However you do it – gambling or the lottery, a scratch card or a competition – winning money can feel amazing. Money is what helps us to live our lives the best way we can after all, and while big money isn’t necessary in order to be happy, enough to sustain yourself and your family is important – so any little extras can help you to afford that extra vacation or a nice little treat every now and then.

Understandably then, the tournament pair in this story were delighted to win a substantial prize, and presumably made excited plans for when the money hit their bank accounts. After all, we all have dreams for what we’d do with a windfall, and these two were living that dream. When the money did arrive, it came with some minimal yet unexpected fees – and this is where the drama started.

Read on to find out how these fees put their otherwise very successful pairing at risk.

AITA for wanting to split bank transfer fees of prize money?

My gaming partner and I played in a tournament. We won $6000 – but then there was an unexpected amount of $40 in fees for the wire transfer.

I didn’t even think about it and thought we were going to split fees 50/50, whatever they were. But now my partner is arguing with me over the $40 fees.

He says that since I didn’t bring up the fees beforehand, he didn’t approve the fees, so he’s justified in requesting I pay the entire $40 fee, and give him $3000 (so I keep $2960).

What’s more is he keeps changing his arguments too.

Let’s see what his arguments were.

First, he said that I should’ve discussed the fees with him beforehand, and that since he would’ve done crypto, he would’ve paid almost no transaction fees.

I refused to budge since I thought it was ridiculous he was upset over $20, then he brought in a trusted third friend and made similar argument.

I showed him via AI that crypto has fees too and it wouldn’t have been much cheaper than $40 in fees (in fact, in some ways, it would’ve been more).

But the trusted friend says to split the fees 2-1 or 3-1 since it would make both of us upset and hence most fair option. Trusted friend says “aren’t you penalising him for your preference for choosing bank transfer instead of crypto???”

Yikes! This only got worse from there.

Then, I looked through our Telegram chat history and found screenshot proof of partner approving the bank transfer. This made me upset, and I demanded apology. Trusted friend called to apologise but partner didn’t.

Partner then said I should pay the entire $15 fee since his bank doesn’t have $15 fee for international wires – but he’s ok with splitting the $25 fee. He said that when it came to matters of money, I should have discussed all fees with him upfront. He’s very upset over it.

Several weeks later after I sent him $2980 and didn’t even continue arguing with him (it seemed I convinced the trusted friend which was good enough for me), I asked him if he would change his behavior at all if the exact same scenario were to occur.

He said may have tried to change the wording to be nicer but he wouldn’t change anything. He maintains that I stiffed him out of $7.50 (forced him to split the $15)

AITA?

It’s really unfair that this one partner is expected to foot the bill for the fees.

When you win a collective total of $6,000, that is a big sum of money.

So deducting $20 each from that still leaves you with a big sum of money – he’s just being petty.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a middle schooler who was totally frazzled after being left to babysit alone for 3-plus hours, and swears she’s never doing it again.

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

This person agreed that he was being ridiculous.

While others instructed this guy to just go ahead and split the fees.

Meanwhile, this Redditor thought it said a lot about the other guy’s attitude towards his friends.

$20 each is a ridiculous amount to have such a petty argument over, especially given the large sum they won. It really makes you wonder what is going on with this guy, for him to be so determined to save a few dollars. But it also says a whole lot about how he treats other people – since by lessening his own cut of the fee payments, it just means that he’s making someone who should be a trusted friend liable for more, thereby lessening his cut of the prize money.

Sure, some people are stingy and want to grab every penny they can. But those people aren’t much fun to be friends, or even compete with. Of course, folk with legitimate money troubles would be justified in not wanting to pay frivolous expenses, but this isn’t that – this is prize money, and he still has a whole $2,980 of that to go straight into his bank account, even after his share of fees.

He’s being ridiculous, and losing a friend as a result.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a mom who is irate after she gave a group leader money for her daughter’s lunch, only to have him pocket the cash and ask all of the kids to pay their own way.