Avoiding Unnecessary Spending on Vacation

Do You Have A Problem Putting Your Wallet Away While Traveling?

Traveling frugally is a common goal for many travelers, and there are loads of ways you can save money on international travel while still having lots of fun and amazing experiences. However, even the most careful budgeting can fall in the face of unintentional and unexpected costs during your travel.

Sometimes, these extra purchases aren’t anything to worry about, but it’s usually best to be aware of these costs anyway, just so you don’t end up at the close of your vacation unable to afford that last train ticket.

Yes, that actually happened to me! When I toured the British Isles many years ago, I only had a few pounds to my name at the very end of the trip. I needed to get all the way from Wales to Heathrow Airport near London. Part of that was poor budgeting on my part. Another was the impulse buy of an Irish ring that I just HAD to have. I still have that ring, and I’m not sorry I bought it.

However, you can really get yourself in a sticky situation if you spend too much while traveling, and you might not even realize you’re spending above and beyond your budget. Despite traveling to a country considered “cheap” for travel and even though you’ve formed a good idea of how much to spend each day on incidentals, you can still find yourself over budget by the end of your itinerary.

In the following sections, I’m going to share some of the ways you might make unintentional or unplanned purchases when you travel, as well as advice on when to go ahead and make those purchases. Sometimes, all it takes is a little extra planning. For other travels, you might need to increase your budget slightly or have a few extra dollars (or pounds, euros, pesos, whatever).

(note: some of the links here are to websites with which I am an affiliate, and your purchases help fund my website!)

Create a Budget Before You Depart

The most obvious way to avoid unintentional purchases is to make a budget and stick to it. However, that advice is often much easier said than done. What do you do when you’re walking around, and there’s a street vendor with churros that look like they were sent from heaven? Do you skip what could be a delicious snack because you didn’t know before you left that you’d pass a street vendor with churros?

No, a better plan is to create a budget with a little wiggle room in there. You’ll probably want to budget things like food and souvenirs, but you may also find it helpful to have a few dollars (or whatever local currency you’re dealing with) in your pocket that you designate as impulse buys. Even if it’s just the equivalent of $20 in your pocket, having that money there and knowing it’s the only money you have for unplanned purchases can help you consider each purchase you might make more carefully.

I sort of always engage in this sort of budgeting anyway, even if I’m not traveling internationally or on a vacation. Honestly, it’s tough to set a budget sometimes, especially when you’re trying to go into a store and just buy one thing. Almost everyone is susceptible to “Oh, I need that!” even when you’re just shopping in the grocery store that’s down the street from where you live.

If you earmark a specific set of bills to use for unintentional purchases and last-minute buys on your vacation, you may find that you consider each purchase more carefully, as well as get to the end of your vacation with as little damage done to your budget as humanly possible. If you go into it knowing you’ll have a few unplanned expenses, that’ll help you budget the overall experience with greater accuracy.

Research What You Want Before You Travel

The biggest souvenir I can get from my travels is almost always the pictures I take. Almost everything is related to getting amazing shots of everything I visit. I want to relive all of those experiences, and the best way for me to do that is to have photographs (or videos) of my time in faraway places that I can share on my social media pages for friends and family. However, even I’m sometimes susceptible to buying things I didn’t intend to buy.

For example, when I went to the British Isles, I bought that ring, which was quite a bit of money for me at the time and made it so I was short on cash when I needed to get back to Heathrow at the end of my journey. Somehow, I was able to convince the person selling the train tickets to sell me one for less than the advertised rate. I have no idea how I managed it, but I got on a train for about half what the journey should have cost.

However, you can’t just wing it with your budget for things like restaurants, lodging, and transportation, at least not in the modern economy. Even though I don’t really expect to make many purchases while I’m traveling (I don’t really need a t-shirt that says “I went to Paris”), I’ll still do a little research on the popular tourist items people tend to buy while visiting a particular country.

For example, I know I need to set a few euros aside for my upcoming trip that will take me through Rome for a few days because my mother requested that I buy a particular item for her. I’ve literally budgeted this item into my itinerary, so I won’t run out of money while traveling. For myself, since my travels will take me through Paris, too, I’ve set a bit aside just in case I find a piece of street art I want.

Take Only As Much Cash As You Need for the Day

Some guided tours will take you right through touristy areas with lots of street shops and vendors, and it’s all but expected that you’ll buy a trinket or something to remember your travels. My traveling partner and I tend to buy a magnet in each country we visit, which never ends up costing too much, so it’s not something I specifically budget.

However, I learned that I should still set some money aside and have a bit in my pocket after seeing a street artist in Cartagena, Colombia. I knew that the tour I was on would take us past folks selling things on the street, so I put the equivalent of $30 in my pocket (in local currency). I’d already set about $50 aside for impulse buys and had bought a dress while on another tour, but I was glad I had the $30 in my pocket because it helped me to avoid spending too much on that tour, as well as have no qualms about buying a piece of art I saw while walking around.

I didn’t want to get caught with buyer’s remorse while traveling, so having some money in my pocket that I fully expected to spend helped me spend just as much as I wanted and nothing more. I had additional cash in the hotel room we stayed in while visiting Cartagena, but I didn’t bring all of it with me while walking around. That money was earmarked for other purposes; I only brought the money I had set aside for tourist purchases.

However, you can engage in this same method for any sort of outing. If you’re going out to eat and you don’t want to spend more than $40 between you for dinner, don’t put any more than that in your pocket. Hopefully, you’ve researched your destination restaurant, so you’re within their budget, but even if you haven’t and only have a vague idea of prices, it’s still better to take only what you need when going out. Who knows when an impulse buy might stick its head out at you and convince you to spend extra.

Avoid Tourist Trap Purchases. . . Mostly

If you take a guided tour in a city with lots of street vendors, you may find that your tour guide purposefully takes you down streets where their friends are located. I don’t blame them for this practice; you have to expect some cooperation between the locals when there are tourists around. Like the piece of art I bought in Colombia, our Cartagena tour guide was friends with the artist I bought my painting from, but I would never have met the artist in the first place if the guide hadn’t had us walk down that street.

So, you have to know going in that a tour guide or other recommendation might have you interacting with someone whose sole purpose is to sell to tourists. Although you might find the process, at least initially, somewhat annoying, don’t automatically assume you’re getting a bad deal on a particular trinket or souvenir because you’re buying from someone whose job it is to sell to tourists.

Honestly, many of the items I’ve bought in my travels have been under these exact circumstances. I’m in a touristy area, and I’m being sold an item at what is probably a bit of a markup versus what a local would pay. If you’re particularly savvy with money and can understand the exchange rate, you should be able to bargain with the seller so you don’t get taken to the cleaners while on a guided tour.

But don’t worry overly much if you don’t care to bargain. As long as you planned for the purchase and didn’t go wildly over budget, who’s to say that you paid too much for your item? If it’s something you wanted and were thankful to have purchased, especially when you got home and unpacked it, whatever you paid for it was definitely worth it.

---

---