CAROLYN HAX

DEAR CAROLYN: I would like to know if there is a polite way to decline a monetary gift. My in-laws give us checks for our daughter’s college fund for her birthday and Christmas (she’s 14 months old).

A college education is something my husband and I feel we would like to provide for our daughter, as parents, and we also get a somewhat uneasy feeling about being financially indebted to our in-laws. There have been a couple of instances where they’ve contributed money to something (our wedding, for instance) and then felt they had a say in how it was spent.

— College-Funded

The sentence, “A college education is something my husband and I feel we would like to provide for our daughter, as parents,” is one of the fall-down-funniest things I’ve ever read.

Today’s prices, private college, quarter mil.

Asking people not to give you gifts is a way of telling them to butt out of your lives. This is not the Square 1 you want to start on with your child’s grandparents.

And, if they’re going to be overbearing, cash is actually on the safer side, since you have the last word in how it is spent.

And, of all the monetary gifts to attach strings to, college-fund money is the hardest for them to control. Tax laws have more say in its use than they do, if you open a 529.

AND, they have outright laughable say in where your child goes to college. Your daughter herself has only so much say.

So, every nickel in a 529, thank them profusely, and thank the fates they chose this form of financial puppetry.