Her Husband Wants To Give His $10,000 Christmas Bonus To His Struggling Parents, But She Doesn’t Want To And Thinks They’re Financially Irresponsible
This woman and her husband are already well-established in their careers, even though they are still pretty young.
They have been smart with their money for their entire seven-year marriage so that they were financially stable enough to purchase a home and build up an impressive amount in their savings account.
Plus, they have three children who are all under 5-years-old, so despite a lot of their income going toward their family, they have been able to remain financially comfortable.
Besides their mortgage, they don’t have any other debt.
She and her husband have been able to achieve this by putting off big purchases so that they can save up enough money to make future purchases in cash.
Both of their vehicles are more than a decade old, and they’re planning to replace one of them in the next couple of years, making sure that this purchase won’t add any debt for them.
“On the other hand, my husband’s parents are financially irresponsible. For their anniversary last year, they bought matching Teslas, even though they own a new truck that cost them over $100,000 and had recently remodeled their home,” she said.
Even though her in-laws had accumulated this huge amount of debt, were 15 years away from retiring, and not having anything in savings or even a retirement account, her father-in-law chose to go from full-time to part-time hours because he was sick of his hour-long commute to work.
Several weeks after that, her in-laws went on a trip to the Bahamas for two weeks.
CarlosBarquero – stock.adobe.com – illustrative purposes only, not the actual person
Once they got back from vacation, her father-in-law was let go from his job.
Her mother-in-law works three days a week as a receptionist at a doctor’s office, so they are financially struggling.
Normally, she and her husband host Thanksgiving at their house because they have a lot of room for everyone to sleep over without their guests having to worry about booking a stay in a hotel. This has always worked out well for them, and it also alleviates the stress they’d be under if they were going to travel across the country with their three children.
Unfortunately, for Thanksgiving this year, their mother-in-law had used up all of her PTO to take the vacation to the Bahamas, so travel wasn’t possible for her.
This meant that she and her husband had to take a flight to visit them.
“Airfare for the five of us was close to $3,000, plus another $800 for the Airbnb since my in-laws only had room for my sister-in-law, her boyfriend, and college roommate. It was hectic, but we were not too upset over the cost since my husband had just learned he’d be receiving a $10,000 Christmas bonus,” she explained.
The bonus is taxed, so it’ll end up being a bit more than $6,000.
Obviously, her husband was thrilled about this, but he didn’t want to bring it up to his family because he didn’t want to seem rude and act like he was bragging about it while his parents were having a difficult time financially.
But his sister happens to have a friend who works for the same company, so she learned about the holiday bonus and mentioned it during the family’s Thanksgiving dinner.
After dinner, when she and her husband were driving back to their Airbnb, her husband let her know that his mother talked to him in private and asked him if he could think about possibly giving his bonus to them as a “gift,” and she called the bonus an “‘unexpected blessing.'”
Now, her husband feels conflicted about whether or not he should give his parents the bonus he’ll be receiving from work.
“I understand that it’s not my bonus and that we should want to help the family. However, I can’t help but feel they partially contributed to their situation. I’m also upset that outside of my mother-in-law letting us know that she will not be buying gifts this year (even the grandkids), my in-laws have not adjusted their spending habits,” she shared.
Her in-laws have continued grocery shopping at Whole Foods, and they also recently updated their iPhones.
Meanwhile, she and her husband have decade-old vehicles, make all of their meals at home, and do their best to find items on sale at Walmart.
Besides this Thanksgiving trip, they have never taken a trip like this throughout the entire time they’ve been married.
She’s been feeling a bit of guilt because she understands why her husband doesn’t want to see his parents going through tough times.
At the same time, she feels resentful because she thinks her in-laws are in this position due to their bad financial decisions, and if her husband doesn’t keep his bonus, they will be worse off.
Her in-laws got into a bit of a financial mess, starting with the truck they owned.
Because of her father-in-law’s long commute to work, as well as constantly visiting their daughter at her college, they put in nearly 80,000 miles on the truck.
She assumed that this was the reason they purchased the two Teslas and that the rural area they lived in was also a factor. They use a lot of fuel on their travel, and they don’t want to sell their Teslas.
Five years ago, her in-laws moved into a smaller home because her father-in-law wanted to move out of the bigger city they were living in at the time and to a more rural area, and they bought the house for $1.5 million. She doesn’t think that her in-laws would be able to receive any sort of financial assistance.
Her sister-in-law has one more year of college left before graduation, and she’s planning to move in with her boyfriend next semester.
Right now, her sister-in-law doesn’t have a job and doesn’t know what she’s going to do once she’s done with college. Her boyfriend, who graduated last year, currently has a job in IT.
It seems that her sister-in-law is similar to her parents when it comes to finances.
Her sister-in-law maxed out her credit card and unnecessarily purchased a new vehicle when she wasn’t having any issues with her previous vehicle.
According to her sister-in-law, she and her husband are wealthy. Probably because of this assumption, her sister-in-law always asks them for wildly expensive gifts for Christmas that they couldn’t reasonably afford to purchase for themselves.
Every time she and her husband visit her in-laws, or when her in-laws come to visit them, her in-laws make the assumption that her husband will foot the entire bill when they go out to restaurants.
Also, the person that her sister-in-law knew who worked for her husband’s company works in another department, and her husband doesn’t know this person. The person had heard about how particular departments at the company were receiving huge bonuses, so her sister-in-law asked her husband if he was in one of the departments included.
So far, she hasn’t expressed her views to her husband.
In her view, if her husband gave his bonus to his parents, it wouldn’t really improve their situation too much because they’ve often used money intended for a particular purchase toward other things.
When her husband was accepted into college, a portion of the recruitment package he received was a student loan reimbursement, which was as high as $12,000.
Before he graduated, he reached out to his parents for some financial help, and they took out a parent’s loan worth $6,000.
Later, her husband mailed his parents a check for $6,000 so that they could pay off the loan right away.
A year after that, his parents conversationally mentioned that payments were starting up for the loan they needed to pay back.
He asked his parents what happened to the money he gave them, and they informed him that they used it on other things and didn’t pay off the loan because the monthly payments were relatively low.
In the past, her father-in-law attempted to convince his wife to stick to following a budget.
At this point, she had begun doing her own hair instead of going to a salon.
When her mother-in-law saw all of the hair products she had in her bathroom, she told her that she should probably also learn how to do her hair herself because her father-in-law wanted them to cut down on frivolous expenses.
She mentioned to her in-laws that she and her husband follow the financial advice of Dave Ramsey, but it didn’t seem like her in-laws were at all interested in learning more.
Lately, she’s been concerned that one day, her in-laws will be in such dire straits that they’ll need to move in with them.
She and her husband purchased a big house because their goal was to build equity, and they planned for their children to all have their own rooms as they grew up.
After the purchase of their home, her mother-in-law made a comment about how she and her father-in-law had never lived in a house that big.
Ironically, she and her husband only paid a third of what her in-laws did on their house, and they also put 40% down on the house.
Over the years, she’s gotten tired of witnessing her in-laws wasting their money instead of saving.
What advice would you give her?
You can read the original post on Reddit here.
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