For the past year now I have been planning on doing a big international trip. I debated on where to go, wrote out itineraries for each option. I decided on New Zealand and I made room to visit family in Sydney for a week. It's the trip of a lifetime; bungy jumping, sky diving, adventure sports. The tour I booked I would have to book my flight to leave on Thursday (THIS VERY THURSDAY). I put the money down for the tour itself. The problem is that it is very expensive, it is over $2,000 of my initial budget. The total cost of the trip is around $6,500. I just graduated college and wanted to splurge. What makes me regret it is that I have been planning on going to Uganda and Kenya next summer with a dear friend. The Africa trip itself will be about $6,000 also, meaning that I would chalk up $12,000 in a year for two dream vacations. I have generalized anxiety disorder and I am having a difficult time with my anxiety. I don't know when I would be able to go to New Zealand/Australia again and my trip to Australia is only made affordable because I would stay with family who I haven't seen in years. What do you think I should do? Should I pull out of the NZ trip? Do I go and just be very anxious about the finances or what?
Without knowing you, your situation, or how to advise anxious people, it's difficult to say, but here are some thoughts: The NZ trip seems worth the effort now because of coordinating the family visit and being all planned. The regret for not doing it could be worse than the anxiety if you do it. Many of my biggest regrets are for things I didn't do. You will probably be anxious about something, whichever decision you make. Will you feel better if you cancel? If this trip is important to you, you might focus on the positives and try put some of your anxieties aside. The money has been allocated, and it sounds like you've made good plans. It seems that you have time to work out something for the Africa trip. If you had to chose between the two, would you pick that trip? Getting one dream vacation instead of two still seems like a good thing to happen to a person. If the cost of the Africa trip is losing the NZ trip, is that the choice you want to make? One trip is clearly possible now, and one is in the future where things could change, so it's not an equal comparison, but it's still part of the equation.
The main question is, how are you going to pay for this? Do you have the money or is it going on a credit card? At this point, you have to go to NZ. You would lose more money by canceling. If you don't have the money and your family doesn't have the money, then cancel the second trip. You will be able to travel later on, but you need to start getting financially stable and ready.
I called and pulled out of the trip. I don't know if I will get my money back and it will take a few days to find out. If I don't get any of my money back, I lost $1600. If I went on the trip I would lose even more. I won't be going on a vacation this summer. I'm not sure the anxiety of going to NZ is worth it at this point in time, or self loathing myself for booking it or cancelling it. I can probably put myself back on the trip if I called back but I don't know if I want to do that. I also think that being financially stable and not anxious about finances is more important than taking this trip at this point in time.
Have you ever made a big decision by researching it well and then decided that you've done your best to inform yourself, and you should just take a leap of faith, knowing that you can never be absolutely certain about anything? Your anxiety disorder may make that approach impossible for you. If so, I hope that is something that will change over time for you. Of course I don't know you well enough to offer you really helpful advice, but -- due to the family connection and how much money you could lose by canceling -- my instinct (if it were me) would be to reverse the cancellation and just do it: Take a leap of faith. But I had a very similar problem planning my last trip to Mexico, and I have to admit that I should have taken more time considering whether it was a good thing to do at that particular time. But at least I made it down and had some very memorable experiences. Well, Good luck with it! (After all, sometimes what we do depends as much on luck as it does on our decision-making abilities.) Please do keep us "posted"!
Update: I was able to cancel my trip to NZ and I was able to get every dollar refunded (completely unexpected). I know that my anxiety disorder did contribute to my overwhelming anxiety about the cost of the trip. Now that I canceled it I can see with a clear head that it would have been okay had I gone. However, if I had not cancelled it I am not sure that I would have been able to relieve the anxiety. I decided that what I am going to do is try to go to NZ and Australia in the fall and just not go on any big vacation this summer in order to do that.
Hey I'm glad you got your money back and feel better about it. Dealing with anxiety can be difficult and even though once the anxiety has been relieved you can look at it and see that it would have been ok if you can't deal with the anxiety at the time then stepping away from the cause can sometimes be the best thing even if it is just taking a step back so that you can make a plan so that the next time you are able to go through with it.
