This morning we didn’t hurry. Yes, we are here to ski but we are also here to rest and enjoy life.
Don’t know about you but queuing for the lift while my heart is still half asleep is not my idea of rest. This is why we don’t hurry in the morning – we still get four, five hours up in the mountain, getting up and down a hill.
Still today was different! When I got in the gondola and looked down I saw people standing at the bottom of the ski run.
And I remembered; remembered standing with these people in the winter of 2011.
I have mentioned before that when we had a pile of debt, we didn’t stop doing things and we just learned to do them differently.
In February 2011 two things happened: I got to know Tim Ferriss and we still came to Bansko skiing.
We didn’t book a package holiday; we flew to Sofia, spent there several days in our apartment. Then rented a car and drove to the house of a friend – it is 8 km from the ski lifts.
We rented skiing equipment, we hired a snowboard instructor for our son and…we had still spent less than half of what a package skiing holiday would have cost us. There was one problem – the ski passes for the three of us would have set us back by about £80 per day.
I wasn’t going to pay that! And Tim Ferriss helped me not to do that.
You know how in the ‘4-hour Workweek’ Tim mentions that if we are to succeed we ought to leave our comfort zone regularly and do some weird stuff? Like go to a shopping mall and ask absolute strangers for their phone numbers?
I didn’t get that far but…
…for the first time in my life I worked out what the people at the end of the snow run were doing. They stand there at about 11.30 when the serious skiers are already coming back asking to buy their day passes.
You see, in the morning you can’t buy a half day pass; you can do this at lunch time but it is still much more expensive than paying half price to buy someone’s day pass.
I figured it’s worth a go; it’s a win-win. The person coming back recoups half of the price they paid for their pass and I get our passes cheap. The only one in loss is the company operating the resort and I reckon they make a healthy profit.
And for me this was a Tim Ferriss moment of getting outside my comfort zone.
I did it! I managed to get passes for all three of us every day of our holiday. And you know what? This is when I knew that I’ve broken my financial boundaries; that I’ll manage to pay off the debt and turn around our financial fortunes.
Standing at the end of the snow run wasn’t about, or wasn’t only about, getting our ski passes cheap. It was about leaving my financial comfort zone.
Before that I wasn’t comfortable about talking about money. You may have noticed that this was before The Money Principle. In fact, without our skiing holiday in 2011 The Money Principle may not have existed.
Asking to buy ski passes was a small action through which I broke my financial boundaries and left my comfort zone forever. Everything I’ve done after that is easy in comparison.
Today I wasn’t asking for ski passes – this time we are doing this the ‘normal’ way.
If you think that I am not challenging these financial boundaries again and again you’ll be wrong. Everything I’ve bought here, I’ve got at least 10% discount for; and in most of the cases I asked.
How about that!
What are your financial boundaries and what have you done to break them?
I don’t think I have any financial boundaries! All I ever did was ask questions of others or myself to get the best value. It is rare that I need something right now, so I have time to find a lower price. Patience is a great financial attribute!