AITA - Financial Resentment
My husband (25 M) and I (23 F) have been together for over 3 years. Eight months into living together, we bought a house. Two months afterward, he quit his job with no plan. While he was unemployed, I took over finances (his parents helped because I can't afford to support us on my salary alone), and I would check in with him every now and then to make sure he had emergency money, at least for gas, food, etc. At this time, we split all shared bills 50/50 and handled everything else separately (cars, insurance, phone bill, credit card debt repayment). After a few months, he was able to find a job but had to take a big pay cut, so now I was the breadwinner. To remain equitable rather than equal, I offered to split our cars 50/50 as well. He had a car payment for $515 a month on a new 2023 SUV, and I was saving $400 a month to go towards a new car—I was driving a paid-off 2015 SUV. Since money was tight in the time after (we're playing catch-up on all the time he was not working), we began dipping into my "car savings" until nothing was left. His car continued to get paid. A while later, he got a higher-earning job where he made a lot of OT. All of our financial arrangements remained the same, with bills still dipping into my "car savings." A little while later, my car began having trouble, and I ended up needing to pay for repairs for $600. At the time, I was scrambling because I had no fund for my car. I ended up pulling a credit card to pay for it all. When my husband saw this, he tried handing me $600 cash, saying not to use my credit and claiming he just remembered he had that. I got mad and didn’t believe him and paid with my credit card anyway. The days after, I blew up and told him that I didn’t believe he forgot about that money, and I couldn’t believe he let me stress all day regarding how to pay for these repairs when it feels like his fault I had nothing saved up. I told him I was done feeling like his financial scapegoat, and he needed to pay for his car by himself going forward—I was done helping him. He claimed he was going to start sending some money to try and even out that disparity that occurred. It never happened. He was paying off his debt aggressively and living lavishly, with about $300 left over after bills from his weekly paycheck. I was being left with $60–70 after bills from my biweekly paycheck. I spoke to him after some time of this and said I feel a very large unfairness in our financial split and asked if we could do a split based off pay or just combine ALL finances. He accepted to combine all finances, and I offered to be in charge of scheduling all our payments and stuff. After about 2 months of this, he fell ill and is currently on a disability leave at work. In the meantime, he has been working at his parents’ restaurant to help out financially. This has been going on for 5 months now. In that time, he continued contributing to our main bills account (everything we split beforehand) but never deposited into our shared fin ances account (this is where it’s supposed to be our shared money and where our credit card bills and such come out of). He would constantly have cash on him and be talking about saving for a new PlayStation. Meanwhile, I’m back at being left with $60 after paying bills every pay period, and I would communicate this to him every two weeks when I scheduled bill payments (I’d say, for example: “Hey, by the way, my direct deposit hit for $400, and I just scheduled our credit card bills for $325—we have $75 for the next 2 weeks.”). A couple weeks ago, I blew up and told him that I was done paying all his credit card debt, and if he wants to have “his money/my money” so bad, we can have separate bills again and he can take care of his own stuff. After this discussion, he accepted he’s been in the wrong for pocketing that money while I’m fronting all our bills and drowning financially, and he began depositing that money. Although he’s now doing what I asked, I’m struggling to move on because I find my blood boiling seeing all the money he’s putting in there. At first, he framed it as if he was getting $40–$60 above what was being deposited for bills. Later, he slipped up and said it was about $100 a week. His first deposit was 2 weeks ago, where he deposited $218, and now yesterday was $320 (and I know he had already used some cash). So in my head, you’re telling me that for 5 months you’ve been living life like this while I stress/drown? So on top of him living stress-free on my dime, essentially, he was also downplaying how much extra cash he really had. So… am I the AH?
Posted Jun 8, 2026, 4:45 PM UTC