How to Prevent Overspending on Holiday

With international travel back on the cards, now is the time to starting thinking of how to prevent overspending on holiday. The Express shared an article about how Britons where ‘blowing the budget‘ when they travel abroad on vacation. This should come as no surprise to anyone as most people don’t mind splashing on holiday even when they don’t have money for it. To stop you being another number on the statistic charts for the media, in this post I want to share two (2) tips on how to prevent overspending on holiday whether you are travelling international or domestically.

Travelling abroad is one of my best past times and I am excited that the number of ‘red-list’ countries has decreased tremendously and we can not practically travel anywhere. Being an unable to travel for so long has had made considering going a cruise now that waiting for the big 40 in 6 years to get here before I do a cruise trip. The *Ambassador Cruise Line has be wanting to hop onto the next cruise to somewhere warm as the UK inches closer and closer to winter than summer. But before we get there, I promised you some two (2) tips on how to prevent overspending on holiday.

Disclosure: This is a collaborative post.

How to Prevent Overspending on Holiday

A couple of years ago, I read an article that read “why being broke is the best time to travel” and because this article triggered me, I wrote my reaction post entitled “is being broke the best time to travel“? Thinking back to that time, I understand now more than ever why I felt triggered by the title, not so much the content but read my post for more details. I was triggered because the title promotes travelling whilst broke which in turn for some people instead of being creative with making money, they would reach for their credit card and fall into debt. I know of people who’ve borrowed thousands of pounds just to go on holiday to impress people they don’t even like and I do not subscribe to that travel of thought.

Travelling to me is so important and it is a form of therapy in a way, this is how I let out steam by exploring new places, enriching my mind with new cultures and digging into the yummy local cuisines. So, for me it is so important that whenever I travel whether spontaneous or planned trips, I always have enough money for the trip plus extra money for eventualities that always seem to happen in life. The tips I shared in this post on how to prevent overspending on holiday are those that I practice myself and will be practising on my next trip. There is nothing complicated about my tips, these can be applied to any trip whether you are travelling internationally or domestically, whether travelling solo or in a group.

Budget for the trip

Whenever people hear the word budget, half of their spirit leaves there body because there is a huge misconceptions when it comes to budgeting. In actuality, budgets are the only way for you to stay in control of your money, its the only way for you to enjoy your trip without worrying about money. All my travel budgets are similar because I always cover the same basics and modified as and when needed, check out my video below for my recent budget video on my channel.

Budgeting for a trip doesn’t need to be complicated, you just need to think of a couple of important things like:

• Transportation – what is your model of transportation? will you be flying to your destination and where you arrive there will you hire a car or take public transport? When it comes to moving around at destination, is everything within walking distance, will you require Uber/taxi/bus? These are the things to think about.
• Accommodation – where do you want to stay? In a hotel, hostel, Airbnb or even couch surfing? How far from the central location do you want to be?
• Food – when it comes to food think about where you will be eating breakfast (is it at the hotel everyday of your trip or not), your lunch (restaurants or you will make your food?) and your dinner (eating out, cooking or skipping dinner). What about snacks, how often do you snack?
• Activities – whether you have gone on a beach only vacation or an adventurous one you need to think about activities that you will engage or want to engage in. Do you want to do local tours, wine tours, food tours etc or you want to explore the popular tourist sights? Think of what you want to do or might fancy doing and budget for it.
• Miscellaneous – I always budget for miscellaneous regardless of the type of trip I am going on whether its a quick solo weekend getaway or a long trip. Either way, make sure you budget for miscellaneous spending, this will take care of any surprises that you want encounter on the trip.
• Gifts/souvenirs – if you anything like me you like souvenirs to remind me of the destination and often its a fridge magnet or shot glass, whatever it is for you make sure you budget for it. I always love buying little gifts for my family so I always include that as well.

Plan Ahead

Planning ahead will help you so much with reducing overspending when you travel. If I am going on a 5-day trip, I will plan for each and every single day and I often break it into three budgets (morning, lunch and evening). If I know that I want lazy mornings chilling at the pool doing nothing then I am less likely to spend but in any case I still try to budget for each time slot. On most trips I don’t often have lunch because that is often my touring/exploring time and will instead snack and this means I will need to bring my own snack on the trip. And then for evenings, I like to chill back at my accommodation and plan the rest of the trip.

And there you have it, the two tips I promised I would share on how to prevent overspending on holiday. It truly isn’t that complicated, just do a budget (this may require more time) and then plan a lot of activities in advance so you know what you will be doing. Schedule in some relax time where you do nothing and schedule in an empty day/time slot so you can add in anything unexpected or spontaneous activity you want to do on holiday.

Now that we can travel again, when is your next trip?