Kate Hackett
I find u/Livid_Jury_4998 in his recent post to Reddit’s AITA forum absolutely insufferable. The guy is an absolute douchebag and forcing his wife to live with his friends after she’s expressed a desire to live on their own. They can afford it. It’s doable.
Check out this post and tell me I’m wrong, guys. Tell me I’m wrong.
OP explains that he and his wife live on a big plot of land. He rents one side of his home and lives in the other. In addition to renting a house out, he ALSO rents rooms IN his home. He mentions it later, but PS: They’re HIS friends.
Okay backstory time, I (m/34) and my wife (f/34) will have been married for three years this upcoming December. I own a two family house on an acre in central jersey that I purchased when I was 25. I rent out one side and live in the other, I have two spare bedrooms that I also sublet, one to a dear friend of mine (m/35) and another to my cousin (f/35). I have always rented these rooms and having the extra income between the rental side and the rooms I rent on my side means the house basically pays for itself mortgage wise. I have to come out of pocket for utilities such as garbage, electricity, fuel oil etc etc.
Because of the rentals, he pays about $600 — which is pretty sweet. But his wife is sick of having roommates.
My monthly cost of living is anywhere from 600-800 bucks handling the aforementioned bills. Relatively cheap for New Jersey where a two bedroom apartment can run you 2500 bucks. So now to the issue at hand my wife wants to get rid of our roommates….
OP explains that she currently has 0 cost of living and is rebuilding her financial situation. It sounds like things are going okay.
As of now she lives for free absolutely 0 cost of living, which has helped her significantly regarding paying down debts, fixing her credit and so on, she’s not out of the woods yet but she’s well on her way, I’d say in about another year or so she’ll be 100% debt free.
When she brought this up before, it wasn’t economically possible for them to live without roommates. But now it seems like it is and OP’s wife was ready to deal with this.
She has expressed in the past that she would like to live alone but at the time it just wasn’t economically feasible for us to do so (she wasn’t working, then Covid happened, blah blah blah) no big deal right ? Also I should mention you wouldn’t even know we have roommates, sometimes I go days without bumping into one of them.
This poor woman is so obviously SICK of this arrangement that she told OP she’s leaving or they’re going. OP immediately went to “that’s not a smart financial move”. What an ass.
Anyways this week she slaps me with an ultimatum out of the blue that either the roomates move out or she’s going to leave me, I stated that I did not think that was the smartest financial move as she only wants to give them 30days which would means we would be looking at having to come up with 1600 bucks the following month. Queue argument.
Wife is ready to pay to live alone together. OP thinks this is dumb (I hate him) to spend money for no reason.
She states she can afford to make up the difference, and that paying it would be worth being able to live alone together. Am I the asshole for thinking this is stupid, that giving up almost 20k a year in rental income on the drop of a dime doesn’t make any sense, not to mention telling a friend of 22 years as well as my cousin sorry guys the wife’s giving ya 30days notice good luck 👍🏻….
OP want s to stick it out another year (NO) and give the roommates a ridiculous amount of time to find someplace new. …Is he a jerk?
Furthermore this income allows us to travel whenever we want, buy whatever we want, go out whenever we want. It basically helps make us very flexible financially. Also why can’t we compromise ? Okay you want them gone, let’s stick it out out for one more year, knock out the rest of your debt and also give the roomies plenty of notice that this is what we are going to pursue.
TLDR: wife wants Roomate’s gone, husband thinks it’s stupid because “money”. Wife threatens to leave, husband still thinks getting rid of rental income is stupid but offers compromise. Wife will not compromise. Is he the asshole
God, I hate him. Thankfully, Reddit did too.
“YTA. You’re willing to let your WIFE leave your ass because of money (she even offered to make up the difference??). I guess my question to you is what do you want out of a marriage? You need to start thinking of your family (wife) and not your roommates and money. The fact that you might let her leave you over this situation is making the marriage not look too great,” wrote another person.
Another Redditor said, “YTA. For a 34/year-old married person with no kids, there are WAY too many people hanging around your place. Your wife must feel like she’s living in an undergrad flophouse.”
