Teresa Giudice’s husband Luis Ruelas has once again found himself at the center of a Bravo firestorm — this time over his paycheck.
The drama kicked off when Jennifer Aydin, never one to hold her tongue, took aim at Ruelas in a shady Instagram comment, mocking his $10,000-a-month salary from a packaging company and suggesting it was far from the lifestyle expected of a Real Housewives husband.
“Ten grand a month? Is that supposed to impress anyone in Jersey?” Aydin quipped, sparking an instant frenzy among RHONJ fans.
Within hours, social media turned savage. Memes dubbing Ruelas “Mr. 10K” flooded timelines, with viewers ridiculing him for flaunting a business mogul image while allegedly living off what they called “Costco money in a Gucci world.” One fan wrote, “Teresa didn’t marry up, she married into a paycheck-to-paycheck storyline,” while another joked, “10K a month? That’s not Bravo husband energy, that’s Bravo intern energy.”
Ruelas, however, wasn’t about to take the insult lying down. In a fiery response posted late Wednesday night, he blasted Aydin for “demeaning honest work” and insisted he was proud of his career and the income it provides. “I work hard, I provide for my family, and I will never be ashamed of that,” he declared.
But his impassioned defense only seemed to fuel the online ridicule. Fans accused him of playing the victim while simultaneously flaunting a multimillion-dollar mansion with Teresa. Some even pointed back to his controversial past business dealings, questioning why he was so defensive over a paycheck if, as he often claims, money isn’t an issue.
Jennifer, for her part, fanned the flames by liking shady comments from fans and slyly hinting in Instagram stories that Luis should “focus on explaining his history instead of his salary.”
By Thursday morning, #10KLuis was trending across Twitter and Instagram, with Bravo watchers divided between those applauding Ruelas for standing up for blue-collar work and those roasting him mercilessly for what they see as yet another contradiction in his ever-dramatic storyline.
With one sarcastic quip, Jennifer Aydin has reignited one of the most heated feuds in the Garden State, leaving RHONJ fans salivating at the prospect of this paycheck drama exploding on screen in the next season.
