Fiancé resists limiting his day trips to afford longer travel Dear Carolyn: My soon-to-be husband and I have vacation-inequity arguments. We have backpacked together for years. I have a chronic autoimmune condition, so backpacking has become harder for me. I also have a day job now, whereas I used to do shift work that allowed me to take a lot more time off. Partner does a lot of day hikes on the weekend in addition to backpacking, although he has cut back on his backpacking. The argument is, he considers his travel imminently more reasonable than my wish to travel overseas. I understand that traveling overseas costs more money. However, his driving back-and-forth does require gas money. He often gets a meal or grabs something on the way out, plus other food and gear replacement. He spends these $100 amounts on a regular basis because they don’t look like a lot. He always tells me I can save for my trips by putting $150 away, except then I end up having to transfer money in because we’re short during the pay period. He also scheduled all his annual vacation time on backpacking trips without discussing it with me, then said he’d just take unpaid time for any trips I want to do. Of course, who wouldn’t want extra vacation time? But then he will lose us money when he is not working. He feels like I am restricting him. I also have a window of time to do these things, given my disease activity. This is a major issue for us. He thinks traveling overseas isn’t affordable, something I can maybe do once every three or four years, even though he wants to go to the same area over and over until he has seen every canyon in Utah 1,000,000 times, and we are very, very good at traveling on a budget. I’m at a loss as to how to resolve this. I have asked him to track his expenses on trips, but he basically refuses to do so. We also are supposed to get married this October and we had talked about going on a week-long trip to Italy because I haven’t been on a real vacation for over a year, and he was going to cancel his 10-day late summer backpacking vacation (over half unpaid time for him) to help us save money for it, but I still see it on the calendar. How can we get past this? — Arguing Introducing Say More, a new advice column from The Washington Post. Carolyn’s been writing her advice column for two decades. Explore the archives below. | 
