Reply to adults who live off their parents' money secretly annoy me (and i don't understand them)

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[quote=Anonymous]NP here.  I used to think the way a lot of people on here do, that gifts of money always come with emotional manipulation that's not worth the trouble.  That's the way it is in my family, and I don't rely on my parents for assistance as an adult.  They did pay for some of my college, but I also took loans and worked (and in fact they paid for less of my college than we agreed when I chose my university, which was one of many early lessons about relying on them!).

Things are different for DH and I have come to be more relaxed about it.  He is an only child and his father was a small business owner who left his mother several money-making properties when he died.  MIL is retired from public service and has an 80% pension in addition to an IRA.  She has a paid-off house and is constantly saving, in addition to having an excellent financial planner managing her investments.  She sees the income from FIL's properties as DH's inheritance from him and nothing we can do or say about keeping it for herself or putting it to the side will dissuade her from trying to give it to him.  Because he is an only child, there is no issue about playing favorites with money between siblings (as there is in my own family).

MIL certainly does not give us a lot by the standards of this discussion (no $1.8 million houses or $40k cars!) but enough that she provided a down payment (on a small house we qualified for on our salaries alone) and is growing a college fund for DC.  She also pays for our flights to see her, because she doesn't want finances to limit our visits while she is alive in the name of hoarding resources until after her death.  She doesn't pay for elaborate vacations or material goods that are just for show, but she does sometimes pay for unexpected home repairs (gutters that came down in the blizzards, for example) because she does not want us to use our emergency cushion for things like that or to have to reduce retirement or mortgage prepayments.

We do not request any of these gifts from her, but DH (often but not always) accepts them when offered because she has made it clear that it's important to her.  It helps her feel connected to him while she is alive and like she is able to see the fruits of her hard work benefiting her family.  We know that she is adequately provided for (her investments and savings would cover 20 years of care if necessary) and would never accept a gift that came from her selling off any of her assets.[/quote]

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