I used to think that overpacking was a sign of inexperience, until I watched my colleague Sarah—Harvard MBA, corner office—stuff her carry-on with enough granola bars to survive a nuclear winter. That’s when I realized that the habits we form around travel often reveal more about where we’ve been than where we’re going.

Growing up in a working-class neighborhood in Baltimore, I learned early that vacations were luxuries earned through overtime shifts and saved quarters in coffee cans. Now, years into a career that has me crisscrossing continents, I’ve noticed something peculiar: many of us who grew up with financial instability carry invisible luggage that no airline can charge us for. These aren’t character flaws or signs of being “unsophisticated”—they’re survival mechanisms dressed up in carry-on bags and carefully hoarded hotel toiletries.

The more I’ve observed my own travel behaviors and those of friends who share similar backgrounds, the clearer it becomes that economic anxiety leaves fingerprints on everything from how we book flights to how we experience luxury. What society often dismisses as “cheap” or “tacky” behavior is actually a complex psychological response to scarcity—one that doesn’t simply vanish with a bigger bank account.

1. The Airport Food Hoarder

Last month, I found myself at JFK, mechanically stuffing my backpack with $4 bananas from Hudson News despite having access to the airline lounge. My travel companion, raised in Westchester comfort, looked at me with gentle confusion. “You know the lounge has free food, right?”

Of course I knew. But knowing and believing are different currencies when you’ve grown up watching your mother stretch a pot of soup across four days. The arithmetic of hunger stays with you: every meal you don’t have to buy is money saved for an emergency that your body remembers even when your bank account has forgotten. I’ve interviewed Nobel Prize winners while carrying a purse full of pilfered breakfast buffet muffins, wrapped carefully in napkins like holy relics.

This isn’t about being cheap—it’s about the profound inability to trust abundance. When you’ve experienced the specific panic of not knowing when you’ll eat next, your nervous system never fully updates its software, no matter how many first-class upgrades you accumulate. The executive who grew up food-secure grabs an airport sandwich without thinking; those of us who counted crackers grab three, just in case the plane goes down and we need provisions for the desert island.

2. The Obsessive Receipt Keeper

My phone contains 3,847 photos of receipts from trips spanning five continents. Not for expense reports—most of these trips were personal. I photograph every taxi receipt, every coffee purchase, every museum ticket, creating a paper trail of my existence as if someone might demand proof that I deserved to be there.

This habit mystified me until my therapist pointed out that when you grow up poor, you learn early that every dollar must be accounted for. “Where did the money go?” isn’t just a question—it’s an accusation, a moral failing, a threat to survival. The receipt keeping is a form of financial vigilance that protected our families from overdraft fees and shut-off notices.

Even now, with a healthy emergency fund, I find myself calculating and recalculating trip expenses, creating elaborate spreadsheets that would make a CFO weep. It’s not about the money anymore—it’s about the need to prove, constantly, that I’m not being wasteful, that I deserve this experience, that I can justify every penny to the invisible judge who lives in my head and speaks in my mother’s worried voice.

3. The Empty Hotel Room Sweep

Check-out time is 11 AM, but I’m there at 10:58, having spent the previous twenty minutes conducting what can only be described as a forensic investigation of the hotel room. I check under beds, inside drawers I never used, behind curtains, in the bathroom twelve times. The shower curtain gets pulled back repeatedly, as if my toothbrush might have developed legs.

Friends who grew up with replacement guarantees—who knew that lost items could simply be repurchased—find this behavior exhausting. But when you’ve grown up understanding that every possession is irreplaceable, that a lost jacket means a cold winter, that a forgotten charger means no phone until the next paycheck, you develop hypervigilance around objects. The fear isn’t losing things; it’s losing things you can’t afford to replace.

This manifests in other ways too: the triple-checking of passport locations, the obsessive patting of pockets, the mild panic when a boarding pass isn’t immediately locatable. We become archivists of our own possessions, curators of the temporary, because we learned early that carelessness is a luxury we couldn’t afford.

4. The Loyalty Program Maximizer

My wallet is a graveyard of loyalty cards, each one carefully maintained and monitored like a small investment portfolio. I know exactly how many points I have with every airline, every hotel chain, every rental car company. I’ve spent hours researching point transfer strategies that would save me $50 on a flight.

The middle-class narrative around loyalty programs is about convenience and upgrades. But for those of us who grew up counting pennies, these programs represent something different: a way to make travel possible at all. Every point hoarded is a future trip that doesn’t have to be sacrificed to a car repair or medical bill. It’s security dressed up as rewards.

I’ve watched wealthy friends book flights without checking prices, choosing convenience over cost without a second thought. Meanwhile, I’m cross-referencing five different websites, calculating whether Tuesday departures save enough to justify the vacation day, wondering if the 6 AM flight’s $30 savings is worth the pre-dawn Uber. It’s exhausting math that happens automatically, a mental tax on every decision that those who grew up with financial breathing room never have to pay.

5. The Souvenir Abstainer

The gift shop might as well have a force field around it. While other tourists browse leisurely through overpriced keychains and shot glasses, I’ve developed the ability to walk past without even registering the display. This isn’t snobbery—it’s self-protection.

Growing up, souvenirs were what other families brought back from vacations we couldn’t take. The very concept of buying something simply to remember an experience seemed absurd when the experience itself was already an impossible luxury. Now, even with disposable income, my brain short-circuits at the idea of a $30 t-shirt that serves no purpose beyond memory.

Instead, I collect free maps, ticket stubs, and hotel stationery—worthless objects that become priceless because they cost nothing. My apartment is filled with these paper ghosts of places I’ve been, each one a small victory over the voice that says I don’t deserve to take up space in the world. The irony isn’t lost on me: I can afford the souvenirs now, but the programming remains stronger than the bank balance.

6. The Public Transit Navigator

In every new city, my first instinct is to master the public transit system with the intensity of someone preparing for the SATs. I study maps, download apps, memorize routes, and calculate exact fare amounts. Taxis and ride-shares remain emergency options, reserved for true catastrophes or late-night safety concerns.

This isn’t about being adventurous or culturally immersive, though I’ve learned to frame it that way in professional circles. It’s about the deep discomfort with spending $40 on a taxi when a $2.50 subway ride will suffice. The mental math is instantaneous and involuntary: that $40 represents groceries, utilities, the buffer between stability and crisis.

I’ve taken buses in Bangkok at midnight, navigated the Moscow metro with a broken phone, and walked miles in uncomfortable shoes rather than hail a cab. Each successful public transit journey feels like a small victory against profligacy, even when the time lost far exceeds the money saved. The habit persists because it’s not really about money anymore—it’s about proving I can still survive without excess, that I haven’t forgotten who I am.

7. The Hotel Amenity Collector

My bathroom cabinet is a monument to every decent hotel I’ve ever stayed in. Tiny shampoo bottles lined up like soldiers, miniature lotions hoarded like gold, shower caps I’ll never use but can’t throw away. The collection grows with each trip, a physical manifestation of abundance anxiety.

The rational part of