Even to the seasoned traveller amongst us, there’s a certain air of excitement that surrounds the process of planning and organising your next trip, from the moment the idea of a destination pops into your head to that “payment complete” notification you get upon confirming the flight booking. With all the excitement that comes with going on your next trip however comes the very real risk of over-indulging, one of which areas we tend to overindulge in being that of our spending.

Just like cheating on your not-so-strict diet or slacking off a bit with regards to some work you may still have to finish, the excitement of a going away someplace far somehow induces this destructive feeling that it’s simply okay to overspend just this once. If you do indeed get excited by each subsequent trip you take then I’m sure you know exactly what I’m on about and I’m sure you also know that it’s all good and well to point overspending out as a problem, but it’s something else altogether trying to solve that problem!

This is exactly why you have to sort of train yourself in your everyday life to avoid overspending, going through some daily exercises in financial astuteness with the manner in which you do your shopping. By the time the actual trip arrives it’s perhaps a bit too late to try and develop financial astuteness “overnight,” quite simply because the excitement of the trip itself always proves to be a bit too much to have you thinking straight.

So you need to start today – you need to start now with some smart shopping techniques in order to help you avoid the overspending associated with going away. As you know there are some expenses which just have a knack for popping up at the most inopportune of times – travel expenses which you simply cannot avoid if you’re trying to do so in the moment.

Buy Effectively and Functionally

There are many items which make up the luggage of a traveller and whenever you go out shopping your should do so with this in mind – how many of those items are you going to take with you on your trip? Buying effectively and efficiently would then come into play in the sense that you could save yourself a lot of luggage space by perhaps buying a high-quality, fully featured smartphone like a good iPhone to cover all the functions you’d otherwise have to buy other gadgets for. A really good camera in your smartphone means one less item to carry in the form of a digital camera, for example, so that’s what it means to buy effectively and functionally. You have less stuff to carry which means less stuff to spend money on, provided you of course that you take care of your phone using something like tempered glass screen protectors. After all, you’ll be using that one gadget for many different uses and you want to keep it protected in this way.

Buy Light

This one is a no-brainer; there’s a reason why retailers indicate and emphasise a product’s weight as forming part of its “features.” It’s because it is indeed a feature which could very well help you avoid travel overspending in that you can then carry more of your goods with you without having to worry about possible penalty fees for excess luggage.