AITAH for refusing to buy the $1.2M apartment my wife wants, even though she earns 3x more than me?
I'm 35, my wife is 34, and we have a 4-year-old. I work a stable government job, taking home about $2,000 a month after taxes. My wife is in tech, pulling in about $6,000 a month plus bonuses. Our current apartment is comfortable, in a decent school district, and our mortgage is only $500 a month.
Last month, she decided we NEED to buy a $1.2 million apartment in a top-tier school district. The down payment would be around $500,000 — we could barely scrape that together by draining our savings and selling our current place. But the new mortgage would triple to almost $2,000 a month. We'd be living paycheck to paycheck. If she gets laid off or takes a pay cut, we're completely screwed.
I told her the risk is too high. Our kid is still young. We don't need to go all in right now. She exploded. She said: "You make peanuts, what do you know about my anxiety?" She called me "complacent" and "unambitious." Then she dropped this: "If I weren't carrying this family, you wouldn't even have the life you have now."
She's not wrong about the income gap. But that comment cut deep. I'm not against moving eventually. I'm against gambling our entire future on one house. Now she's giving me the cold shoulder and telling her friends I'm holding her back.
So, AITAH for wanting to play it safe?
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1August 14, 2026 2.7K 7
