AIBU to feel upset about my well-off in-laws being tight with money at Christmas?

[Gingerbreadcottage]

I’m feeling a bit sad and annoyed and just want to sanity-check whether I’m being unreasonable.

My in-laws are very comfortable financially - retired, mortgage paid off, big house, multiple holidays a year, no real financial worries. We, on the other hand, are on a low income and things are tough at the moment. They know all of this.

Back in the summer, they offered (we didn’t ask) to put £100 towards a new bike for our son. It was kind of framed as a nice gesture at the time. Then they later told us that because they’d contributed to the bike, they would only get him “something small” for his birthday, as the bike was his birthday present from them. Fine, I understood that.

Fast forward to the other day: we were at theirs and they asked what we all might like for Christmas. I said I wasn’t sure yet what our son would like, and I’d let them know. My MIL immediately said, “Oh don’t forget we bought that bike for him — that was birthday and Christmas, so we’ll just get him a book or something small.”

I just sat there feeling a bit stunned and honestly hurt. It’s not about wanting them to shower him with expensive gifts - it’s more that the £100 they offered months ago is now being used as a reason to opt out of both birthday and Christmas. Meanwhile they are extremely comfortable and spend freely on themselves in other areas.

They also very rarely help with anything practical or day-to-day with him, so it’s not like they’re involved in other ways.

I can’t quite put my finger on it, but something about it feels… mean? And I hate that feeling, because I don’t want to care about money like that. But I’m struggling with the idea that their grandson is basically getting a token gift at Christmas because of something they voluntarily contributed to back in July.

AIBU to feel upset and a bit angry about this? Or am I overthinking it?

So as they have bought some sort of small present for both Christmas and Birthday you are talking at least £110 and more likely £120 this year. Multiply by 7 and that's £840 on presents for the grandchildren. Do they also buy presents for adults? If so that's possibly 6 or more extra presents on top so easily spending over 1k on presents.

They didn't handle this well; if as seems likely they have a budget of £100 per grandchild per year they should have asked if DS would like to put his share towards a bike rather than telling you later that he'd used up his gift allowance for the year.
But this resentment of older people who very likely had to be frugal during their earlier lives but are now more comfortable, is not great to see. Many older people are generous with gifts and other support to younger family members. Those who are not so generous have kinds of reasons, including a fear of lacking money to pay for care when the time comes. Their age does not globally mark them out as mean.

You're not unreasonable to feel a bit 'off' in a way about this, but you would be unreasonable to say anything.

My inlaws could also be weird with gifts. They'd rarely turn up, but when they did, could shower one child with a decent gift and have nothing for the others. Now, in their head, they saw something they thought one child would like, there was just no thought at all to how the other children would see this.

It wasn't that they didn't love their grandchildren, they were just 'different' at best. Without us saying anything, over the years the children came to understand that people are different and that Nan on one side was very different to the grandparents on the other side, it was what it was.

I’m kind of on the fence. Yes, they could be more generous. But I have made enormous financial sacrifices for my DC and am about to support them through medical school. Holidays, treats etc. are all on hold for the next 5-10 years. At some point I will want to just be selfish with my own hard earned money.

glad there's some sensible replies on here.
£50 for birthday and Xmas is perfectly reasonable. if they gave you the money for the bike and you got all the glory then it's reasonable that actually you tell DS the truth, that it's a joint present.

That’s crazy to me. A single book? I’ve recently bought gifts for a child of a girl I work with and a little boy I’ve never met for a child’s party and got a lot more than a book for both of them!

I am not well off by any stretch of the imagination.

I do not think that grandparents spending £50 on their grandkids birthday and another £50 on Christmas are tight to the point of being called mean. I think it's a very normal and perfectly acceptable amount. I don't think my DC had ever spend more than that on them by their (very loving) grandparents. It would never occur to me to label them as tight for that.

What number would you find reasonable, OP?

I do believe generosity comes from the person not the value of the object!
Like I have the most wonderful friend who is piss poor - but she always posts my kids her kids books when they are done. And I have a friend who does me drawings and paintings for gifts because she is on
sick benefits... both really generous gestures.

When my brother gifts me anything - he brings it up for years.... if he sees it in my house he will say "oh yeah I gave you that hat / candle / cookbook". Like it has strings attached!

I think you're upset because this bike has strings....

Can you remember the gifts your grandparents gave you at Christmas? Perhaps, like me, you’re more likely recall the time you spent with them and the experiences you had with them. Imo your PiLs are particularly at fault because of the lack of involvement in your DS’s life, their poor expression of their love for him in terms of time and gifts. Leave them to their self-indulgence and meanness. Ultimately they’re losing out big time.

I disagree with most posters here and don’t think they’re being mean. £100 on one grandchild is a lot of money when you have multiple others to buy for too.

In future be less stunned. When they said it was Christmas and birthday say oh you said just for birthday in May.
In future I wouldn’t accept random gifts.
Often people who have money have it as they are like this.
Sometimes there’s also a moral angle to it, they feel children have too much and a book is quite sufficient.
I’d chalk it up to experience but not accept anything and hoc again.

Maybe they’re not as well off as you think, or maybe they’ve limited money for the future, or worrying about their future, or have repairs to the house etc etc Everyone always thinks everyone else is loaded, but you can’t know their exact financial situation

A Christmas present for your grandchild is not in any way a bail out so why did you type that as a comparison??

I can't understand GPs like this. Mine were loaded and I have some amazing presents(and a heap of money!) to show for it. The only thing I could possibly think of is that they are not as wealthy as they appear, which is I suppose possible. Still weird and rude, though.

Sometimes you can tell, and anyway it doesn’t matter how broke you are beneath the surface if you daily spend on luxuries just for you and are mean and stingy for everyone else.

Weird power games - doing this at a family event.
My in laws are just the same. Spend lots of money on themselves or their house. Any presents they get for our child are a) things the child may not even want and b) very low on value and don’t save us - the parents - any money.
I try to devolve all these chats to my husband and failing that to text / email.
Some people have more money than ability to show love - even making an effort towards trying to understand what the child would like, at a low price point, shows some kind of love - is my take.

I generally think people a) overdo the gifts at Christmas and b) expect things they shouldn't from parents and in-laws. But in your case, both of these things are trumped by the fact that they keep stretching what the bike contribution was actually for. That's mean and a child won't understand it and they should be challenged for reasons of fairness.

Set your expectation of them at zero - anything above that will be an overachievement.

PIL brought two £1 cheesecakes from Morrisons plus six mince pies for Xmas lunch for six adults and four teenage boys. The GC got £30 for 18th and 21st birthdays. Our last meal with them before FIL died ended with him asking ‘who’s paying for this?’ And on and on..
They had over £1m assets. I will never understand.

My mother rarely spends more than £30 on a present for our DD. However we hit her up for a term of private school fees, so am fully expecting we get shit all this year.

I was wondering about this. I’m the same, I haven’t got much money and thanks to a lifetime of seeing favouritism I make sure I spend the same on everyone. Maybe this is really what it’s about.
Theres other grandchildren so they and their parents have probably seen the bike and hopefully they’ve been told the circumstances. If not then they will feel short changed as well.

This ⬆️.
They could be worried about assisted living and care homes. The pension could be worth less than they planned for.
They gave your child a gift.
They're also going to give him a book, which is a lovely gift.
Don't focus so much on monetary values.

Blimey. I'm going to say she's been very generous!

Exactly this.

Eyeing their savings and fuming about how they should use it to benefit you is really entitled and unseemly. As is the veiled suggestion that they are using money for holidays that could be spent on their grandchildren.

£100 over the course of the year is generous. There’s nothing wrong with a book as a Christmas gift.

You’re not insane

my mil who is a multi millionaire regularly buys our children things like socks and hair clips for presents. The first Christmas I spent at my husbands she wrapped foam door stoppers for my brother in law. Nevermind her yearly 20k per person holidays, her Valentino handbag, her multiple multi million pound homes. She’s Scrooge.