'AITA for telling my fiancé that I’m not going to pay for his parking at work?'

"AITA for telling my fiancé that I’m not going to pay for his parking at work?"

Hey everyone! A little backstory: I (23F) have been driving my fiancé “Eric” (23M) to his workplace for almost a year now. This is due to the lack of affordable parking at his job - he would have to pay almost $200/month for parking at his work, which he says is out of his budget.

His workplace is a few miles out of the way from mine, so it does take me ~ 25 minutes extra per day to drop him off and pick him up. But I’m happy to do this for him, and usually don’t mind at all.

Eric has never offered to pay me gas money, which again is totally fine. The only thing I ask of him is that he be ready on time to leave in the mornings. Eric has a very chill job, where if he’s late to his office it really doesn’t matter. My job is the opposite - I open the office every morning, and so I have to be there at a set time.

Unfortunately, Eric has consistently been late more mornings than not. When he is running behind, I have to either wait for him and be late to work myself, or leave without him (which I feel badly about, and he doesn’t like, because then he has to drive himself and pay to park for the day). I’ll admit that when he’s late, it frustrates me. I’ll often go quiet in the car, which he says makes him feel bad.

Now to the problem at hand: Eric was late again this morning, and again I was upset. In the car, I told him that I couldn’t keep being late to work, and he really needs to be ready on time. I need to mention: never once have I raised my voice at Eric, or said harsh words. When I’m upset, I simply go quiet.

To my surprise, he then said that he didn’t feel it was “worth it” to have to deal with me being “so angry” in the mornings, and that after we get married in a few weeks he wanted to start driving himself to work and having us pay for the parking garage.

I told him that I felt like the $200/month in parking wasn’t worth it (especially considering his student loan payments are restarting soon, which will be very high), and that if he was just ready on time in the mornings, everything would be much easier. He responded that actually, $200/month wasn’t that much, and we could afford it. This is where I may be TAH:

I told him that it was interesting that he didn’t want to pay for gas or parking for the past year (and was happy to have me do it for him), but now that we were getting married and he’d have access to my money, $200/month + gas was no longer a big deal (I out-earn him, but not by much - we are on tight budgets and will be even more so once we have to start paying back his loans).

I said that if he wanted to pay for parking himself, that was fine, but I wouldn’t be contributing as I saw it as an unnecessary expense. I added that I was still happy to drive him to work every day, but I did want him to be on time.

He got very angry, and said that I was lording my money over him. He said it wasn’t my business what he wanted to pay for, and that I had no right to control his schedule. I dropped him off at his work, and we haven’t talked since. I really don’t want to be controlling, and am starting to feel awful. AITAH here?

Here's what people had to say to OP:

pineboxwaiting wrote:

Oh dear. You two need to have some very serious conversations about money before you get married. You need to create a budget that tracks every penny, and then you need to determine your financial goals.

You ALSO need to have a clear understanding of how money is going to work when you’re married. Most people keep their own accounts and put money into a joint account to pay for joint expenses. Your fiancé seems to think that he’ll have access to all of your money as soon as you marry. You two need to have a conversation about your expectations when it comes to money.

Finally, this driving him to work thing is nuts. YOU stop being late to work. You need to leave every day at 7:30 to get there on time? THEN LEAVE AT 7:30!!! Not 7:35. Not 7:40. Every day, leave at the same time whether he’s in the car or not.

I really hope that the picture you painted of this guy just reflects how he is in this one situation & not how he is generally. Because the guy you wrote about here is incredibly selfish. He doesn’t care if you’re late to work. He thinks he’s entitled to your money.

And you’re a bit of a pushover. You let him make you late, and when you set a reasonable boundary about spending, you feel incredibly guilty. I wonder if he manipulates you a lot because you want to be nice? NTA Your fiancé is incredibly entitled. Pay attention.

Agoraphobe961 writes:

NTA. This is a big red flag. It’s too much when it’s his money, but not when it’s your money. Please take a hard look at his disrespect of your job, boundaries, and financials.

SetIcy438 writes:

You might consider delaying the wedding or calling it off entirely. He wants YOU to enforce the budget? Oh no no no.

megZesq writes:

Yep. I know this immediate conflict is “just about parking” but it seems like a decent snapshot of what to expect in the relationship. He’s happy to spend her time and her money, but gets mad if she points that out. Can’t see that getting better with time.

Fuschia_apple OP responded:

He really isn’t selfish in other areas, and I do love him very much. He just isn’t very financially literate. I’ve created a very detailed budget for us, and savings plans as well as account plans. This expense is definitely not in that budget, which is why I got so upset. I’m hopeful he will stick to it.

In a post 5 days before the parking issue, OP asked this:

Hi everyone! My wedding is in just under a month, and I am so excited! But after receiving invitations for/attending other friend’s weddings, I’m starting to worry that mine may be too short.

For context, my wedding is outdoors on a Friday, since the venue my fiancé and I fell in love with didn’t have any Saturday dates left this year. Because of this, I thought that a 5:00pm ceremony start time would be appropriate - the temperature would be cooler than in the afternoon, and people could still go to work that day if they wanted.

The issue is, our venue has a rule that everyone and everything (minus the venue’s items, of course) has to be out by 10pm. So my fiancé and I are having our send-off at 9:30.

It looks like most of my friend’s weddings are closer to 6-7 hours in length, and ours is coming in at 4.5. I’m a little worried that our guests will find this too short, or feel like it wasn’t worth it to come (many of our guests are traveling from out of state). I know that it’s too late to change anything now, but am I overthinking this?

Is this too much of a red flag? She doesn't seem swayed....