THE HOUSEHOLD MATH

A woman's plan to make her sister's husband pay his share of the house costs nearly blew up over one blunt question: why should three people live there while only two pay for the mortgage?

During the pandemic, the poster and her sister bought a house together and split everything 50/50. That worked until the sister got married. Her husband moved in, and the arrangement changed to fit the new reality: the three adults in the house split the bills evenly, one-third each.

For a while, that seemed to settle things.

Then the sister and her husband opened a joint bank account, and the conversation shifted. The sister wanted to go back to a 50/50 split. The poster said no. In her view, nothing had changed about the number of people using the house. There were still three people under the same roof, so a 50/50 split would mean the poster would cover half the costs while the sister and husband each paid 25%.

She laid out the problem plainly: "there's still three people living here." If the bills were divided that way, she said, "I would be paying most of the household bills." The sister pushed back, arguing that if the household costs were split in thirds, "THEY are paying the majority of the bills," and that "it isn't fair that they are paying more than me."

At first, the poster held her ground. The house was being used by three people, and she didn't see why the numbers should change just because the sister and husband now shared an account.

Then came the first edit, and with it, a change in the poster's thinking. She realized the house was only in the sisters' names, which meant the two of them were the only ones building equity. That changed the mortgage question. The poster said the mortgage should be "strictly on us," while her sister's husband should contribute to utilities because "he is using water/oil."

There was also a smaller source of irritation tucked into the update: the husband's things had been moved into the poster's office. That rubbed against their original bedroom/office setup, though the post focused mainly on the money.

By the second edit, the sisters had reached a compromise. The mortgage would be split 50/50 between them, household costs would be divided three ways, and the husband would pay a little rent. The poster said, "I do understand so this is fine for now."

She closed by acknowledging the whole arrangement for what it was: "I am well aware my living situation is stupid haha."