay chit chatting give them mine instead

I agree with the advice to start saying that's very kind but it's not what we want. And when money lands in your bank account, move it to a separate grandchildren's account and tell them that's what you're doing. I also think you need to stop mentioning what one set of parents has bought to the other - since this seems to be encouraging behaviour you don't like. You aren't being that "British" about money if you're letting your parents know that DH's parents are paying for this or that. I appreciate it might just come up in conversation, but not mentioning exactly what others are buying you just needs a little practice.

I think your problem is as well that it is for "specifics", such as 1 IL has paid for the pram. When we had our PFB both sets of parents were saying could they buy pram/cot etc so we just said "no, we are not buying anything yet but if you like you can put some money in an empty account we have and then we will buy stuff for baby as we go along", so we did buy big stuff (nursery furniture etc) with that money but neither family could then specifically say "we bought x thing".

We obviously also bought stuff for our own baby and now they have just set up direct debits in to her savings accounts.

Other than the baby we don't get money off them though as they have worked hard for it and should spend it on themselves.

cheshire I wish we'd done that Mentioning what the other set got isn't in an oharen'ttheygenerous way, it's often as part of a refusal that they don't need to buy the pram because that's already been contributed to. If the money hadn't been for anything specific it would be much easier.

I know we got ourselves into this but I do want out before it gets to them dictating schools etc.

I've got myself into a right tizz. Usually I'd try to talk to my best friend but it's about filthy lucre so a faceless bunch of strangers it is.

next time when one of them offers to organise the event just say no you want to do it all
that way you can keep a hold of the money spent

For dd2's baptism mil offered to make the cake, as she had done for our wedding, and dd1's baptism. I said to her that I really fancied making one for dd2. I don't think she found that offensive. At least I think unfortunately she's still speaking to me.

Christening aside, one thing to consider is that they may be doing a bit of shifting of inheritance. Forgive me making the assumption, but it sounds like both sets of parents are comfortably off and they may be trying, with the cash gifts into accounts, to make sure that you get the money in the long run rather than the tax man.

If that's the case you need to be clear that that's what they're doing and they might want to think about it more formally. So you need to have a very unBritish conversation about it all with them, that way you get the chance to say that you want cash diverted to DS, or whatever.

Not really related to your problem, but if you are going to put money aside for your baby, consider that you might have more than one child, so may wish to consider a savings plan that allows you to share money saved between all your dc, rather than ds having a lot and a subsequent child not having as much. Not sure how this is done though.

I wish I had this problem!

Looks like you need to be vague in the future then.

I think you need to do what others have said, get DH to speak to his Mum and get the christening toned down and make this the last event the IL's arrange.

In the future blag that you are not sure what you are doing yet (e.g. if it's a birthday etc) and then once you have arranged it yourselves just say "oh we have done blah" once you have paid for it. Otherwise yes, they will probably dictate which prep school your baby is going to

Other than that just give them your baby's bank details and say for special occasions for them to put money in there.

I am sure there is a Mumsnet phrase which is basically thanks but no thanks (but said in a better way) :)