Fear of Commitment
Your ticket ma’am? |
My husband and I were at dinner last night at a loud, unusually warm, cheap pizza place. Actually our kids were there with their youth group and for transportation purposes we decided we would eat there too, but we sat at a table back out of the way so as not to “cramp their style”. While we were sitting there a friend came up and chatted for a few minutes. During our conversation he shared his holiday vacation plans for he and his son. They have a great trip planned and he had used frequent flier miles, hotel rewards, and e-mail watch lists for bargains. In telling us how he’d booked it all, it came out that he had reserved the airline tickets last March.
After he left my husband and I just looked at each other in amazement – the idea of committing to something nine months before the event (sounds like a pregnancy doesn’t it?) was incredible and foreign to us. We talked about that a bit and my husband even asked the question wondering how we had gotten this way. I think the furthest out we’ve ever made commitments in traveling is three months, we’re always too afraid something might happen. (Though we agreed we couldn’t remember anything ever happening that hindered our plans.) Even when we went out of the country (Israel) a few years ago, we were taking the place of someone else who had backed out of the trip – so we made those plans not quite four months ahead of the trip.
I’ve been thinking about it some more, and I think I have some clues of how I got here (I don’t know about my husband’s reasons).
- I am afraid to commit the money in case something happens. Money was never plentiful growing up and I have a tendency to be scared to spend money.
- Along with the above, I always want to get the best deal out there so that I am not being wasteful with our money and I hesitate to make a decision on spending.
- I moved around a lot as a kid. I wonder if perhaps that made me uncertain of the future so I don’t like to plan that far in advance.
- I worry about being prideful, and planning something major for myself seems selfish.
Being that we’re at least an 11-12 hour flight from the coast of America, we’ve already planned and BOOKED our summer trip for next year. The longer you wait over here, the more expensive everything becomes. Your friend is right. If you plan early enough, there are some fantastic deals to be had!
I think we are of the same ilk! All of your reasons made sense to me. (And I was also a military brat.) It's not that money is an issue, and sometimes I will spend a little extra for comfort and ease, but I do think about an emergency coming up and the money is already spent.