“He asks why he should pay for my life”: Man making $700K wants wife to cover her own car, retirement, and daily expenses

A Reddit post about a "high-income husband and low-income wife" has been making the rounds and sparking backlash related to the expectations of marriage.

Posting to r/HENRYfinance earlier this month, u/BrilliantFinancial10 wrote that while she's self-sufficient and makes $80,000 a year at her job, her husband of 10 years makes a significantly higher amount at $700,000 per year. 

Although they've previously contributed to their joint financials based on how much they make, her husband no longer feels that his contribution of $6000 per month vs hers of $1000 is equitable. 

"He feels it is unfair that he pays 90% of our bills and covers extras that come up," she writes.

"He asks me what am I providing for him in return for him paying for most of our expenses. We don’t have kids. He doesn’t cook. I do all the cooking and cleaning dishes and organizing houses. He does garbage and cat litter box scooping.

"Our cleaning lady does the cleaning every week. He tells me my cooking and organizing house, filing tax, keeping up with house errands isn’t worth at least $100k salary and definitely isn’t worth to cover $620k difference in income. He wants to know why he should pay for my life and wants to know what I am bringing to the table if I’m not making close amount to him."

This has left the Redditor and her husband at an impasse. He seems to want her to find a way to make more money and also thinks that their income should be kept separate, with him having full control over the money he makes.

From the sound of it, he wants his wife to pay for her own ($20k-$30k car) and to have less discretionary spending money than he does because otherwise it's not "fair" that he's funding her life. She also admits that he's uninterested in planning for retirement together and wants her to figure out how to figure out her retirement and investment accounts on her own.

What is HENRY?

The post was originally shared in the r/HENRYfinance subreddit, a place for people who consider themselves "High Income, Not Rich Yet." The sub itself defines that as applying to people who, on average, make around $250,000 a year but have a net worth of under $2 million.

In other words, it's a subreddit dedicated to making a lot of money and, generally, working towards achieving long-term wealth. In theory, it's the kind of place filled with people who have the same outlook as OP's husband on the surface—a desire to squirrel away the money they have and a belief that $80k is low income.

In reality, this post was too far out of touch even for people focused on accumulating wealth.

The devaluation of partnership

Although Reddit sees its fair share of posts where it seems clear one person in a relationship is taking advantage of the higher-earning partner, that doesn't seem to be the case here. The original poster makes a living wage all on her own and reports doing the majority of the work it takes to run a household—but because the latter isn't something so easily translated into dollars and cents, her husband is devaluing her overall contribution to their shared life.

That in and of itself would likely have been enough to rile people up, but the Redditor later admitted that she supported her husband financially while he was in residency for several years, including prior to the marriage itself.

"After 2 years of marriage, he finished all training and his income jumped up to 600k, then now $700k," she wrote.

The vast majority of responders were calling out the red flags of this situation left and right, warning the OP that it doesn't sound at all as if her husband is treating this relationship of over 10 years as a partnership.

"OP in her post history said she was upset he was decked out in designer but she was wearing TJ Maxx. He’s got the newest tech but she has an old laptop. He has a luxury car but she doesn’t. Although he pays for most of the joint expenses, she only has $3k spending money per month and can’t keep up," u/Berryhawk wrote.

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The post “He asks why he should pay for my life”: Man making $700K wants wife to cover her own car, retirement, and daily expenses appeared first on The Daily Dot.