To think a meal should not be part of a Birthday Present?

[zaktha]

I recently turned 60. I like material gifts not experiences and my family know this.

For my 60th birthday present, DH got me a pair of earrings (c£200) and is paying for a slap up meal with him, me, and our adult dc (c£300).

AIBU to think the meal isn’t really a gift to me?

How awful, divorce him and do yourself him a favour.

Pick the most expensive thing on the menu, or one of everything - that’ll teach him!

I’m a single mum in my later 30s with two primary age children. I can’t afford luxuries for myself but wow I’d be absolutely delighted if someone paid for a meal for me! I’d rather that than the earrings and I say that as someone who likes nice things too.

My favourite gifts are always from my children who make or buy something with their pocket money while making me turn around so I do not see. It’s often something completely random but the way they are beaming when they hand it over means more than anything.

Well I guess you haven’t mentioned that you are NC with your adult children ?

I’d be more than happy with just being taken out for a meal and spending time with my family don’t be so ungrateful

🤣

This! You're being weird.

I wouldn't be surprised.

OP, your husband should LTB.
HTH.

You sound quite greedy - is it that you’d rather have the £300 on a material gift??

how would you celebrate if I wasn’t for the meal? And whatever the other thing is - who would pay for that?

I hope he finds out and just cancels it and takes the earrings back.

but I also agree this is just someone bored and pebbly won’t come back

So tell them you’re not fussed about the meal and just take the very lovely and generous £200 present. Or ask if you can just go for the meal on your own so that part of the gift is just for you.

You sound very ungrateful.

Also - offer to pay for the meal yourself if you don’t want him paying for it. But don’t expect anything else

You come across as an incredibly difficult person to please! Do you really need presents like the earrings at your age? Have you not accumulated enough stuff!!! I recently celebrated a big birthday and asked for a charity donation instead. And lastly I think a family meal is lovely and enough!!

If someone paid for me to share a lovely meal with my family then it would certainly feel like a gift to me.
I'm not far off your age and surprised that you want more stuff rather than experiences. Each to their own of course, but unless people are struggling financially they typically reach a point where if they want something of gift level value, they could get it, and the older you get the more stuff you already have. So unless you're surrounded by people so creative and thoughtful they buy you things you never knew you wanted, do you really want a random thing as oppose to an experience? I mean, clearly you do, but I can't blame your husband for thinking both might be nice. Unless you explicitly said you dislike family meals or wanted a necklace to go with your bracelet or whatever.

This has to be a joke ...

Entitled, materialistic and ungrateful.

Err he is taking you all out for dinner. If he was not would there be another thread along the lines of it was my 60th and DH arranged nothing?

Most people do actually improve with age, so I. can’t imagine what the OP expected for her previous significant birthdays

It’s the Dandy comic!

Or possibly Viz.

So what’s the ‘slap-up’ meal then, if it’s not an ordinary thing you’d be bought any day of the year? It’s a treat. For your birthday. You say you like material gifts not experiences; you’d do well to think about how this has made you ungrateful and rather spoiled when you’ve reached 60 and still can’t appreciate kind gestures because they aren’t objects,

@Advocodo We are not all making a big for sainthood though! The op might not have many earrings and £200 won’t be buying anything special! The meal might be what they do quite a lot. I’d definitely want better earrings and have a pub meal. I would expect to be asked though. We have taken DDs out for very expensive meals for birthdays but we have spent more on gifts. It’s a balance and maybe op feels it’s lop sided.

If they’ve got enough money that they can often spend £300 on a meal, I’m sure they’ve got enough money that she can buy her own earrings.