brought to you by the every dollar app start budgeting for free today today's question comes from

kyle in minnesota he says my wife and i earned two hundred and thirty thousand dollars a year

this income is fairly new as my wife just went back into the workforce we have a five-month

old daughter who my mother-in-law watches while we work. As predicted, my mother-in-law

is now requesting we pay her to watch our daughter. Now, prior to making this arrangement,

she agreed that we wouldn't have to pay her because we're trying to pay off debt. I understand

we are not entitled to free child care, but with $75,000 in student loans to pay off,

we don't have this in our budget. It would be more cost effective for my wife to quit working

than to pay for child care. They, talking about the mother-in-law, make $300,000 a year and have no debt

other than their house. So they don't need the money from us. How do we respond to their request to be paid for

watching their grandchild? Let me tell you something. The animosity is hot. It's popping. I feel it.

Here's the thing. You knew this was coming because you said as predicted. So there's something about

your mother-in-law's character that you kind of knew this was coming. And I'm not saying she's a bad lady, but he obviously knew something might come out of the woodwork here. Now here's a thing. I'm going to call you out first and then I'm going to be on your side. First, I'm going to call you out because they make $300,000. It's none of your, you know, they can spend their money how they want to spend their money. They can decide if they want to be compensated for their time. Don't add those other little

statements in there because that just makes you a little bit like like snap, snappy, right? Like,

I can understand you're mad, but if you bring it up to them, the second you start saying,

well, you don't even need this money, you make 300,000. Like that's the moment the conversation goes just into Terror Town.

Here's the thing.

You said that your wife and you make 230,000.

You said the income is fairly new.

I mean, you're in Minnesota.

I can tell you for us, for one child in daycare, it's $1,300 a month. That's

expensive. So if your wife is making more than $1,300 a month, then yeah, it's worth it. You're paying

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