When you become an adult, the realisation that adulthood isn’t as free and magical as you expected as a kid can hit hard.

Sure you don’t have school, nor do you have to live by your parents’ rules any more – but that has been replaced by chores and responsibilities (and lots of them) as well as answering to your boss.

Moreover, you have to work what feels like endless hours every week, and manage your budget meticulously to pay for dull but necessary things like health insurance and power bills.

So it’s natural that, as adults, we find little things to look forward to, to make everything else worth it.

For the father of three in this story, the things he looks forward to are his two annual family vacations.

But this year, things are different – and not in a good way.

Read on to find out why.

AITA for not “taking one for the team” and not paying for my sister-in-law and her family to come on our spring break trip?

Twice a year, my wife, three kids, and I go on a trip, just the five of us.

During Spring Break it is a domestic trip. During summer it is an international trip.

These two trips are my favorite things we do throughout the year. We live very frugally throughout the year, but during these trips, we do it big.

The money for the trips comes from separate, non-marital, passive income I have from a family commercial real estate business (in case anyone is wondering, we have a prenup).

Understandably, others were envious of their trips.

After our trip last summer, my sister-in-law (wife’s sister) told my wife that she and her husband were going to save up and come on next year’s trips with their two kids.

My wife didn’t push back. I heard about this a couple of months later and was quite frustrated. I do not like my sister-in-law at all (it is a long story).

My wife convinced me to be ok with it by laying out that they will get their own accommodations and outside some shared meals, I did not need to spend much time with her.

But then, in January, my brother-in-law’s job issued a “return to the office” directive (he was previously working remotely and lived out of the state of his office).

Let’s see how that changed the family’s plans.

His employers offered a short window for anyone who did not want to return to resign and get a good severance package – so he resigned and took the severance.

After that happened, they decided they could not come on the trip, since there was a chance they would need to sell their house and move in with my in-laws.

Well, about two weeks ago, my mother-in-law, wife, and sister-in-law were spending the day together, and my sister-in-law kept bringing up how upset she was about the whole thing and about how much she had been looking forward to the trip.

My mother-in-law pulled my wife aside and said, “I know y’all can pay for the trip. Just pay for it.” So, my wife offered for us to pay for it.

Uh-oh. Let’s see how the husband responded to this offer.

After my wife told me this, I was livid. I said, “You want me to pay for the terrible experience of doing this trip with your sister? No, I will not do it under any circumstances. This is a two ‘yes’ and one ‘no’ situation, I am a ‘no’ so she isn’t coming.”

My wife thinks I should take one for the team and pay. I refuse. I do feel bad for her kids. But, I am not paying for the displeasure of being around my sister-in-law. Heck, I have offered to take her kids only on the trip. I would be fine with that. They can stay with us.

But right now, I am left with either effectively doubling the cost of the trip or having them stay with us on the trip, which is counter to why I agreed to let her come in the first place.

AITA?

This guy has been put in a really unpleasant situation, and it sucks.

Clearly he needs to sort out his beef with his sister in law – but the fact that his wife knows that they don’t get along and offered to pay for the whole family to go on the vacation anyway really wasn’t her best move.

It’s no wonder this guy is feeling frustrated and trapped!

Let’s see what the Reddit community made of this.

This person thought it was his wife who was the issue here.

While others thought that the mother-in-law had overstepped.

Meanwhile, this Redditor encouraged him to stand up for himself.

Absolutely this guy should not be having to pay for his sister-in-law and her family to attend the vacation, especially if he doesn’t want to.

Sure they might have been looking forward to it – but they should have considered that before the brother-in-law quit his job.

As for the mother-in-law? That was very presumptuous of her.

If you thought that was an interesting story, check this one out about a man who created a points system for his inheritance, and a family friend ends up getting almost all of it.