Mother-in-law and money

macman

MalMonroe said:

macman said:

If she has a income of £8k plus p.a. and only pays you £1K, then I suppose that you could take the long view that, unless she is spending it all, then your wife's inheritance is accumulating by an additional £7Kpa....
But £1K wouldn't have covered the costs ten or twenty years ago. Even if you are content for her to live rent-free, then your council tax and utility bills split 3 ways would cost more than that.
Does she contribute to food bills etc?

She won't have an income of £8k plus pa at all. I don't know where that rumour started. It'll be far less than £7k pa. And she'll have clothes and shoes to buy, birthday and Christmas gifts, toiletries etc. According to OP she doesn't contribute to food bills, no. IMO she'd be better off living alone because she'd be entitled to all the pension credits and housing benefits, etc. She'd be even wealthier then. 

Rumour? Well, assuming she retired before 6th April 2016 and had the full 30 years of NI contributions, then she will be getting £134.25pw minimum, which is £6,981pa. On top of that, she has a small work pension: let's assume it's minimal and only worth £1Kpa. Then she must be getting some return on her £80K capital, again let's be pessimistic and assume 1%, which adds £800. So her total income is just shy of £9K. Her 'rent and food 'contribution is £1K. Which leaves £8K for personal expenditure: that will buy quite a lot of shoes, clothes and toiletries...
Certainly not 'far less than £7K' income, and possibly much more than £9K, depending on the work pension.
As others have pointed out, with capital of £80K, she won't qualify for Pension Credit, Housing Benefit, or Council Tax Reduction: most are capped at £16K.

JReacher1

And of that £134 a week the OP wants to take £100 of it

chubster

MoneySeeker1 said:

Wow! She is indeed taking the p*ss at £19 a week for food/extra on fuel bills/etc.

In your position - I'd only want what it cost in extra costs to have her there and no "rent" of itself. But £19 is in no way even going to cover her food - never mind what fuel and water she is using. Last I knew it was deemed the average person spends about £35 per week on food. Jack Monroe (the cheapie cookbook writer of VERY budget cookbooks) is probably about the only person in the country that could/would eat that cheaply. The rest of us certainly don't - and then there is that fuel/water/etc as well.

Difficult situation with your wife not on side on this. Your wife needs to remember that, just because she has been promised the inheritance, doesnt mean she'll get it. MIL could indeed be planning to leave it all to the equivalent of the local cats home unbeknownedst to her. Some people can be notorious for promising all sorts of inheritance to someone - to get what they want - and never meaning it for a minute and that can include own parents. Just think of the number of times we've read, for instance, of a middle-aged son or daughter working in their parents business/on their parents farm for peanuts wages because they've had this promise from their own parents that "You'll get everything after me". Come the time - and they don't get anything much at all - and they've slaved for peanuts on a promise that amounted to nothing - working all hours under the sun for less than NMW.

Maybe you ought to hand MIL your itemised bills from Tesco and the like for some weeks and say "there you go - you can see the weekly shop last week was £93 (for instance). Divide £93 by 3 and your one-third share comes to £31 for that week.

Same with the fuel bills. You could knock off any standing charge on them - as you'd have to pay that anyway - and say "That bill was £1,000 - deduct standing charge of £100 and that's £900 for fuel usage and so £300 each then".

That's the approach I'd take to MIL on the one hand - whilst showing your wife any tales you can find of adult children left in the lurch by underpaid wages/etc/etc on the promise of an inheritance - which they then never had.

Good luck.

Thank you that good advice, I have started working on a spreadsheet. My thought was that we just divide all bills by three but I can see that yes if it was just my wife and I then we would still have bills to pay and that is the attitude of MIL. The difficult bit is that I can see there are two sides to this, MIL thinks it doesn't cost 'extra' to have her living with us and that we would be paying bills anyway, she seems to genuinely think that £1,000 is a reasonable contribution. 

chubster

JReacher1 said:

Should really be down to your wife I would have thought. She must be aware of your financial situation and if she doesn’t want to charge more rent off her own mother then that seems the end of the matter. I don’t really know what else you can do? Would you throw your MIL out when your wife doesn’t want to charge her more either?

Personally my view on things like this is your MIL raised your wife till probably about age 18 without charging her rent. Now in her advance years your wife is returning the favour so I don’t think charging her £100 a week is really reasonable. 

I can understand the viewpoint that my wife is paying her dues yes however if the roles were reversed and I was living with one of my children I would definitely want to pay my way, I would be embarrassed to think that I was being 'kept'.

macman

JReacher1 said:

And of that £134 a week the OP wants to take £100 of it

No.He said £400pm, which is £92.30pw. 
Her income is not £134pw, iI's that plus her work pension (unknown but let's say £19pw) and savings interest (maybe £15pw. ). Total £168pw.
The OP is suggesting maybe £92pw, but appears open to compromise. The point is that there's a huge gulf between £92 and £19, and MIL doesn't seem prepared to offer a penny more than she's paying at present, which is clearly unsustainable. 
Her £1K doesn't just cover rent, it covers food, electricity, gas, water, insurance, phone, council tax... possibly transport...
What would you suggest is a reasonable compromise?

kazwookie

Can the MIL rent a small flat, then the OP and wife can move to a small property and they are all happy paying their own gas / rent / tax etc etc

Grumpy_chap

I think really, for anyone to give good advice, the OP needs to share the 'back story' to why MIL lives with them, whether there are any other siblings, and what the household finances are.
In the absence of that, £1k/year seems unrealistically low.

thorsoak

JReacher1 said:

And of that £134 a week the OP wants to take £100 of it

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/benefit-and-pension-rates-2020-to-2021/benefit-and-pension-rates-2020-to-2021#state-pension
Pension rate is £175 per week, which equates to £9,100 pa   and this lady also has a private pension.

JReacher1

kazwookie said:

Can the MIL rent a small flat, then the OP and wife can move to a small property and they are all happy paying their own gas / rent / tax etc etc

Sounds like only the OP would be happy. The MIL and wife seem happy with the current arrangement. 

Sea_Shell

chubster said:

MoneySeeker1 said:

Wow! She is indeed taking the p*ss at £19 a week for food/extra on fuel bills/etc.

In your position - I'd only want what it cost in extra costs to have her there and no "rent" of itself. But £19 is in no way even going to cover her food - never mind what fuel and water she is using. Last I knew it was deemed the average person spends about £35 per week on food. Jack Monroe (the cheapie cookbook writer of VERY budget cookbooks) is probably about the only person in the country that could/would eat that cheaply. The rest of us certainly don't - and then there is that fuel/water/etc as well.

Difficult situation with your wife not on side on this. Your wife needs to remember that, just because she has been promised the inheritance, doesnt mean she'll get it. MIL could indeed be planning to leave it all to the equivalent of the local cats home unbeknownedst to her. Some people can be notorious for promising all sorts of inheritance to someone - to get what they want - and never meaning it for a minute and that can include own parents. Just think of the number of times we've read, for instance, of a middle-aged son or daughter working in their parents business/on their parents farm for peanuts wages because they've had this promise from their own parents that "You'll get everything after me". Come the time - and they don't get anything much at all - and they've slaved for peanuts on a promise that amounted to nothing - working all hours under the sun for less than NMW.

Maybe you ought to hand MIL your itemised bills from Tesco and the like for some weeks and say "there you go - you can see the weekly shop last week was £93 (for instance). Divide £93 by 3 and your one-third share comes to £31 for that week.

Same with the fuel bills. You could knock off any standing charge on them - as you'd have to pay that anyway - and say "That bill was £1,000 - deduct standing charge of £100 and that's £900 for fuel usage and so £300 each then".

That's the approach I'd take to MIL on the one hand - whilst showing your wife any tales you can find of adult children left in the lurch by underpaid wages/etc/etc on the promise of an inheritance - which they then never had.

Good luck.

Thank you that good advice, I have started working on a spreadsheet. My thought was that we just divide all bills by three but I can see that yes if it was just my wife and I then we would still have bills to pay and that is the attitude of MIL. The difficult bit is that I can see there are two sides to this, MIL thinks it doesn't cost 'extra' to have her living with us and that we would be paying bills anyway, she seems to genuinely think that £1,000 is a reasonable contribution. 

I think a distinction between "fixed costs" and those based on "consumption" need to be made.

Eg Council tax would be the same for just you 2, but water, gas electric and food is proportional to number of "users", and should be split 3 ways, excluding standing charges.