To think DH should not give our car to MIL?

[silversixpence]

DH wants to buy a new car and has just told me he is planning to give MIL our current car (worth about 3k). She is working and owns two properties so is perfectly able to afford her own car. I can understand a discount of £500 or even £1k but giving it away? AIB really horribly stingy or is this a bit much?

I don't think you are being unreasonable. It's very generous.

Maybe the car isn't actually worth that much or maybe he owes her money and is paying it back with the car.

Depends on how much you need the money I guess. And if the car belongs to both of you (which i assume it does) then it has to be a joint decision.

It's a very generous gift but if you can afford it then I don't really see a problem.

Depends what the circumstances are really....maybe she helped him buy his first car or with driving lessons years ago....maybe he just wants to do something nice....

Does she have a car?

If he's buying a new car, the obvious thing to do would be to part exchange the old car to get money off the new one. Why does he want to give it to her? Can you afford it?

Can you drive?

He's told you? As in you don't get a say? Who bought the car? Why is he giving it to her? How would he feel if you made a similar value gift to your mother?

We can afford it, but DH has been between jobs for 3 months. He has a new job and has some redundancy pay from his previous job. We are not well off though in terms of our lifestyle and the money would always be useful somewhere.

He is generous, to a fault! But I suppose it isn't necessarily a bad thing. It is his mother after all. I certainly haven't ever had a gift to that tune from him though!

Well i think he just assumed I would be ok with it and he certainly wouldn't ever veto me giving any money to my own parents (I paid back a loan for my dad a few years ago worth about 3k I think). However my parents are much worse off financially.

I say if you cant have the car for whatever reason, part ex it and then you save money for you actually need it.

Does he often make unilateral decisions like this?

Doesn't sound like you have £3k to throw around like that. Why aren't you using the car as part ex or getting the money from "we buy any car" or similar?

oh, ok, so he thought you'd be ok with it, and you have in the past given your own parents a similar value gift.

Do you not want to give his mum the car? Have you told him that you feel a bit anxious about finances and would really prefer it goes towards a bit more of a cushion? Or has he already told his mum?

Now you've mentioned your dad's £3k the car seems to even it out. Does your MIL even want your old car?

Clam it's not a final decision, we are discussing it, it's not a power issue as far as I'm concerned. He just thought as we didn't need the car he could give it to MIL, but it is a lot of money which is why I questioned it.

If he wants to give his mum a present and you can afford it, why not?

Has she got her own car??

I think there's a difference between paying off a loan and gifting a car, tbh!

YANBU - why would he even be thinking of giving it to his mother if she's that well off? Chances are she'd end up selling it herself!

I don't think he should give it to his mother. Different if she was hard up but obviously not. He'd be better off putting the money away for any emergencies that might crop up. Has she already got a car?

On the face of it isn't OP's dad more deserving? He lent them money when they needed it despite being apparently worse off than the MIL?

Actually what i would do is part-ex the car as OP states she's not rolling in it herself and would come in useful.

I think what goes around comes around. You are lucky to have a generous husband and I can think of all kinds of benefits to that, enjoy.

I read it as the OP paid a 3K loan that her parents took out for themselves, not on the behalf of the OP and her DH.

Maybe the DH is thinking that since they did something nice for the OP's parents, he would like to do similar and give his mother their old car.

It's not uncommon for families to do this as it would probably be worth more to the person than it would be as a trade in. I agree that he probably would like to do a similar thing for his Mum as you did for your Dad..