Wealthy FIL & meanness.

[Longblondeandblueeyes]

FIL is worth at least £1.5 million, most likely more. He has 8 properties (that I know of), a mixture of offices, shops and flats that he rents out. All with no mortgage (he is too old now for a mortgage). He has several pension incomes and 5 cars. Lives in an 8 bed home.

Me and DH are okay for money, however, FIL's daughter is on minimum wage, lives incredibly frugally, sometimes cannot afford to put the heating on in winter, has not had a holiday in 15 years, and is raising 3 children.

FIL never offers help to any of his kids (we don't need help, but SIL almost certainly does). He does not buy Birthday presents either. Never treats his kids to a meal out. Literally nothing ever.

His new GF however, is showered with gifts and foreign holidays and very expensive meals out. She never pays.

FIL also laughs at SIL's lack of car and affordability of things.

No family fall outs. No-one ever challenges him. We are all friendly, so no underlying reason for any of this.

I literally cannot fathom how his brain must work. I can't imagine not helping my children if I was him.

What an arse. Hope your DH doesn't follow in his footsteps.

DH very generous! Loves spoiling people, thankfully.

He sounds disgusting. Showers his girlfriends with gifts but can’t even help his own daughter.

strange

My df won big money when I was a young dm with 4 x dc.
Never so much as bought the kids a bag of sweets.
He had never paid csa when I was a dc either.

Does your SIL want to increase her earning potential? Or is she happy in her current job?

I know a very similar guy, sold a business for £8 million, never helped out his struggling dd. I just couldn’t understand it. My parents, not massively rich, were always offering/gifting money.

I don't understand it either. Why wouldn't any parent not want to help their children out.

Could your dh ask his father to consider helping his daughter in some way.

Your dh may have to tell him exactly what, as he seems to have no natural talent in helping people.

I think not buying your grandchildren birthday gifts is mean.

However now she is an adult he is no longer under any obligation to financially support her. Perhaps he thinks as their parent she needs to step up and provide for the children to ensure they have everything they need. Three children was always going to hard financially especially if only on minimum wage.

Helping out adult children in an emergency I’d expect, helping them out due to their choices if they aren’t dong anything fir themselves won’t solve anything though and then if feels entitled to expect others to do it.

This sort of thoughtlessness is so sad.

But you cannot change them. Just be a good sister and good family to your SIL. Family is the most important thing. Your love support and connection will be what counts ultimately.

He might give a different view.
Personally, I’d always help our children because we enjoy doing so but I can see he might think she should have got herself into a better financial position before having three children.

What stopped her getting into a decent job before having children?

He might feel he worked hard to gain a decent standard of living and she needs to do more to help herself. He might even have said get yourself settled into a decent job before having children.
His money, his choice. We only know one version.

We only know one version

Indeed

DH uncle is a millionaire, he is very disappointed in his low achieving children and their inability to look after themselves financially, and thinks giving them money means they would never learn to look after themselves

Last year he caved, as his kids (in their 40s) never learn (think holiday to a yoga retreat in Greece, followed by not being able to afford fixing the boiler and begging family for money to help....

He has given up and given them 100.000s, which they spent in a year and are bust again...

So the FIL sounds mean, but he may have reasons...

Why hasn’t your dh helped out his sister?

What does his GF do? This is not myself but I have met people who will really judge on income and success. One of my colleagues came from nothing and had a very successful career plus her and her DH invested in property. They owned around 40 flats and houses. She saw failure as a weakness. He may be like that.

Is there any history of her doing something he really disapproved of? E.g my sister married someone who had already been in prison and had two dc with him. I told her she shouldn’t go ahead and disapproved she did and let’s just say it put her on the road to a disastrous life.

Not sure about the "but she had three kids" thing though ... after all she might once have had a DH who she trusted, but who left his family in the mire
Then again she might not, but the point is that we don't know

Perhaps OP could clarify a few bits?

That's how he stays rich. Mil and Fil never offered to help us when ds1 was born and we didn't have enough money for food. Although I did lose a lot of weight. They thought that we were trying to get money off them all the time, even though we never asked for anything. They'd ask if we had seen any new films and we'd tell them that we had no money to hire them, and apparently that was indication we were only seeing them because we wanted their money! They are comfortably off. It's how the rich stay rich.