I (30F) grew up really poor, like every one is sleeping in one room with a single heater over the winter poor. I did college mostly on scholarship, and then took on some debt for grad school and came out on the other end with a career that started out around 70k a year. Honestly, I felt like I'd made it. Totally happy and feeling financially stable.

Then I met my husband (36m) who makes about 5-6x what I do. We've been married 2 years and when I think about our finances it still freaks me out and feels unreal, truly I'd never even imagined access to this kind of money. We are not luxury driven people, he didn't grow up poor but he's from a solid middle class family. We have a small house, drive outdoorsy cars that are both close to 10 years old, one dog and two cats, mostly spend money on one or two trips a year and a nice restaurant once or twice a month. I still work. Our finances are combined.

So here's the issue- my husband's job is incredibly high stress and I think this bleeds over into him feeling overwhelmed and stressed out a lot. Normally, I have a lot of empathy for that. I try very hard to be supportive. I do the majority of our house chores and errands, I encourage him to go do fun activities on his own and with his friends- I think I'm overall pretty responsive to his stress. EXCEPT when it's finances. We get into these arguments every few months where he expresses feeling so financially stressed. I'll ask why and usually it's due to some bigger than usual expense (plane tickets for a trip most recently) and I'll ask if we can afford it or try to understand what the concern is and he'll say things like "we can but it's so expensive" "I'm so overwhelmed" "I just feel all this pressure." I never pressure him to spend money or ask for things, all our big plans and purchases are shared so the implications that I'm pressuring him feel really unfair. I'll tell him that and he agrees I'm not but he still "feels pressure" (from who?! Himself i guess???)

Honestly at this point i do kinda feel like the asshole because in my head I'm thinking what the absolute fuck is going on here? We max out multiple retirement accounts and after all our bills and spending for the month we still have 8-10k LEFTOVER. We dont even need this much money or this level of income. He could take a 50% cut to his hours or his pay rate (and I've suggested this due to his stress- he's not interested) and we'd still have a higher income than anyone I'd ever even KNOWN before I met him. I want to yell at him that he's so out of touch and that he needs to get a grip and get some perspective. Everyone in my family lives in small, shabby apartments. No one owns a home or travels. And HE'S the one who is having a stress melt down about money?! It's fucking absurd and it makes me angry.

I don't say any of this to him off course, I'm not mean, but I certainly feel it and I definitely get grumpy and irritated when these arguments happen. AITAH for feeling like this? It's truly driving me crazy every time it comes up as an issue and I feel like I'm right but I also feel like an asshole.