Money Moral Dilemma: Should I ask my mother-in-law to share the money she's made selling my stuff?

Pollycat

fenwick458 said:

MSE_Kelvin said:

I presumed I would see a return

people should never presume anything.

Either sell the stuff yourself or give it away for free. you can't expect to have someone sell your old unwanted stuff and then give you the profits!

Exactly this.
If you expected a share in the profits you should have discussed this before giving her the items.
 

cam80

How how do you know how much money your mother in law has? You learned? It’s none of your business. You don’t know where any of her money has come from. Clothes dont sell for much so you would have to have given her an awful lot to make £500. 

Wonder how she would feel if she found out that after giving her the clothes you took to a public forum to discuss her and her finances? 

Maybe you should get rid of your own tat in future. 

LKAY

Stop giving your stuff to your MIL, and sell them yourself, thus keeping 100% of the profit.  Put in the effort - reap the reward.

stef_walker

She's gone to the effort of doing a car boot sale and spent her own time doing it. You could do that if you wanted the money. Or else, give the things to charity and they can make some money. I think discussion closed! 

SteveSi

Why do you think she goes through all the hassle of selling stuff at the car boot sale?
Car boot sales these days are pretty much the same as giving stuff away for free and you can only make a small profit if you get the goods for free in the first place (it costs you petrol, table charges, wear and tear on car and stock) - so sell them yourself on social media or eBay if you expect some money.
So of course she has made a bit of money from it or else she would stop doing it.
You mention some of your stuff was new, so why not stop buying stuff that you don't need or use and put that money in a Stocks and Shares ISA (tax free). Einstein said that compound interest was the eighth wonder of the world - 10%/year interest rate (quite possible over a long period of time) for 50 years will multiply your savings by 145 times!

REJP

No.  Don't give her any more stuff without an agreement that she shares the profits with you.
As for petrol and pitch costs she would pay that anyway.
 I would rather give my goods to a local charity shop than get taken advantage of by anyone.
as for the comments by someone saying get your lazy backside to the car boot, personally I would like to go to my local car boot sale but it is always run on a day that I have to go to work.
please remember the guidelines for this forum and keep it friendly!

BethP

As you gave the items to your mother in law, I don’t see how you can expect her to share any of her profit from selling them.  Perhaps next time you give her an item, tell her you’d like 20% of any profit.  That or stop giving her your stuff and donate it to your local charity shop instead

Groom

Depends what you mean by given. If it was as a present or just something you didn't want, then the answer is no as the items belonged to her. If however you gave them to her knowing she was going to sell them at a Boot Sale, then perhaps yes. However it should have been discussed before you passed them over and an amount agreed. 

tain

The way I read this dilemma is someone saying to their MIL 'oh you're doing a car booty? Can you take some of my stuff?'

Now I really don't read that offer as 'here's a bunch of my belongings for you to rack a profit up on'. However it's pretty obvious a proper conversation was needed about expectations, and that didn't happen. 

The response from the MIL is nonsense, and I think that's been included specifically to highlight that there was an expectation to share the profits, and the MIL has given a dishonest answer. And I agree that it is dishonest. 

anneevo

How did the conversation go in the first place?  Did you offer her stuff to sell when you knew she wanted items to sell at a car boot sale  or did she say she would sell the items for you?  Do you only want money for the items now you know she's 'made' £500 - less petrol and money to have a stall at the car boot plus her time?  You haven't put any time or effort into selling stuff you were obviously happy to get rid of, new or not.

Anne