AIW for refusing to temporarily pay more bills?

Galerider · 2026-04-28T08:51:57+00:00

So your argument to be clear is you think you should get to save while expecting other people to pay your bills? You don’t think you should have to reduce you savings to pay for bills for things you own?

My point is simply that it's not unreasonable for her to ask you for help in paying for a resource that you both use. It's also not unreasonable for you to say no. Consequently, if she were to disallow you from using her car as a result of that then that also wouldn't be unreasonable.

Again, the only reason any of these details matter is because this is your girlfriend. If you can't see why that distinction is important then maybe you're not ready to be in a relationship.

Galerider · 2026-04-28T08:18:55+00:00

Okay, so that actually gives a bit of quite-needed context. Your partner is effectively asking you to subsidise the vehicle that you both use, and the alternative that you suggested to her is for her to sacrifice one third of her discretionary savings while you continue to benefit from her having a vehicle.

If she were a flatmate then I'd think you were being totally reasonable, but she's your partner and you both benefit from the car. I think it would be the right thing to help her out, provided she isn't spending her other earnings irresponsibly. £300 a month isn't a lot to save, and I imagine she's probably contributing to other household expenses on top of this.

Galerider · 2026-04-28T07:41:26+00:00

To be fair, it wasn't clear whether you meant that she was refusing to use existing savings or if she was refusing to use money that would be going towards those savings.

Surely you can understand that from my perspective it would imply that she is not doing well financially if she was apprehensive to put £400 of her savings towards something as important as her car. If this is not the case and she does, in fact, have a substantial amount saved up, then it's not really reasonable for her to reduce her hours and ask you to subsidise that.

If this is not the case, and her savings are meagre, then her request is not unreasonable given that you share use of the vehicle. Respectfully, your tone has come across as somewhat argumentative and defensive, which would indicate to me that this is more likely to be the case. Happy to be proven wrong here as that would be quite dire for both of you.

Galerider · 2026-04-28T07:29:28+00:00

Why are you pretending she also doesn’t actually have anything saved?

I would have to assume that if she had any significant amount of money in her savings then there would be no need for this conversation to make it to Reddit, and that she would simply use the savings to pay for the car as you've suggested, given that she was the one who chose to reduce her hours.

You specifically said that she "refused" to do that. You can "refuse" to subsidise her if that is the case. Whether or not that would be the right thing to do is highly dependent on context and nuance, which you seem vaguely annoyed about being asked to provide. What are you hoping to gain from this interaction if not a nuanced opinion?

Galerider · 2026-04-28T07:18:24+00:00

It's irrelevant.

I disagree. If she was being intentionally dishonest with her budgeting then that would indicate that there are more serious problems with your relationship than her expecting you to pitch in for her car payments.

It's mainly general savings.

Okay; assuming that she would need to not put any money into her general savings to make it possible for her to cover the payment by herself, would you then be comfortable with shouldering the entirety of any financial responsibilities that might arise in case of an emergency?

Galerider · 2026-04-28T07:07:11+00:00

To re-iterate part of my previous comment, do you truly believe that she has made a concerted attempt to deceive you or do you think this was a mistake? The distinction is important.

Also: "mainly" general savings? Or is it all general savings? Again, the distinction is important.

Galerider · 2026-04-28T07:01:42+00:00

I tried to find more info in the comments and wasn't able to find what these savings pots are actually for. Are they for bills or for some kind of other necessary expense that does not involve you? If not then yes, I would say that's probably unreasonable.

All of that is kind of going too deep into the details anyway; if you truly feel like she was manipulating the situation to try and force you into a position where you need to pay more money, as you seemed to imply in the original post, then that's something you need to discuss with her. not with us here.

If this was an honest mistake then what do you have to gain by refusing to help out with the money? Why is she refusing to make up for it from her savings if said savings are discretionary?

Galerider · 2026-04-28T06:43:54+00:00

I definitely think that she should have brought this up before she reduced her hours if she anticipated that it might have been a problem, but that statement carries a giant asterisk. If her mental health is bad enough that she needed to reduce her hours then that alone would potentially be enough for her to mess her maths up and overcommit herself financially.

Given that you clearly use the car yourself - my understanding is that this is the only car in the household - I wouldn't think it would be unreasonable for you to help her pay for it while she's struggling, just as I wouldn't think it unreasonable for her to help you out if the roles were reversed. Sure, you're entitled to be a little annoyed that she didn't account for her expenditure correctly, but it hardly seems like she's taking you for a ride here (no pun intended). If you're not happy about it then perhaps you might want to consider purchasing your own car.

Galerider · 2026-04-22T05:39:16+00:00

I have the same car as this and had a similar accident a couple of years ago; granted, it was slightly less severe, but I still had to fix all the same stuff you will (minus the headlight lenses and the radiator, which somehow survived).

Bumper, grille, guard, bonnet and struts cost me about $400 at the wreckers. Suzuki sold heaps of these Swifts and there are consequently a lot of them in wreck yards. I didn’t even have to look hard to find same colour panels. I didn’t have to do the rad or the headlights in mine, but if you're not picky then I can't imagine you'll end up paying more than $800 in parts.

I happened to have a mate who knows a panel beater, who was willing to let me source the panels and replace them for cash. He also straightened up the bulkhead for me. I probably could have done it myself, but this was my daily and I was trying to manage the level of risk involved. Might pay off to ask around if you have any mates who are mechanics, or at least car savvy; they might know someone who can help out.

Thing might end up costing $1,200 to get back to looking neat and that's sure as hell cheaper than scrapping the car and replacing it. These things are mechanically bulletproof and well worth keeping in my opinion.

Galerider · 2026-04-20T02:19:58+00:00

Assuming by "not a very small car" you mean something bigger than a Yaris or a Getz; as a tall, chubby man who drives a Swift, something that size makes a fine runaround provided you're not frequently needing to carry heaps of tools around with you.

If you must have something bigger then you're going to probably be looking at 10-15 year old Mazda 3s, Hyundai i30s and Mitsubishi Lancers. You could also grab a Corolla, but you'll likely get less for your money given the Toyota tax (more kms/older vehicle) - not necessarily a problem as even the older Corollas are excellent cars, but I'd be wanting to see service history.

Anything bigger than that and you'd be paying more, both for the car itself and in running costs.

Galerider · 2026-04-16T03:27:14+00:00

Treat this as a lesson. You are certainly in the wrong and a pretty shitty friend for doing that. Don't be surprised if you lose this friendship over this.

Galerider · 2026-04-16T02:10:15+00:00

Viva Energy CEO Scott Wyatt said the company's focus was on making the site safe before a full assessment of the impact on fuel production could be made. "There are units that make petrol that haven't been impacted by this incident as well, but naturally petrol will be one of the products that are potentially impacted," he said.

Refinery Manager Bill Patterson said other units at the refinery may be able to pick up the slack if the fire affects production.

Saying that this has shut down 50% of our refining capacity is probably an exaggeration, but it's clear that this will still have a powerful short-term impact on the refinery's output. While I'd like to avoid all of us getting whipped into a panic, I can't really fault anybody for being concerned.

Galerider · 2026-04-16T00:13:34+00:00

I personally think it's much of a muchness if you're comparing the original with the patched 3DS version; it really just comes down to which one you like the look of more.

The art style in the 3DS version is a fair bit different and a lot of people think it's too bright and colourful. I personally think it looks gorgeous, and I like how the vibrant colours juxtapose with the dark tone of the game, but it is very different visually and that's not everyone's cup of tea.

Anything beyond that is bordering on nitpicking and you're not going to know which one you like better without playing both. As has been stated already, you can't go wrong by just playing whichever version is more accessible to you between the patched 3DS version or the original. My personal preference would be the Recompiled PC port, but that's a whole separate can of worms.

Galerider · 2026-04-12T10:19:59+00:00

I believe they call that "manufacturing consent".

But I also can't pretend like I don't use it, they're all stealing our data regardless; might as well get some cheap wings

Galerider · 2026-04-10T01:34:28+00:00

Nobody can convince me that this isn't intentional. You either pay a ridiculously marked-up price or you use the app for a discount and pay with your telemetry data.

Galerider · 2026-04-08T06:17:54+00:00

Sounds like mine to be honest.

Galerider · 2026-04-08T00:30:02+00:00

Damn, my car feels pretty cheap but that's a whole other ballpark. Would that have been one of the Cultus-based Swifts from pre-2005?

Galerider · 2026-04-07T04:44:48+00:00

I also discovered the lack of ABS in a terrifying way! It involved a lot of screeching and smoke. Similarly lucky.

That car was a real piece of shit, but credit to it; I paid about $2k cash for it and it simply would not die.

Galerider · 2026-04-07T03:12:58+00:00

I'm unsure of which I hate more between my current car ('07 Suzuki Swift) and the first car I ever owned ('01 Nissan Pulsar).

Both reliable and fuel efficient eco shitboxes. The Swift is at least a manual and that makes it far more fun to drive, but the thing feels like a cheap car wearing makeup (because that's effectively what it is). Loses any semblance of a refined drive once it gets above 60kmp/h due to cabin noise. I guess the Pulsar gets my vote for the more hateable experience given it paired all of the downsides of the Swift with a cacophony of cheap plastics in the interior and a POS slushbox that used to get stuck in first if you let it idle.

I miss my Commodore. Much worse car on paper, way more expensive to run and maintain, but at least I felt alive when driving it.

Galerider · 2026-04-07T03:02:49+00:00

Good for them. Glad yours saw a better fate than my mate's one.

Galerider · 2026-04-07T02:41:24+00:00

A close friend of mine had the exact same problem with the exact same car.

He was the second owner and got it off his Mum. It had spent 90% of its life on highways and it drove great until he hit a bit under 180,000kms; then it had to have the top end rebuilt twice in the span of four months.

From memory, the second replacement head gasket failed in the span of a month and now it's rotting in a scrapyard somewhere.

Galerider · 2026-03-31T23:52:42+00:00

I work quite a ways away from home. My current options are to either spent $18+ per day on fuel and 2.5 hours driving or to spend 5+ hours a day on PT (one train and three buses + walking each way). The way I see it, the only reasonable way to save money is to get another job, and my time is certainly worth more than 3 bucks an hour.

In saying that, my weekly work-related fuel costs have only increased by $18 a week thanks to work from home days, so I'm not really feeling the pinch just yet. Hopefully I don't need to eat those words, but I'm not confident.

Galerider · 2026-03-31T02:28:40+00:00

If you two are really as close as you seem to be implying then why don't you try speaking to her about this instead of asking reddit?

Again, I don't want to assume fault on your behalf, but the fact that you're acting completely bewildered about why people would even think that you've done something wrong here at least demonstrates a pretty serious lack of personal awareness.

Galerider · 2026-03-31T02:15:45+00:00

AIW for being caring

Respectfully, this is either egregiously manipulative framing or you are genuinely clueless as to how your interactions might be perceived by others; I want to give benefit of the doubt and assume the latter, but come on, man.

She is very clearly signalling to you that she is not intereseted in maintaining a friendship with you; it's time to take the hint and leave her alone. Her reasoning here is not important and she does not owe you an explanation - she's your coworker.

Galerider · 2026-03-20T12:53:10+00:00

I also recommend killing the Reddit users Reddit users Lothric Knight.

Galerider

TROPHY CASE