Save your photography budget for getting there

 I do enjoy taking and curating photos. I wish I still had the many photos I took before digital photography became possible. I even wish I had done a better job organizing and stories the images I took with my first expensive digital camera. Oh well.

I have come to focus almost exclusively on the images I take with my iPhone. Yes, an iPhone is an expensive device costly nearly what some of the cameras and lenses I own costs, but you also can't surf the web with any of my cameras. You can turn one of them into an Internet server so you can download the pictures, but that doesn't count. 

As a whole, I think the photos I take with the iPhone are superior to the photos I take with my more traditional cameras. The one setting my some telephoto shots. The iPhone has such great intelligence that framing the shot is nearly always all that is necessary. There are ways you can override this intelligence if you want to limit yourself to your own control of certain details but why bother. Story first. 

If you enjoy setting the settings and hauling around the lenses and tripod, good on you. I do throw in my camera equipment when I use my care for a trip. My general advice would be - save your photography budget for getting to where you can find interesting things to shoot. Bring you iPhone.