To be annoyed with DM about her Christmas fund?

[PurpleSky300]

My Mum (60) works part-time and sometimes struggles for money at Christmas.

We have Christmas with extended family and pool together so we’re never short of anything, but she would like to have a bit more personal spending money and stuff to buy nice presents. Anyway, as a result - 3 of my family agreed last year that we would pay monthly amounts into a Christmas fund for her and by the start of December, we’d got about £800. I transferred it over and within a week, she’s spent about £500 and hardly any of that is on presents. It’s all gone on normal things like groceries, petrol, cat food and now she won’t have enough left for Christmas itself and it feels like we’re back at square one.

I know I probably shouldn’t be annoyed. She said, “When you haven’t got much money, the necessities have to come before luxuries” etc and that’s true. And she said she could top up her spending money from her wages in December anyway. To me that’s not really the point, though? This money was ‘ringfenced’ for Xmas, that was the whole point of it. So that she would be able to go out and do more things, go on nights out, buy treats and enjoy the festivities. I feel annoyed that it’s gone on mundane daily stuff and part of me begrudges doing it again next year. Am I being unreasonable?

It's the second scenario, yes. I do appreciate I could have explained it better. It might have spared me so much bile! I was trying not to give details that I thought might be outing. Lesson learned 😮

I dunno. Quite early on You said she had no mortgage, a partner paying bills and you and her brother helping her out. To be it seemed obvious there was spending beyond absolute necessities.

Sadly some people will always waste whatever money they have. My parents are similar. Any spare is spent. As a child I’d be asking for beans from my aunty for dinner one minutes and watching sky while dad hoovers with the Dyson the next minute.

Oh dear. Poor PurpleSky300. I think you've had a really rotten day.

I disagree with PP that she is of a generation that didn’t expect to be working, I am the same age and working fulltime. Is there a specific reason she doesn’t work full time OP, if she is short of money then it is the obvious solution ( I actually also have an extra part time role to top up my money and allow me to save more for my retirement)

So the boyfriend pays for the house and bills

She works full time so must earn about 1500 a month?

Would I hell be giving her £800!

I get you. I am the same age as your mother and I work FT to continue to support my kids - one to save for a deposit for a house, and two in FT education, one with no funding.

It's shocking to me that she expects her children to support her financially! I wouldn't dream of that - well not unless they were hugely rich and successful!!

She's taking the piss!!

You gave money in the expectation you’d be given most of it back in presents?

You really think that’s better than paying essential bills?

So much for the season of giving and goodwill.

She works part time

I get it, OP. You were all trying to do something nice and give your Mum something for special treats and instead she's just used it as general bunse. I think I'd find that a bit trying too.

The amount of people who seem to think that I'm leaving my poor Mum starving or something is absolutely absurd. Talk about jumping to conclusions.

Not 'jumping to conclusions', but responding to what you put in your opening post. You implied that she didn't have enough for necessities and you were cross that she spent money you gave her to buy other people present, on sorting out her essentials.
That's what all the first 3 (?) pages of replies were replying to.

I contribute heavily towards my Mum's groceries and petrol costs every week, all year round. Her partner pays the bills, pays her car insurance, pays for holidays, and all other domestic costs. Her DB sorts out repairs and most DIY things if they ever need help in the house. They have no mortgage.

If you had put this ^ information in at the start, then everyone would have replied differently.

I, for one, would be asking you why on earth you are giving a woman who has no mortgage, has all her bills paid, her insurances, her repairs, her groceries and petrol all year round paid, whilst she is still earning herself, £800 for any reason.

Yeah OK then, I wonder if our children will feel entitled to boss us around when we get older

I really think this emphasis on spend spend spend at Christmas is not great. Why not simply recognise that her contribution to the festivities and presents will be smaller because her budget is smaller and not try and help her to keep up? Various members of my family have been in assorted financial states over the years and when we know one person/family is a bit stretched financially then less is expected of them. We just welcome their company and presence for the Christmas period, even if they cannot afford much (or indeed anything).

She didn't. You might want to check some of the later updates to the thread.

As a 60 year old woman, I think it's a bit of a reach to say that we've known for "decades" that we wouldn't get our state pension at 60. I can't honestly say when I became aware of it, but it isn't "decades" by any means, and at the start of my working life it was certainly the expectation that 60 was when we'd retire

I turn 60 next year. When I graduated at 22 I joined a firm with a traditional occupational pensions scheme, in which retirement age was 65 for men and 63 for women. A couple of years later, female employees were given the option of accepting an equalised pension age of 65, which I did. State pension age was still 60 for women, but my expectation - more than 30 years ago - was that I would work to 65.

The change to state pension age was being mooted at that time - late 80’s/early 90’s. The act which introduced the change of state pension age for women was passed in 1995 - originally to be phased in between 2010 and 2020, but later accelerated.

But yes, decades. It’s been on the cards for decades.

When I was working full time years ago and / or being a stay at home mum, my retirement age would have been 60.

Then I believe it increased to 62 ? gradually up to 65 - in line with men.

Now my retirement age is 67, so I have just over 4 years to go and believe me I am counting them down on one hand.

Not every job can you increase your hours in, I can't - I have asked on more than one occasion 5 members of staff left recently and I was told there was no budget to replace them.

Also it is not that easy to get a new job, I have been applying for other jobs since March.

I would have suggested Mum finds out if there are any benefits she could claim, but then I read there is a partner whom I guess she lives with and I believe that would exclude any assistance via benefits.

Only read first page.
It sounds like she's struggling so much, it's not like she spent it on her hair.

I wonder why not have monthly savings to top her up a little each month anyway? It sounds like even 40 a month would be helpful and set aside less for her than 800 for Xmas...

I think this money has been a huge boost for for her and she's enjoyed it, let her enjoy it

You should atleast reads the OPs posts, save wasted questions.

You know when you are on low wages and then you get some extra cash it is nice to catch up with bills, and stock up on food. She could have spent it on silly xmas presents that no one will even use.
Go easy on her as she must have needed to buy what she did and hard living on your own and surviving as everything so expensive.

PuzzledObserver · Yesterday 22:38

As a 60 year old woman, I think it's a bit of a reach to say that we've known for "decades" that we wouldn't get our state pension at 60. I can't honestly say when I became aware of it, but it isn't "decades" by any means, and at the start of my working life it was certainly the expectation that 60 was when we'd retire

As a woman in her 74th year, I reiterate... for decades, long before I turned 60, we were aware that women would not be collecting their state pension at 60. I distinctly recall that there was an awful lot of heads-in-sand stuff going on, and strident cries of "being cheated out of our rights" and "stolen money". Any woman born in the 50s or later who has grown up since the birth of feminism would have to be stupid not to recognise that they would need to supplement their state pension by one means or another. And to see that the pension as it was was unsustainable. There was plenty of warning about saving/ISAs/private pensions being essential in the future. Spending ludicrous amounts of money on frivolous "stuff" at Christmas just because you are swept up in the frenzy of the herd mentality is plain foolish.

Genuinely doesn’t leave a lot?

He expects her personal spends to come out of her own money? Of course he does. He pays all the bills. You post as though he has an obligation to cover all her bills. I earned 3 times what my ex dp did, I covered the majority of the bills. Damn right I expected him to cover his own personal spends.

The only reason I could think he would need to cover her personal spends is if she was a sahp.

The fact is that she is bad with money. You also contribute and have been conditioned to feel sorry for her. You described them as necessities. But they aren’t. She has treated herself. Not in the way you wanted. But she has been treating herself. By ‘popping into m&s for pizza and wine’, because she wouldn’t normally, she has treated herself.

But she has somehow managed to spend the money treating herself and convinced you the spending is proof that she is poor. The whole ‘when you are poor necessities come first’ line is absolute rubbish. Bad with money and poor can be 2 different things.

The things you gave her the money to do, she isn’t interested in doing. Or she would do them. She would have spent money on them before whether she could afford it or not.

I have been skint. Like, after bills and food I had no spare money, skint. Then I was getting more in debt every month type skint. Then I started earning a bit more and slowly I have spare money after sorting the debt. In the middle stages, if I got a new top but needed new shoes to go with it and I couldn’t afford the new shoes I just didn’t get them the shoes until next month. If I needed a hair cut and I didn’t have the money. It waited.

Your mum isn’t ’just bad with money’ she just knows that everyone else will see her right so she doesn’t have to be better with money.

I think your gesture came from the right place and you sound like you really want to help her. But it’s also sounds like you are waking up from her manipulation around money. She might be a lovely mum in all other ways, but she has you convinced that she is poor when she isn’t really. She is making choices that leave her without money. And she has you convinced it’s everyone else’s responsibility to help her because she is poor. She isn’t really poor. She is spent.

She needs to earn more money if she wants to be able to get the new shoes and a scarf and a top all at the same time. But even if she earned more money, she would still be in the same situation. She would spend everything she has and still come asking for money.

She isn’t on her own. She has a dp who pays all her bills and op also helps her out with petrol and food.

I'm picturing your mother, in fact, are you my sister's SIL? 🤣 My sister's mother in law matches your description of your mother perfectly. She flits from one part time job to another - usually gets sacked for overstepping or talking too much and heavily relies on her dc, whether they can afford to help or not. She isn't really broke, just bad with money and frivolous. She lives in a big house that she refuses to sell but can't upkeep, and relies heavily on her dc for food and bills, when they have their own dc and much more modest homes to support.

I think you've not read it properly.

Op, I get being annoyed but part of this is perhaps you are cross at yourself for expecting her to be different this time and she isn't? Perhaps next time she moans about money to get presents (if she does) then don't jump in with a solution ie giving her money, just sympathise and say that sounds hard what are you going to do. And remember the oldadage, no good deed goes unpunished.

OP I don't want to sound mean but your mam is a scrounger.

I have no issue with her working part time or anything like that but you have to live in your means. If you do not have money you cannot have luxury hair cuts, flowers, a parliament of cats and treat.

STOP FUNDING HER.

If she wastes all her spending money on luxuries the day she gets it and has nothing for the rest of the month then tough shit she is not OWED luxury. Given she is fortunate to have the actual necessarily paid for by her partner you do not need to give her anything. Its not actually 'helping' her its like buying heroin for a junkie.