Most personal finance blogs advise people to find less expensive options for having fun, i.e. go camping instead of taking a full-fledged (and expensive vacation).  While this is good advice, it can be very easy to turn what should be an inexpensive trip into a not-so-inexpensive-anymore trip.

I’ll give you an example from my own life.  Mr. Savvy likes to camp.  Me, not so much but I make the best of it which means I must camp ‘in style’.  We headed to our local sporting goods store recently in preparation for our trip.  The only thing we actually needed was a new propane tank for our grill. 

What did we leave with?  We got the propane.  I got a spelunker hat (it’s actually called a headlamp but spelunker hat sounds more fun) for me because it’s dark in the woods.  Then Mr. Savvy said it doesn’t actually provide that much light so I got a lantern too.  Common sense would have said get one or the other but not both but I think my spelunker hat is cute.  Of course, I had to get batteries, lots of batteries - can’t chance running out of power in the woods.  Then we got a super-duper warm sleeping bag.  Yeah we already have a sleeping bag but it’s not super-duper warm and I get cold easily.  I did resist the urge to buy a handy-dandy all in one spice bottle though.  I would be oh-so-convenient to not carry five different bottles into the woods but I had to draw the line somewhere.

I’m not sure how much all that stuff cost (though I did have a coupon of course) because I stuck Mr. Savvy with the bill since he’s the one who likes to camp, hahaha.  However, we easily spent $50 on things we didn’t need and have survived without when camping in the past.  So beware of inadvertently turning an inexpensive activity into a costly activity.