MIL is a gold digger?

My mother in law is always asking for money from my husband.

My husband already gives her an allowance monthly. She will always request for more money using various reasons. On her birthday she requests for money to buy expensive gifts like once she said she wants to buy a 1000 branded bag and requested for the money as a gift. My husband and I are very frugal people and do not spend that much on gifts.

Another time she request for a cash advance from my husband citing that she does not have enough to spend and told him that he does not have to give her allowance for the rest of the year. He agreed and gave her 3k in total. She used the money to go for holidays overseas. 3 months later she told him she did not have enough to spend so he had to continue giving her allowance again.

Then once she said her relative was scammed and they needed money desperately to sustain their business, she asked my husband to remit 5k over to her relative and promised to pay back by pawning her jewelry. In the end she only paid back 1.5k to my husband. However this year she asked her children to sponsor her the money to buy back her pawned jewelry as her birthday present! That’s just too much!

My husband is not her only child, he has a brother as well and I’m sure she also requests for the same from her other son.

By the way she never raised her sons. She divorced my father in law when her sons were in primary school and my husband and his brother were taken care of by their father. While she remarried and had another son with her new husband. I am puzzled if the husband gives her money as well?

She is now staying with her new family. The only times she comes to visit my husband and his brother is on special occasions like their birthday or mother’s day etc. Often she promises to visit on a weekend but ends up changing the date or cancelling it causing trouble to me and my husband as we already arranged not to do anything that weekend to prepare for her visit. This has caused us to feel disappointed each time especially once when she cancelled on his birthday. She only contacts my husband when she needs help like to book flights overseas for her (making him pay again).

We are just middle income earners. Why does she expect him to keep supporting her like that? She is over spending out of what she can afford and she even told us that she does not intend to work anymore and wants to enjoy her life since she worked so hard last time. She is only 50 this year. She also had a gambling addiction last time and my husband had to ban her from entering casinos.

Now that my husband and I just welcomed our first child, there is going to be alot more expenses and we need to save and plan for our future and retirement as well. She rarely came to visit our child since birth and only came once so far even during my pregnancy she was not heavily involved while my family bought us lots of gifts for the baby and my parents also gave us money to help with the baby expenses. There is such a huge difference between my husband’s mother and my family I can’t help thinking that she is a gold digger.

Am I being too stingy and sensitive regarding her requests for money as this is his mother?