February 4, 2025 at 7:48 pm

Unsupportive In-Laws Bash Husband For Trying To Start His Own Business, But Once His Venture Is Successful They Want Him To Pay Their Bills

by Jayne Elliott

Source: Reddit/AITA/Shutterstock

Starting your own business from scratch can mean a lot of work with little pay, but if it’s a good idea, it just might be worth it.

In today’s story, a man works hard to start his own business, but he resents his in-laws for the way they treated him when he was just getting started.

Let’s see how the story unfolds.

AITA for no longer giving support to my wife’s family after I became successful with my own company after they talked down about me.

My (early-30’s) wife (mid-20’s) grew up in a fairly poor environment.

Her grandpa had money, but her mom didn’t and her sister doesn’t.

My wife has an incredibly strong work ethic (she’s probably more so defined as a workaholic).

When I first met her, I was in trucking, making about 50k-70k/year.

Since then I developed a niche for a speciality marketing field and became very good at it.

His wife was supportive.

All my friends encouraged me to go into business for myself with a marketing company.

My wife was fully supportive of this, even after we discussed the financial difficulties we would have for the first year or so due to a l limited budget.

I made sure she knew that some months, I may not get a check from the business (my salary is paid monthly).

His in-laws were not supportive.

Her family, however, were not.

They accused me of neglecting my family, being lazy, not wanting to work, etc.

They would constantly be bringing up the fact that I “didn’t have a job” because I was always home (working remote).

She would defend me, but they would ignore it and continue to call me lazy and a “deadbeat” for putting my daughter in daycare while I worked from home.

I was still driving a truck part-time to have steady, reliable income but it was only half of what I was making on a good week.

His hard work paid off…literally!

In the last year however, I have grown my income from my business beyond what I was making in trucking, and have very little overhead.

Since we cut costs back when I first started, we realized a lot of things we were paying for, we could do without.

Or we found other alternatives and we never really added those expenses back so it’s like we have significantly more money now.

I still drive a semi occasionally for a friend who owns his truck (mainly to keep my CDL active and stay knowledgable in the industry as a fallback).

He refuses to pay for the in-laws.

Her family has taken note, and they are constantly asking to go out to eat with us, hang out with us, etc.

They get mad when I never pay for the meals, the outing, the vacation, etc (aside from my part of the tab, obviously).

Looking back, I understand why they never had money, they were living well beyond their means, but if it makes them happy then it is what it is.

I let my wife do whatever she wants with her money (which sometimes includes buying stuff for her family, which I support her doing with her money if that’s how she wants to spend it).

But I make sure that she knows I don’t want a dime of my money going to her family since they were very unsupportive of what made us our money, and would go as far as to talk down about me for doing what lead to our money.

He has no obligation to pay for anything for his in-laws.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

I completely agree with this comment.

Source: Reddit/AITA

Yes, what is his wife’s take on this?

Source: Reddit/AITA

Well, when you put it like that, the answer is clear.

Source: Reddit/AITA

This is a good point.

Source: Reddit/AITA

The kids had nothing to do with it.

Source: Reddit/AITA

His in-laws can pay for themselves.

But hopefully that choice won’t cause a huge rift.

If you thought that was an interesting story, check out what happened when a family gave their in-laws a free place to stay in exchange for babysitting, but things changed when they don’t hold up their end of the bargain.