Do your parents / PIL give you money?

[Merryoldgoat]

I’m not sure what I’m asking really but here goes.

My DH and I are comfortably off, good professional jobs and a nice lifestyle. We’re not loaded but we live in SW London and have been largely unaffected by the pandemic.

I don’t have parents anymore and my upbringing was dysfunctional so I’m not sure how normal parents behave.

DH’s parents keep giving us money - fairly large sums. We never ask for it and don’t ‘need’ it but it’s usually for something as a gift. Eg. We needed a new front door. We were saving for it but they said they’d like to buy it. Then they thought the porch needed doing (it did) so offered to pay for that too.

Now MIL wants to talk to me and I know she’s going to offer to pay for a new patio as I was talking to her about getting it priced up and saving for it.

PIL are very nice, kind and VERY easygoing people. They don’t try to control us or anything. I think they just want to spread their good fortune a bit but it feels odd somehow?

I’m 43 - surely parents stop this stuff if you’re old and solvent as we are?

So YABU - parents like to do this if they can - just enjoy it.

YANBU - it’s unusual and no parents I know fund their solvent adults home improvements so you should stop taking the money

This makes perfect sense to me. My FIL is sitting in a huge sun that he will never spend and will all go to the tax man. He would have been better of giving bits away like this

@jgjgjgjgjg

Are they doing it for tax reasons? To decrease the size of their estate while they can?

We’ve never done it to avoid tax. We both firmly believe in higher taxation for a fairer society and are happy to pay our contribution. We do it because it gives us pleasure. It’s nice to buy our children things that they want or need.

@Chocobo11

My parents won't even lend me money for a new bed when I'm currently sleeping on a mattress on the floor... let alone just give me money and they are very well off. 😂 I need to find a new family clearly!

I've come across that sort of meanness in others, some of whom are quite well off. A young woman of my acquaintance who works hard and has a young son (single parent), asked her parents if she could borrow £20 for a couple of days until payday and was refused.

If parents cannot afford to help out, fair enough, but if they can, why not? There is joy in giving and you can't take it with you.

Sometimes the less well off are more generous than the rich.

@PotteringAlong

My mum has started to do it because she has been advised to start giving away money up to her tax free allowance for inheritance tax reasons.

I don’t think it always has to be controlling and awful. They can afford it, they want to do it. It’s fine.

This is what I was going to say

My DH parents are very wealthy, but have never given us money. Their other son is really poor and despite everyone getting on great, they have never offered him any financial help.

My parents did give us a little money when they won the lottery (small win).

My children are adults and about to get onto the property ladder and I'm certain that I will be like your PIL's. I can afford to help, so I will!

I think if they want to help and it’s with no conditions, that’s lovely. My Mum does this regularly (on a smaller scale), she’ll give us £100 for some new clothes for the children, give us money towards DD’s new bedroom furniture etc, when she downsized her house she gave us quite a bit towards our extension too. My grandparents are pensioners who don’t have a lot, but last autumn they sent us £50 to get the kids some nice winter coats - we can afford it and feel odd about accepting the money from them, but it genuinely makes them happy and would offend them if we said no. I’d like to think I’ll do the same with my children too!

It seems surprising to some people that others DPs would rather give money away to offspring and grandchildren rather than the taxman.

My DPs view is that they have already paid tax on everything they earned - and this is true neither came from rich families or inherited anything themselves - so why should their money be taxed again when they die.

Double taxation isn’t just limited to IHT though. I get taxed on earnings and then pay tax on purchases too. I do think it’s a mind set that the more wealth you have the more precious you get about protecting your wealth lest the tax man, god forbid, take some of it. Certainly seen some of this from previous left leaning friends who now spend most of the time whingeing about being in a higher tax bracket.

I don’t accept money from DM, as it always comes with strings (we have a great relationship as long as I maintain independence, but if you let her “help”, she thinks she’s entitled to tell you what to do).

DFIL financially supports DSIL and DBIL, and their children, so no money has ever been offered (which is fine, we don’t need it).

But yes, huge numbers of my friends and colleagues get large sums of money (four figure sums each month), well into their 40s. I don’t know anybody who pays their own private school fees, for example (obviously plenty of us send our kids to state schools). Others have their mortgage paid for them. I assume their parents have good final salary pensions, because they aren’t all millionaires. It is how people on “normal” middle class incomes live in 4 bedroom houses in Zone 2, run two cars and send three kids to private school 🤷‍♀️

My parents are retired. They're comfortable but not wealthy at all. My Dad is constantly offering me money. I refuse the cash, but he has kindly paid for a few things recently which have really helped me. Eg a new garden fence when mine blew down.
I think they feel guilty that I'm a single parent. Not that they have any reason to!
They do an enormous amount of free childcare for me though. A huge amount. It's saved me thousands over the years and has enabled me to have some semblance of a life, despite having a useless Ex.

Take their kind gifts and enjoy

My late (and much missed) MIL used to give us £500 at Christmas and £1,000 at the end of the tax year. My DM regularly gives us a few hundred to a thousand, although she's a retired normal income person, so not well off. If I ever in any way expected money from my DM, she'd soon stop giving it bc she hates grabbiness. The more I try to treat her, the more generous she is, so it's a difficult balance. I realise I'm fortunate in this, but I definitely didn't have a privileged upbringing and was frequently stoney broke as a younger person, when I could definitely have used a helping hand. My DM is aware that salaries in our sector haven't kept up very well, so I don't earn much more than she did when she did a similar job in the 80s.

Op I can totally understand how you might feel uncomfortable with it but if they are willing to help out and can afford it I can’t see the harm!

My parents have never helped us out, my mum wouldn’t even buy me a coffee if we went out. She’s not well but not broke either - just me me me with money even though my siblings get loads 😂😂 mil has here and there. She’s took us out for lunch a few times. We don’t expect her to pay as she’s not got much money but she likes to. She knows we don’t treat ourselves.

However, my grandparents helped out my parents a lot. They really wanted to so what’s the harm?

I’d like to think I’ll be able to help my kids when they are older! 💕

Take it and enjoy it. My in laws have given us several cheques over the years, they'd rather give it away while they're around to see it go to good use.

For all the posters saying ''they have a great pension...they can afford it'', my great aunt in law would always give money to her gc and her dc. She did have a good pension-about 3000 a month and no mortgage or electricity/gas bills(long story)but she was giving so much she'd be in her 70s and going back to work to keep helping them. She killed herself doing the extra work as she was simply too old but the families never knew.

Don't think ' a great pension' means they are Bill Gates.

@thatwasme22

For all the posters saying ''they have a great pension...they can afford it'', my great aunt in law would always give money to her gc and her dc. She did have a good pension-about 3000 a month and no mortgage or electricity/gas bills(long story)but she was giving so much she'd be in her 70s and going back to work to keep helping them. She killed herself doing the extra work as she was simply too old but the families never knew.

Don't think ' a great pension' means they are Bill Gates.

Thankfully, as well as a great pension, my dad also has good financial sense. He took voluntarily redundancy at 59 with a substantial payout (he’d worked for the company since he was 16, and worked right up to director level) which is invested with the help of a financial advisor. The capital isn’t touched. He has a great pension on top of that.

Of course but being careful with the money, no matter how much it is, can be the big difference between going into a home and staying at home with carers. The latter which most would choose if they had the means.

MIL gave us a rather large cheque last year which we were extremely surprised by but obviously very grateful for.

When I thanked her for it she said “it’s not for you it’s for MrEdersons”

DH was furious and bought me a Louis Vuitton handbag out of the money, and told her that he’d done that too! She wasn’t very happy to say the least.

God I love that man!

@EdersonsSmileyTattoo your MIL!!
Your DH sounds fab though.

That that's a very sad position your aunt was in but I have detailed knowledge of my parents' financial situation (with their full agreement, I have POA and we regularly discuss investments, Wills etc). I am very confident that they can afford to be generous, they don't just give to family but also substantial donations to the charities they support.

No, they don't and it's not something I've ever expected of them.

@sansou
In my case I was definitely talking about money in double figures, so £10 to the kids upon a good achievement at school for example. £30 to me at the end of a few days at my parents house. Definitely not talking about any large amounts. My parents helped us with a few thousand for our home deposit which we paid back within the year but no large amounts in gifts, I couldn't accept it, I always worry that they might need it.

My parents often give/gave me and my 3 siblings generous cheques and we're all in our 40s and comfortable.

My lovely dad died on Friday. He contracted covid in hospital. He'd only had 1 vaccine and was just too frail/vulnerable. I've really had the best parents and my heart is broken. I know if my mum is financially ok she will still want to give us money. She's the most generous person I know.

My MiL does this. We don't ask for things, we are happy to save for our own expenses and pay them ourselves as we earn enough to do that, and aren't extravagant. But yes, she likes to give us bits every so often.

I think she has an attitude of wanting to see the nice things we can do while she's alive to be a part of things. She never offers more than she can afford and it's not all the time.

''We don't ask for things''

Said in every situation where the gps end up funding their dc and gc. Surely people can insisty no>?

I’m really sorry to hear that @NeverTalksToStrangers you must be devastated. Take good care of yourself and your mum.