Being married requires collaboration, but what happens when one of the two refuses to carry their own load?

In this case, this woman’s husband kept procrastinating on an important task and it resulted in a fine.

She decided he needed to learn a lesson and pay with the money he had earmarked for video games.

Let’s analyze the situation.

AITAH for demanding that my husband pay for his car ticket from his fun money

I’m a 34-year-old woman, married to my 38-year-old husband in the US.

Basically, we have a joint account, where 95% of our joint income goes.

5% of our remaining shared income is then split evenly between us.

The whole idea is that we use the joint account for bills, groceries, rent, and other shared expenses, while the split 5% is our fun money.

We can use the fun money for fun, individual expenses, like new clothes or electronics.

For example, my husband saved up his fun money for several months and bought a nice PC to play video games on.

I usually spend my fun money on drinks out with girlfriends.

This sounds like a good arrangement so far. But it would present an issue shortly.

I’m not sure how it works in other countries, but here in the US every year we must renew our car registration.

It will cost us a little less than $200.

We had to renew the registration by May at the latest.

(Actually, we had to renew it in April, but the DMV gives drivers a 1 month grace period, so we had until May to renew the registration.)

So he had plenty of time to get this sorted out.

My husband and I share the car (it’s our only car) so of course the expenses come out of our joint account, but the car is in my husband’s name.

When the reminder to renew our car came in the mail (around March) I told my husband to pay for the registration.

He told me he would.

By April I reminded him again twice.

Both times he acknowledged me and told me he would.

He has a pattern of procrastination.

It’s October now, and he has not paid for the registration yet.

I’m busy with my own work and household responsibilities.

For example, I usually cook and grocery shop for our household.

Plus, my husband told me he’d take care of the registration so I completely forgot about it by May.

I just assumed he paid for it.

Believe me, I had no malice or aggression in not reminding him—I was just busy with my own tasks.

He seemed to be relying on her to keep reminding him.

A week ago, he actually got pulled over on his way back from work.

The cop ticketed my husband for the expired registration.

The ticket is $50 bucks.

My husband came home in a panic and went to pay the car registration. He wants to use the money in our joint account to pay for the ticket.

This is where the issue comes in.

I told him absolutely not.

It was his responsibility to pay for the car registration.

It’s not even that hard to pay for the registration—it’s entirely done online.

It takes less than 10 minutes.

I do not want our joint money to pay for his mistake, especially since money is tight right now.

And she’s absolutely right!

I want him to pay for this ticket with his fun money because actions have consequences.

Again, he had months to click through a few prompts on the DMV website.

My husband told me that I’m in the wrong.

His fun money is for fun.

He’s saving up for a couple of new video games and that $50 from his fun money account will set him back.

Wow.

His mom and dad think I’m being cruel and petty.

Maybe I am… but he needs to learn that his behavior has consequences.

AITA?

There’s no sugarcoating this: he sounds like a ten-year-old.

Let’s see what Reddit has to say about this.

Someone shares their indignation.

This commenter agrees he needs to face the consequences.

That’s a great point.

Someone shares their point of view on the matter.

Can’t argue with that.

This is how an adult should behave.

He should have considered the cost of a ticket before procrastinating for two months.

Now he’s just acting like a child.

If you liked that post, check out this story about a guy who was forced to sleep on the couch at his wife’s family’s house, so he went to a hotel instead.