My Cheap In-Laws Keep Ruining Our Vacations. I Don’t See a Way Out.

Pay Dirt Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by dragana991/iStock/Getty Images Plus. Pay Dirt is Slate’s money advice column. Have a question? Send it to Kristin and Ilyce here. (It’s anonymous!) Dear Pay Dirt, I am a 50-year-old woman married to a man whose parents are in their early 70s. His parents have never treated me well, and we don’t get along. But now they’ve started ruining all our vacations. They bought an obscene amount of timeshare points in their younger days. I know the maintenance fees are eating up the entirety of their travel budget. Their solution? Force our family into going on vacations with them. They cover the room; we cover everything else. I hate this. They’ve never admitted that this is their plan, but it’s obvious. At dinner, my father-in-law orders the most expensive item on the menu. My mother-in-law watches what I order like a hawk to figure out what she should order. It’s all bad. I keep calling my husband’s attention to it, and he keeps making excuses for them. Recently though, at the first dinner of our vacation with them, when the bill came, they just automatically said, “Thank you!” without even pretending to take out a wallet. My husband paid but said, “Sure, but we can’t afford to do this all week.” My mother-in-law’s smile dropped quick. Suddenly they told us they couldn’t afford to do anything during the week. So we were stuck doing free/cheap things only and cooking meals back in the room. I’ve been wrestling with this, wondering if it only bothers me because I don’t like them. But the fact is, vacations are supposed to be restorative, fun, maybe educational, whatever. With them around, I am stressed and miserable. It’s not a vacation. And now we can’t do much unless we foot the bill. Also, we have two kids. We can afford to pay for his folks but only if I dip into my inheritance from my father which I want to protect for our retirement and my kids someday. I’d so much rather use our money to pay for our own accommodations and our own expenses and leave his parents out of it. I’m also frankly worried that they’re eyeing my money (most of our retirement fund is my 401(k) and my inheritance). My husband and I share money, but I do not want to be paying for his parents’ later-age care (which I see as a problem coming down the road). Not with how they’ve treated me over the years! How do I get out of vacationing with them? Also, am I a terrible person? —Not Their Meal Ticket Dear Not Their Meal Ticket, Not wanting to be taken advantage of by your in-laws doesn’t make you a horrible person. Everything you’re saying here is spot on, especially being wary about how this is going to affect your finances down the road. Let’s start with the vacation. You’re absolutely right that this does not sound like a vacation at all. It sounds like your in-laws are dragging you along while they attempt to make the most out of their timeshare mistake while also getting a free meal ticket. No, thank you. That one is somewhat easy to get out of. If you have to, blame it on your budget or limited time off — either way, you and your husband should make clear that you plan to vacation elsewhere, with your kids, not the extended family. The other part is a little tricky because they haven’t said anything about depending on you for long-term care and financial support, but you can sense it coming. Start earmarking your inheritance now and make it clear to your husband that’s the plan —whether it’s for your kids’ college fund, retirement, or an emergency cushion. Once that money has a purpose, it becomes much bigger and more uncomfortable to ask you to divert it to something else. The point is to have that conversation upfront (and sooner rather than later) so that your husband knows where you stand and what to expect. The two of you should also be on the same page about this. It sounds like he is, at least somewhat, given he was willing to tell them you all couldn’t afford to cover meals all week. Now the key is making sure they understand you can’t afford to do it for a lifetime. —Kristin Please keep questions short (<150 words), and don‘t submit the same question to multiple columns. We are unable to edit or remove questions after publication. Use pseudonyms to maintain anonymity. Your submission may be used in other Slate advice columns and may be edited for publication. More Money Advice From Slate My girlfriend and I are in our 20s, and we’re both struggling to move up in a creative industry while paying rent in an expensive city. We live together, and we both have good jobs that have us on the ladder for where we want to go, but we are underpaid (everyone in our industry is) and always stressed about money. We both fantasize a lot about how we might come into a lot of money—a favorite dream is someone seeing us in the corner store every morning and deciding we deserve to inherit their apartment. But now my girlfriend thinks that we should make our fantasies a reality. Never miss new Slate Advice columns Get the latest from Prudie and our columnists in your inbox each weekday, plus special bonus letters on Saturdays. Advice Family Personal Finance