... not to want to be H's and PIL's cash cow?

[TheGlorifiedSecretary]

NC as this one will out me to anyone who knows me.

PIL are coming over for two weeks. They live overseas, in a less than affluent place, and have never left the country before. Yes, it's a big thing for them and yes, they're all terribly excited. Unfortunately, so is H.

So far he has ...

• Delayed booking their flights until the prices skyrocketed. The combined price of their flights is now at a third of my monthly salary.

• Allowed his mother to invite her youngest son along on the trip - on our (i.e. my) expense.

• Insisted his parents cannot sleep on a camping mattress and made the ludicrous suggestion of buying a brand new double mattress just for them. Decided to put PIL up in our bedroom instead when I vetoed this.

• Decided that since they're coming to Europe he'll take them to Paris for a weekend - 4* hotel and all.

• Picked a gazillion fancy restaurants to take his family to for various dinners. He took me to the kebab shop for my birthday FFS!

• Promised his mum a shopping trip at the local equivalent of Selfridges.

• Promised his brother to take him to a football game

• Promised expensive souvenirs to SIL back home

• ...

Decent is never good enough for his parents. It has to be the finest and most expensive of everything!

All of this would be fine - if it weren't for the fact that I'm the one paying for it. H and I moved to continental Europe last year. I work as an IT consultant and make decent money - H is refusing (by his own admission) to learn the language and is hence an intern at a company where only English is spoken. He earns a pittance and I pay for everything (rent, bills, food, him going out with his friends, ...)

H doesn't see what the big deal is. He is saying that the entire stay for the three of them "only" costs me one month's salary. Yes, one month. That is some 20-odd days of getting up at 6am, dealing with my thoroughly unpleasant client's antics all day and coming home at night ready to drop dead!

We had a huge row about this last night, during which H said that after PIL leave he's finally going to learn the local language and get a proper job. He plans on doing this by attending a three week residential course. Guess who he thinks is paying for this as well?

WIBU to sell H and PIL into slavery in order to recoup some of the money they apparently all think I'm making exclusively for them to spend?

Ok - in an attempt to avoid the "get dressed for school antics"

I think he is def unreasonable - if - you would happily contribute to flights booked at the cheapest times, would be happy for a couple of days out and couple of meals out

He is being unreasonable to expect extravagance that he hasn't contributed to

Yanbu

To put it bluntly CH is not a good place for a non Swiss to find work locally, even if he does get some language skills. Ostensibly they pay well but the cost of living is also high. Even large international companies will employ a Swiss ahead of an expat, in fact it used to be a legal obligation. Unless he is making genuine contacts in the local business world I really don't fancy his future work prospects there. Time for a rethink.

Time to read DH the riot act after this OP, on so many fronts. To me the biggest issue is not the parents, but the whole Move to CH / not learn German / take lifestyle job thing.

Even if he learns German it won't be Swiss German . While most business is officially conducted in High German, the rudiments of that won't be enough to work and be accepted in a local company.

Sounds like he had massively unreaslistic expectations, moving to another country and expecting to be offered a great job on the spot; and is now resenting that you were able to do this and he was not.

I'm thinking that he has probably not told his parents about how things really are, but rather bragged about his fabulous career and (joint) income. And if the parents are from a developing contry, a Swiss salary will indeed sound like a fortune, so that's why he's trying to show off and throw money around.

I see all our money as family money and yes, we treat respective parents, no matter who is earning more at that particular moment. BUT we would discuss the budget (a month's salary is a lot!); neither of us would get secret credit cards and both of us always make an effort to contribute to the finances.

You can get by on High German if you are skilled, eg in IT, quite a few German speaking people I know have done well in Ch. My other experience of CH was they are not as multicultural as the UK.

If the OP's DH applied to an English speaking office and he was able to show some local language skills then that ticks a box albeit a small and probably insignificant one.

However, he needs to be fluent enough to converse on technical/business issues in order to significantly improve his employment prospects. Unless this is a permanent move, by the time he becomes proficient it will be time to come home.

I am not saying that he shouldn't learn the local language. I am merely saying that you have serious things to argue discuss so don't waste your capital on the language thing.