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The original was posted on /r/AmItheAsshole by /u/chemist1928 on 2023-09-21 17:47:59.

I (28m) recently finished my PhD and my income rose significantly (from $35,000 to $73,000). My wife (26f) also moved jobs and increased her pay (from $40,000 to $50,000.) We recently welcomed our third child into our home, and our daycare expenses rose to $1000 a month, which ends up being a little less than half of my wife’s take-home pay. Also for context we share finances completely, so when I say “my pay” or “her paycheck” to us it is really just our money.

My wife told me that she would like to stay home with the children following this school year (she works as a teacher). I told her we could try to make it work and we started budgeting to live on only my income without her check. We still pay daycare with her check, but that is all. The rest of her check we pay extra on our debt ($40,000 in consumer debt, 110,000 mortgage debt). The last month we have been able to do this, but it is much tighter financially than we would like to have it. If you notice, our incomes combined a couple years ago totaled $75,000, which is close to my income alone now. So we are essentially living on our old incomes, but with 3 children to care for and with significant inflation.

I am sad that we are struggling so much with this new budget. I want to tell my wife that I’d like her to continue to work so that we can have an easier life with more margin. I am worried, however, that it would be an asshole move to tell her to keep working when I know she is a great mother and is really struggling with wanting to stay home with them. The only other option we have as far as money is to reduce our retirement contributions to give us more margin (I contribute 8% pre-tax, employer matches 8%, then I do an additional 8% in Roth). I don’t want to reduce these contributions because I want us to be able to retire comfortably.

WIBTA if I told my wife that I am not comfortable with our budget on only my income, and that I would like her to continue working to give us more financial margin in our lives?